Every summer term BLF’s Education Programme offers a week of eye-opening talks, workshops, and interactive experiences. Teachers, course leaders, and parents or carers who home educate children can register and book for events.
BOOK EDUCATION PROGRAMME TICKETS
Myths, Legends and Magical Creatures
Friday 11 June 2027, KS2 English and PSHE (Years 3 and 4)
Meet two very different dragons. The Dragon Kings of Chinese tradition rule rivers and seas, where they are associated with rain and good fortune. In the legend of St George, the dragon is a dangerous monster that must be defeated. Through interactive storytelling,
students will discover how different cultures can imagine the same mythical creature in very different ways. Then it’s their turn to create. Following a live illustrator, students will combine unexpected animal features to invent and draw a magical creature
of their own. They will then build an original legend together before writing their own short version, deciding who their hero is and what they must overcome.
Earth and Space
Monday 14 June 2027, KS2 Science and Geography (Years 5 and 6)
From the stars above us to the oceans below, these sessions explore the amazing connections between our planet and the wider universe. Students will learn how to find their way around the night sky and tell a star from a planet. They’ll discover why we really
are made of stardust, tracing the iron in our blood and calcium in our bones back to the stars where these elements were forged. Students will then explore real satellite images and data to discover what scientists can learn about our oceans from space, including
how they are changing. Finally, inspired by the Voyager Golden Record, they’ll work with an illustrator to create their own postcard from Planet Earth, choosing what they would show an unknown audience in space about life here and their own place within it.
Great Explorers: Into the Unknown
Tuesday 15 June 2027, KS2 Geography, History and PSHE (Years 3 and 4)
Long before satnav, people were mapping unfamiliar places and finding ways across land and sea. Students will examine al Idrisi’s remarkable twelfth century world map and discover how early mapmakers built their picture of the world from the knowledge of travellers
and sailors. They’ll also see how navigation has changed, from reading the night sky to the satellites we rely on today. Students will then take on the decisions involved in an Antarctic expedition, choosing what their team will need and responding as conditions
change. Finally, they’ll question the idea of discovery itself. Through the stories of Columbus arriving in the Caribbean and Captain Cook in Australia, students will encounter the arrivals from different viewpoints and consider whether discovery is really
the right word for what happened.
Under the Sea
Wednesday 16 June 2027, KS2 Science, Geography and English (Years 3 and 4)
Dive beneath the waves to discover what lies in the ocean’s darkest depths and meet some of the creatures that survive there. Students will then enter the legendary lost city of Atlantis, imagining what it might have been like and considering whether it was
ever a real place or simply a story that has refused to disappear. But one lost world beneath the sea really did exist. As Doggerland Detectives, students will use clues recovered from beneath the North Sea to work out what this prehistoric landscape was like
before rising waters separated Britain from Europe. Finally, guided by an illustrator, they’ll draw an underwater world of their own, thinking about what could live there and how life might survive.
Performance Poetry
Thursday 17 June 2027, KS2 English (Years 5 and 6)
Poetry changes when it is given a voice. Students will discover how the way a poem is spoken can change its meaning, experimenting with their own voices before learning and performing parts of William Blake’s The Tyger from memory. They’ll see how rhythm and
repetition can make words stick and experience what happens when a whole audience performs together. The connection between poetry and rap comes to life as the room builds and performs an original spoken word piece, with different parts of the audience adding
to the performance. Students will then turn to their own lives for inspiration, writing an “I am from…” poem drawn from familiar places and memories, with some of their lines shared aloud.
Introducing Shakespeare
Friday 18 June 2027, KS2 English and Drama (Years 5 and 6)
Meet Shakespeare through the words, stories and performances that have kept his work alive for more than 400 years. Students will discover how a boy from Stratford-upon-Avon became an actor and playwright in Elizabethan London, and get a glimpse of what it
was like to experience a play at the Globe Theatre. They’ll find Shakespeare in expressions we still use today before getting to grips with one of his most famous sonnets and helping to create a new 14-line poem together. Finally, they’ll enter the world of
Macbeth, meeting the witches whose prophecy sets the story in motion. Inspired by their strange language, students will write new lines of their own before the whole audience joins together to perform one enormous spell.
Tickets are now available to book for you and your students: BOOK YOUR TICKETS