Brooklands Museum Trust

Brooklands Road Weybridge

Surrey KT13 0QN

Tel: Valerie Mills, 01932 857381 ext 255

www.brooklandsmuseum.com

Karen Blakely is a Year 1 teacher at Oatlands Infants School, Weybridge, Surrey

This is the children’s first big school trip, and timed to kick-start a half-term “Transport” project. With Brooklands on our doorstep, it is ideal, providing all sorts of opportunities for cross-curricular work. They love time in the activity room where they can handle wheels and axles and dress up in period motoring and flying costumes.

It is also a novelty for the children to interact with someone other than women teachers. The volunteer guides are mostly older men, many of whom worked in and around the Brooklands site and the children listen to them with awe. While the boys tend to drool over the sports cars, I am fascinated by the bikes of my childhood. Choppers win over Maseratis for me. The trip sets the children up with all sorts of ideas. We create a class book illustrated with photos taken on the day, and they are able to draw intricate diagrams when creating their own designs for a wheeled vehicle, thanks to all the activity room work.