Blundells+Cottage

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Blundells Cottage is located on Wendouree drive in Parkes on the edge of Lake Burley Griffin. It offers a huge range of educational experiences for students and even teachers, with its diverse range of period artefacts and information. School and group bookings are available by appointment and is open to the public on Thursdays and Saturdays from 10am till 4pm. Blundells Cottage gives teachers the opportunities to discuss the following topics with their students:
 * Blundells Cottage - Anna Kellie and Cara Slattery**


 * History: you could go into the history of the cottage. Talk about who lived in the cottage and how long for. You can also talk about the history and growth of the ACT. Furthermore, if you wanted to go into even more depth for the older students, you can talk about the history of Australia and how ACT was formed. Teachers can pose open ended questions such as "What do you think would attract people to ACT if it wasn't even a recognised territory yet?" or "What do you think the families who lived in Blundells Cottage would be farming?"


 * Artefacts: there are many different artefacts that were not neccesarily original artefacts owned by the Blundells but were donated from other households from the Duntroon Estate and are original and genuine artefcts from the era. If you go on the tour, the tour guides go into detail about these aretifacts and how they were used. As a class you could talk about what things in the cottage are different from what we use now. For example, the cottage displays a butter churner that was used to seperate milk and make butter and cream. Discussions be made with the similarities and differences about how and who makes butter in this day and age.


 * Farming: The families living in the cottage used different artefacts to help with the farming of the land. Similarily the points made in the history discussion, teachers can discuss how farming has changed over the last few hundred years, including what, who and were produce is made and farmed.


 * Location and Landscaping: The cottage is located near Lake Burley Griffin. This allows discussion on how the landscape of the area has changed so much over the last century with Lake Burley Griffin being made, farming lands that are now major buildings and suburban areas.


 * Society and Living Conditions: You can talk about the time in which the families lived in the cottage and how different their living conditions were.


 * Families: talk about the difference in family sizes and what was neccessary to accomodate for these differences. For example discuss how the whole family would have slept in the same room in some circumstances. As well as this you can talk about the different roles of all the members of the family. Discussions can be mad about how the boys would help the father and generally take over the farm as they got older, and the girls would help out a lot in the house.


 * Architecture: The size of the house, how it was made out of stone, the difference in the structure of the house. For example, the toilet and a bread oven were outdoors.


 * Emigration: members of the family were from different countries. The older years can talk about travelling to Australia back then and how many people in Australia are from different countries.

During our visit to the cottage we discovered that there was a wide range of resources for many different ages ranging from years 1-6. You could use different aspects of SoSE such as History, Geography and civics and citizenship.