Y3/4 Trip to Matlock
The Peak District Mining Museum
Tuesday 19th June 2007
Today saw us back to school for ten minutes before setting off to the Peak District Mining museum, after an hour or so travelling we dropped our stuff off and straight into activities, some children exploring the museum and tunnels, some finding out about the different types of rocks that were mined from the rocks around the Peak District and have a look at the gift shop.
Other groups went to pan for gold and investigate a real mine just up the road from the museum.
A break for dinner, then time to swap around and everybody to do the things they hadn’t already done – before it was time to get back on the bus and home for the end of the day!
Not really what you would have thought of as a museum, apart from the sign above the door giving the game away. This building was our base for the day.
A coloured version of the plans for Temple Mine
Temple Mine – an insight into what we saw…
Keen explorers, all ready to go underground…
Panning for gold, demonstrated ably by Mrs Tidmarsh, teaching assistant and fool's gold expert!
Tristan manages to find some gold
The shiny gold bits are the fools gold... Can you see any?
Deep in concentration… looking for any sight of some gold
More opportunity to pan for gold
The next group of intrepid explorers
waiting to disappear down the mine.
Our tour guide, Pat explains a little bit about what was mined from Temple mine down the years.
When Temple mine was first opened up, the owner didn’t care how tall his miners were – just so long as the ponies could get up and down to drag the containers out! I don’t think I stood up straight for any of my visit deep into these tunnels and caves!
Pitch black apart from a quick flash light on my camera… how the miners would have had to have eaten their dinner so they didn’t waste any of their expensive candles that are needed especially for when they are mining.
Pat shares more information with the children…
In the museum, Hannah gets very hands on and has a go at keeping the mine empty of water… a very physical job that was normally done by the men and the boys.. Hannah did it very well though!
The children took in a great deal of information, had a great time and certainly in my groups, the children behaved brilliantly, proving to be a credit to Cheslyn Hay Primary School. If this is the standard of behaviour – I look forward to taking many more of our children on school trips in the future.
Hopefully some examples of children’s work will be able to come out of today and in time be displayed on the website for you to look at.