Seaside Holidays activity 8: Create a Victorian photo album

Learning objectives

Knowledge and understanding of seaside holidays, souvenirs and photography.

Curriculum links

KS1-2 History (Local Area Study, seaside holidays).
kS1-4 Art and design (create a photo or sketch album inspired by Folkestone and the seaside).

Discuss with the class how they remember important events from the past such as big family occasions, holidays, or places they’ve been to visit. Ask them how they think people remembered these kind of events in Victorian times.

Use Learn with Objects Seaside Holidays 10: photo album as the starting point for your enquiry. Think about the following questions:

• What is an album?
• Why did people make them?
• How do we know they were important to them?
• What did people put in albums before photography was invented? (look at Learn with Objects Master topic entries for this).
• Who created albums in Victorian times?
• Who did not, and why?
• What can we tell about the person who made the album in Learn with Objects Seaside Holidays 10: photo album?
• What does it tell us about Victorian Folkestone?

Ask the children to do some internet research on some of the questions above and to report back on what they’ve discovered.

Create a Victorian photo album

Children create their own sketch or photo album of views of Victorian Folkestone.

They can design an attractive cover in a Victorian font, perhaps including a favourite illustration.

Photographs and illustrations from across the Learn with Objects Seaside Holidays topic can be printed out and stuck inside with appropriate captions.

Top tip: You could also source old postcards of Folkestone and photocopy them so that children can add the images to their albums.