Tuesday 13 January 2009

Holocaust Memorial Day

Holocaust Memorial Day isn't until the 27th January, but this work on this is likely to take us a couple of weeks, so we started doing this yesterday.

We first discussed what the Holocaust was and the people that were affected by it. The boys were amazed at the number of Jews that were killed at this time. They have done their own pie chart to show the proportion of Jews exterminated during this period.

They also watched the video, Purple Triangles that examined what happened to one family of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany.

We then discussed what genocide was in preparation for today's discussion. The genocides discussed were Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda.

The lesson learned from these were that all are based on hate, intolerance and prejudice and can all be manifest even in small ways.

In the coming days we will be discussing case studies of children that lived through these experiences and thinking about what we would have done in similar situations.

It is certainly sobering to consider that each of us could have been put to death either for our religious beliefs, our age, sex or the fact that we wear glasses!

2 comments:

stitchersanon said...

This is what I love about home ed. Not just teaching the the facts but allowing them time to think about things and their consequences, and the emotional side of things and to have views.
Xander is only 8 and whilst he knows all about the military facts etc about war, and that lots of people were killed, I dont think he is old enough to deal with the rest in a sensible, mature fashion. Well done you, may come for tips when it is time lol.

stitchersanon said...

I wish I had read this earlier lol
I tought Environmental science at a level and Ecology...could have sent you lots of climate change activities and web sites with short (2-3 mins) films on and activities.
If you are interested, will happily send you a list of resources...covers all sorts lol and most of the sciences but are fairly fun(I had a theory as a teacher that if I got bored, the students sure as heck did).
Would love your pack when you finish with it. I also use enchanted learning, they have a claender adn you can learn what happened onthat day and there are activities to print off with each day...very boy friendly with space and nasa etc.
lol
Gaynor