Our Year 5 students embarked on the long bus ride to Ballarat's "Sovereign Hill" this week to walk the dusty roads filled with horse carriages and try out the hard wooden benches of a yesterday's world Old School room.
Upon their arrival at Sovereign Hill, the students started exploring the historical precinct filled with traditional early 20th century buildings and shops before trying their hands on some gold washing. Unfortunately, none of them came back home rich, although enriched with lots of new information about the hard life in Australia's Gold Rush era.
The students' highlight of the day was attending a yesterday's Old School, including the strict classroom procedures. Their teacher of the day educated them in the correct standing and sitting attire before showing them traditional games kids in the early 20th century used to play, like horse show throwing and playing with homemade simple dolls. They could also try their hands on cleaning clothes without the comfort of a washing machine and learnt that it was indeed a long process full of hard physical work to scrub the clothes clean and iron them afterwards. The students greatly enjoyed dressing up in garments worn at the start of the 20th century before returning back to Al Siraat and our modern world.