teacher33

I am so glad others mentioned the Museum of London. I was thinking as I read it that the kids might enjoythat more than the V&A, etc. I took my nephews to London when they were 10 and 12 and that was a hit. It really does make history come alive for both kids and adults.

The trip down to Greenwich by boat and back by Docklands Light Railway was also a fun day--one which the boys had requested on our itinerary.

Likewise Westminster Abbey. They were impressed with all the famous burials.

At Windsor they were impressed (boys no less!) by Queen mary's Dollhouse.

In the Cotswolds at Bouton-onWater, there was a mini village (houses hip high) which we enjoyed and the village itself was a pretty walk around. Remember that there were lots of birds in the stream, though they were probably the common everyday kind.

Hope it is as wonderful for all of you as it was for us!

ma23peas

Great ideas!! I thought I had replied earlier but must have been distracted and missed the send....

The theatre trip is thought out (sort of)...I plan on waking the kids (they're all wanting to start this now...10 weeks ahead) at 4am for the two days before the trip...that way when we fly at 5:45 from Atlanta to London they'll be ready to sleep for a good portion of it. We'll arrive in London at 7am...take all carryon luggage and be at the hotel (London Lodge Hotel-Earls Court area..hoping it's safe) by 9:30-10:00....they've set it up so we can check in early and if need be we'll take a nap. I'm sure we'll arrange a nap sometime during the day and hit Hyde Park that afternoon...very relaxed first day but hit Mary Poppins which will really be like their noontime...so they should be ready for it...and it's my birthday..so a special treat is required!

I agree about the Science Museum...was waffling on that one..now I know to skip it...definitely I mean to go to the British Museum..somehow forgot to mention that one...halfsies on V&A...my girls love costumes and I heard they have great ones...so maybe not?

I think we definitely need to hit the Cabinet War Rooms...we'll have covered WW2 by then and my husband is a big war history buff so that would be great for him! Must make that happen. Ohh..and Ben Franklin? Need to check that one out!

You've convinced me to forego the Lake District...didn't realize we were so far off from there. We definitely want to hit some castles/palaces...can y'all give me your opinion of ranking these or adding any I've missed?

Warwick Castle
Blenheim
Hampton Court
Windsor

I'm horrible but I don't know who Mary Arden is...but that day out sounds PERFECT for one of our Chipping days...

Westminster Abbey...that needs to be fit in there...I was thinking of doing brass rubbings at St. Martins in the fields (sp?)...and we'd like to take in Sunday services at a church there...does WA have services on Sunday open to public? Do you have to dress up? Service in our town is very casual...not at all out of place to wear jeans to church...my how things have changed.

It would be neat to take a boat trip...trying to minimize out of pocket expenses...with 5 traveling it gets tight..trying to hit all FREE things in London and saving expenses for ventures out from CN....but we're only there once and it's my husband's first use of his passport..last one expired a virgin...this one will get some stamps!

Thanks all to some great ideas! I think I need to start a travel journal and make up suggested outings for days...the only things in stone are the Mary Poppins (already purchased) and the Buckingham/Mews tour (also purchased) so the rest of the days are ready to fill in and weather might affect some of that.

Thanks so much!!!!
Tara
We would like to hit two of the above but may only have time for one...my son is such the bird fan that I think just driving out in the countryside and stopping when we can to just take looks in the trees will fascinate him.

margyb

I highly recommend Warwick Castle....the kids will love it. It is in amazing shape and looks like what I'd always thought an old English castle should look like.

kswl

Tara, check out this website:

http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~janja/rspb/where.html

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds gives you maps for birding and good locations in the city.

The Greenwich trip/boat ride/rail is very reasonable. You'd probably spend more money staying in London for a day.

The V&A clothing exhibits are THE reason to go, IMO. Your girls will enjoy seeing them, and it needn't take too much time.

Not sure about St. Martin's in the Field, but you can dress casually at most Church of England services. Near/in Earl's Court there are several Anglican churches. You can go to the parish finder and put in the postcode of your hotel to find the one nearest you:

http://www.london.anglican.org/ChurchFinder

Mrs_Wilde

Birdland is in the Cotswolds, not too terribly far from Chipping Norton - you may want to check that out. The website is www.birdland.co.uk.

Someone mentioned the Cotswold Falconry Center - it's at Batsford Arboretum just outside Moreton - fascinating place and they fly the birds (as I recall a kestral, owl and some other sort of hawk while we were there) sometimes with audience participation.

Also, while in London a stop at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields adjacent to Trafalgar Square for a visit to their brass-rubbing centre is worth a stop and provides a very inexpensive but one-of-a-kind souvenir. My son enjoyed making one (and he was 18 at the time!). It's located in the basement next to the Cafe-in-the-Crypt (nice place for tea too).

Have a lovely time!

Marsha

I second Warwick Castle. My kids - 12 and 7 at the time, loved it! They have a "training session" for young knights and other activities for kids. The wax figures that tell the story of the castle are also very interesting. The kids also loved the British Museum - especially the mummies - and the Natural History museum. Since you homeschool, you will find it easy to "study up" on what is in each museum. For example, my children chose one or two things in each museum to look for.

teacher33

I just googled Bourton on Water to see if I remembered correctly about the miniature village. It is still there. The website alsomentions a maze with treasure hunt for kids and that Birdland is fairly close.

janisj

Mary Arden was Shakespeare's mother. Anne Hathaway's (his wife) cottage and Mary Arden's house are both just outside of Stratford and open to the public.

noe847

We went to V&A for the clothing. We did enjoy it, but in some ways I think my expectations were too high. It doesn't take long to see the dresses, though, so you could pop in if you do the Natural History Museum.

Your husband might really enjoy a visit to the Imperial War Museum. It is very well done. My husband has been there several times.

Westminster Abbey has an admission charge - £22 for families. On Sundays it is only open for services. The public can attend services, but can't tour around. Similarly, Evensong is offered each afternoon at 5:00, and you could attend the service but not walk around. The Abbey requests "respectful" attire for services.

smalti

Tara--

Don't know whether you've seen that you have responses to your post on the Educational Travel Forum. You can't get to that forum by clicking on your name--you have to go to the "Change Forums" menu.

Happy Travels!

flanneruk

On the Educational Travel forum, you seem to be contemplating Hadrian's Wall.

You can't get there and back in a day from Chippy in September - when there's only 12 hours' daylight. Most of the Wall's best artefacts (like the letters) are in the British Museum anyway. And Britain's Roman remains aren't a patch on those in France or Italy, which you're planning for later.

One way of looking at this, if you’re homeschooling your children in world history, is to pinpoint which major events in world history that took place in these islands, and how they’re best visited.

Here’s my nomination.

1.The proclamation of Constantine as Emperor at York: July 306 (because it led to the establishment of Christianity throughout the empire, and subsequently globally). There’s an interesting (to early Christianity in Britain fans, but to few others I suspect) exhibition about this in York (3 and a bit hours each way from Chippy) this summer. Missable for most people, I’d have thought. Cirencester Museum gives almost as good a picture of daily life under the Romans and it’s only half an hour from Chippy. The area round Chippy is stuffed with Roman villa sites: North Leigh (complete with hypocaust and mosaics) is just there in the middle of the fields for example (though leave nothing visible in your car). Chedworth's terrific, but not open 24/7 like North Leigh

2.The preservation of monastic life, and much Western literature, in Ireland and then Northern Britain, while the Dark Ages hit most of continental Europe. Best relic: the Lindisfarne Gospels at the British Library (easily combinable with the Harry Potter tour including Kings Cross). Otherwise you have to go to Holy Island, Iona or Trinity, Dublin


3.Magna Carta, 1215. Apart from the copies in places like the British Library, Runnymede is easily visitable on the drive between Heathrow and Chippy. Runnymede’s also a route-finding beacon featured on the maps most in-flight entertainment systems feature if you’re landing from or taking off towards the west at Heathrow.


4.The accession of Elizabeth 1, 1558. By ensuring England became Protestant, independent and relatively religiously tolerant by the standards of the time, Elizabeth ensured roughly half Europe’s colonies spoke English and practised general religious tolerance. For her connections with the Chippy area google “Elizabeth woodstock” and “elizabeth ditchley”


5.The Glorious Revolution, 1688. Thus establishing William and Mary as a monarchy clearly accountable to Parliament – by far the most enduring democratic model yet established anywhere. Bizarrely, now commemorated mostly for all the wrong reasons in northern Ireland. Mary’s mother, Anne Hyde, was born at Cornbury Park (as was her cousin, Lord Cornbury, the most unfairly libelled governor any of our US colonies ever had). Probably the most undercommemorated major event in world history.


6.The impeachment of Warren Hastings, 1788-1795. Established the principle (virtually unheard of in most former and subsequent empires) that colonial administrators were required to behave honestly, thus laying the grounds for India's surprisingly benign experience of imperialism. Hastings made more money than he should in Bengal: he did so to buy back the family pile at Daylesford, a few miles from Chippy – where the current operators of the organic food shop reach levels of extortion in their pricing even Hastings would have been shocked by


7.The discovery of the pain killing effects of willow bark. OK, this might seem to be stretching it a bit, but aspirin has probably relieved more human discomfort than anything else you can name. Its synthesis and commercialisation was a German development. But it was a vicar of Chippy, Edward Stone in 1763, who first published scientific evidence willow bark killed pain. Marked only by a blue plaque in the town’s Hitchan Mews, near the Town Hall


8.The explosion of intellectual life and scientific discoveries in the early 18th century. Heavily concentrated in Scotland immediately after the Union of the Parliaments, but there’s no real memorial of this brainpower boom there (except near-universal resentment). But the Enlightenment Gallery on the ground floor of the British Museum recreates the excitement of this period. Sadly undervisited (because there are few Greatest Hits exhibits), it’s stuffed with the second-division objects that helped people in the 18th century understand the world around them. When I was 10, I’d have been a lot more fascinated by the stuff here than any number of Rosetta Stones


9.The Industrial Revolution. Relatively few interesting remains immediately near London or Chippy (though Charlbury station was designed by IK Brunel and is almost untouched since, except for its goldfish pond). Ironbridge Gorge will take 2-2.5 hours each way from Chippy, and features mostly the early period when they were still producing buildings of beauty. Didcot railway centre has trains and stations of a rather later date, but they’re frequently in steam


10.The discoveries leading to the theory of Evolution. London’s Natural History Museum is the world’s most spectacular museum of dinosaurology. But Oxford’s University Museum tells the story of fossil discovery far better – unsurprisingly concentrating on the sites and discoveries within 15 miles of itself (Don’t miss the dinosaur footprints in the forecourt), especially those concerned with Stonesfield (arguably the first dinosaur ever discovered). Avoid the University Museum on Sundays, when le tout Oxford take their children there. But look out for the stuff about the dodo. The dodo bits in Lewis Carol weren’t inspired by the dodo itself, but by the Museum’s displays about it.


11.Communism. Das Kapital probably isn’t the stupidest book ever written at the British Museum. The one I wrote there's probably worse, but no-one;s been dumb enough to publish it. But Kapital's done more damage than any other fantasy humanity’s ever dreamt up, and more people’s lives continue to be blighted by Marx’s gullible nonsense than by TB, AIDS and malaria combined. The BM Reading Room is now preserved (together with a number of other more useful books written there). The old fraud’s tomb (as bombastic as the man himself) at Highgate continues to be visited by people who, bizarrely, want to lay flowers on it rather than blow it up. Worth visiting just to watch fellow-visitors.


12.The codification of most games in Britain during the 19th century. If you think that's trivial, you’re one of the few people in the world with access to a TV who’s watching neither the men’s singles nor the World Cup Final today. Most of the world’s major sports have codes first written here, and museums to go with them. Most moving by far is the near-permanent queue of Indians and Pakistanis waiting to be photographed outside Lord’s, the spiritual home of their national game (handy to the Abbey Rd road crossing if you’re doing the Beatles tour). Bizarrely, a preposterous proportion of the world’s motorsport engines and technology (both for F1 and for Indycar) are made within 50 miles of Chippy – practically the only manufacturing industry left in Britain. Renault/Benetton, for example, is just down the road at Enstone.


13.Demonstrating what complete nonsense the “governments need to be authoritarian” myths of the 1930s were. Sites like the Cabinet War Rooms or Bletchley give you an insight into the technology and management of how Britain punctured the myth of Hitler’s invulnerability. (Bletchley’s about 75 mins from Chippy if the traffic behaves. Most routes will take you past the Washington’s’ ancestral home, Sulgrave Manor) But two other sites give greater insight into what really kept Britain going till Hitler signed his own death warrant by declaring war on Russia and the US. The Commonwealth War Memorial at the top of The Mall is, sadly, the only London memorial to what’s still the biggest volunteer army ever raised – the 2.5 million men and women from the Indian subcontinent who volunteered to fight for Britain (though it's surrounded by monuments to the armies from other Commonwealth countries who volunteered to join a fight that really wasn't theirs). Or, close to Chippy, visit the churchyard at Bladon where Winston Churchill is buried in practically the plainest grave imaginable. Opposite the churchyard, find the right-of-way footpath into Blenheim Park and walk through it (for free), past the Palace, to the column of Victory (the victory being the battle of Blenheim). Understand that both Winston’s understated grave, and the preposterously pompous monuments his ancestor, John, conned the country into paying for were precisely how the two Churchills wanted to be remembered: Winston's simple grave for saving us from pure evil, John's megalomania for an obscure victory practically no-one can see the point of. Winston's unparalleled ability to communicate to Britons stayed with him past his death.

Lastly, not an event, but an issue. Prehistoric religion is usually characterised by Stonehenge, though many posters here describe it as a great disappointment. Chippy’s miniature Stonehenge, the Rollright Stones, is infinitely more accessible and fun. There are a surprising number of other similar sites within a few miles of the town.(www.stonehenge-avebury.net/sitevisits.html)

This has turned into what sounds like an ad for the (non-existent) Chippy Tourist Board. It wasn't meant to - just trying to show you can cover an awful lot of world history in London within a few miles of Chippy, or on the journey between the two. There's no real need to subject the kids to the endless hours in a car our overcrowded road system imposes on you if you judge driving times by US standards.

And don't waste energy pursuing Robin Hoodiana round Sherwood Forest: there's practically no "there" there, and getting to Nottingham involves a truly horrible motorway bottleneck. Though there are CS Lewis tours (as well as Insp Morse, Tolkien and Lord knows what else) in Oxford.

kswl

Flanneruk, don't you think they would enjoy the guided tour of the Darwin Centre in the Natural History Museum? Some of Darwin's original specimens are on display from his Beagle voyage.

annettetx

Flanneruk;

Loved your post -- next time I'm lucky enough to go to London, I'm going to have you design a sight-seeing list for me!
FYI -- The Lindisfarne Gospels aren't on display right now at the British Library, although there is a copy you can thumb through and a digital version that can be scrolled through.
The "Treasures of the British Library" exhibit that is currently on does feature some other amazing illuminated manuscripts.
Annette

ma23peas

flanneruk! Wow, simply Wow! Can you come homeschool my kids? You've energized me with your wealth of knowledge to give up all our other subjects (excepting Math, Latin and Reading) and really do some fun projects tied in to where we'll hit for the next 10 weeks before we go...your suggestions have given me some great ideas...didn't even know the Magna Carta was so close!
I picked Chipping Norton only because I got a great deal on a nice cottage where we could make this vacation a restful one..I knew London would be running hither and thither and wanted the kids to experience a more relaxed England...I had no idea it was close to such great historical treasures! I wouldn't have known it had it not been for you taking the time and enlightening us. Thank you so much!
Those ten days will pass by quickly...if you see a family of five in a Vectra with binoculars for the birds and maps in hand just honk at us!
Thanks again!!!
Tara

doonhamer

Warwick Castle is a must, especially if you're going to be there between the 1st and 17th of September, as they are having a birds of prey show between those dates - details on the castle website at:
http://www.warwick-castle.co.uk/warwick2004/index.asp

noe847

flanneruk, thanks for taking the time to put together all of this history information. I'm not going anywhere near Chipping Norton or Oxford but will be able to use much of the London information. And I'm saving all of it for future reference.

doonhamer, we saw a birds of prey exhibition at Stirling Castle and it was pretty cool.

ma23peas

doonhammer...it's a shame. we'll be in London through the 18th...I wrote to Warwick and asked where the birds go from there but so far no response...it would have been IDEAL!!! But, we're still searching for something cool for ds.

Thanks everyone for the great helps!
Tara

Oh! Anyone been to the Cadbury World? I think my kids would love a chocolate day out...and I'll start a new post but is it worth it to see any of the theme parks there?
Thanks!
Tara