Educational Trip Destinations

I don't know if you have found the official website for the Royal Family, but there is a lot of information there, especially under the Royal Residences, Art and History heading.
www.royal.uk

Have a look at the Historic Royal Palaces site, too. I’d definitely urge you to consider a visit to Hampton Court, which has a lot of layers of history. Membership to HRP also covers the Tower of London.

Buckingham Palace is - in British terms - a comparatively recent royal residence (since Victoria’s time).

For Royalty In London, St James Palace, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Hall, Westminster Abbey, Tower of London. Outside London, Hampton Court Palace, Windsor Castle. Scotland - Edinburgh and Glasgow, both for royalty and to get a clearer idea of the conditions that locals endured. Also the Highlands and Islands, who lost a lot of their population to emigration.

Research for museums online. For instance the London Museum is due to reopen at its new location in Smithfield Market in November. It has a satellite museum in the dock lands area. There are many open air museums throughout the UK relating to how people lived from the Bronze Age forward.

As for the Pilgrims many came from a small part of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire via Leiden in the Netherlands.

There is a very interesting trail of their lives which you can follow in that part of the UK- I came across the trail in Doncaster Minster a few months ago, as a total surprise. I think I thought of doing a TR but considered it to be far too niche.
Sort of at the centre of the trail is a Visitor Centre at Retford (a station on the East Coast main railway line), but there is quite a lot of hard copy resource to be had in that area.

Oh, what fun! Fingers crossed you get the grant!

The first thing I thought of has been mentioned upthread and that is Hampton Court Palace. Plan to spend 3/4 of a day from London as a day trip, more if you decide to take a boat on the Thames one way (if available in your time frame).

If you add on France, there is a company in Paris called Paris Walks. Before Covid I did a wonderful walk with one of their guides, Brad, who has a PhD in history and is American. He'd developed a walk centering on the lives of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson during their times in Paris that was fascinating. While this walk is not offered any more(since covid), you might be able to schedule him for a private walking tour for your group on this topic.

www.paris-walks.com

You can also visit Lafayette's grave which is tucked away in kind of a hidden cemetery and apparently during WWII flew the American flag over his grave during the entire Nazi Occupation. IF you want to do this....post closer to your trip and let us give you directions to Cemetery Picpus because Googlemaps will lead you astray! (Hint....googlemaps tries to take you THRU a hospital ER ambulance entrance for pete's sake!! No, not right!)

There is also a plaque on the wall where the Hotel York stood which is the location of the signing of the Peace Treaty in 1783 that ended the Revolutionary War. It's located at 56 Rue Jacob in the 6th Arrondissement and is easy to find. (CityMapper is a good app to have).

Oh gosh....this is going to be fun!

As I read the post this isn’t a student tour. It’s teachers wanting to research for their teaching. But they teach kindergarten. Five and six year olds. Most of these ideas are great — for high school courses. I lived in London when I was five. I liked the park, the zoo, riding in the top front of the bus, and some of the cool stuff at the British Museum, in small doses. So keep it simple. Kings and Queens wear crowns and fancy jewels, and live in castles. Tower of London. The Pilgrims left because they wanted to go to a different church. Westminster Abbey is the kind of church they didn’t like.

Benjamin Franklin (decidedly non-royal, although he appreciated an upscale lifestyle) was mentioned above, and the house where he lived in London is now a museum. It’s his only home that still exists in the world. They have self-guided entry several days a week, but only on Fridays, there are guided History and Architecture tours, which I found fascinating. The place had fallen into disrepair, and squatters were living there for a long time, but it’s been restored to Franklin’s time, right down to the exact shade of green paint in the entry hall.

Royal sights are some of the more expensive in the U.K. (nice if there’s grant funding!), and a couple of things related to Buckingham Palace of note:

The King’s Gallery (might still say The Queen’s Gallery out front, if the carved lettering in the big stone above the columns hasn’t yet been replaced), at the south corner of the palace structures, has temporary exhibits each showing a fraction of the royals’ massive art collection. Currently, it’s featuring fashions worn by Elizabeth II, and two years ago, we saw choice portraits and paintings by Hans Holbein, Henry VIII’s court painter. Including it would offer a peek into what’s normally private pieces, not usually for public consumption.

A block away is the Royal Mews, stables for royal horses, and showrooms for lavish carriages and some Rolls Royces and Bentleys. The carriages date back hundreds of years; the cars, obviously, aren’t quite that old, although they’re relatively new. Queen Victoria absolutely wouldn’t allow those new-fangled automobiles anywhere near her, so Royal cars (and the non-royal mechanics and chauffeurs needed for them) reflected Royal tastes. The Mews are also residences for employees who maintain the stables.

The Wine Fountain in the first courtyard at Hampton Court Palace (mentioned several times above, and really important for your research) is a modern replica, and fairly recent addition. There had not been a fountain there before, and this ones evokes the original, which was built for English and French royalty, at the Field of the Cloth of Gold gathering in 1520, made for Henry VIII to impress Francois I. The modern one on display has never had wine flowing through it; the rest of the palace has plenty to impress tourists (and educators).

As isn31c has said the Pilgrim Father’s story is based around Linclonshire and Nottinghamshire. Have a read here.

The beginning of this website has information about Gainsborough and Boston which both have strong links to the Pilgrim Fathers.

Gainsborough Old Hall is worth visiting. It is one iof the largest and best preserved medieval manor houses in England.

Go and find the delightful small statue to the ‘Pilgrim Woman’. on Gainsborough Water front.

Near Gainsborough Old Hall is the United Reform Church which was built in 1896 to commemorate John Robinson, a leading member of the Separatist group. He fled to Holland to escape persecution for his views, but died before joining the Pilgrim Fathers in America. The church has strong links with America and the foundation stone was laid by the American ambassador, Hon. Thomas Francis Bayard.   Revd. George R.W. Scott of Newton, Mass. as chairman of the National Council of the American Congregational Churches, attended the Tercentenary Celebrations of the formation of the 1602 Separatist Church in Gainsborough. He brought a financial contribution from the American churches which paid off the debts of building the church.  There is more about John Robinson here.

Behind the altar is the Mayflower Room which has a fascinating exhibitionwith maps and artefacts, detailing the story of John and his followers and their voyage to America (via Leiden.) The room is only open in the summe months so you would need to contact the church to make sure it is open for a visit.

I visited last year and was made really welcome by the church members and I am sure they would be delighted to meet you. I spent a lot longer in the Mayflower Room than I’d expected. It is definitely worth trying to visit.

There is some information about Boston here, the site of their failed 1607 escape to Holland. Go and find their Memorial just a few miles down the Haven.

Also have a look at the Mayflower Trail website. You can download the trail here which has information about many places to visit in both Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire.

There is so much history waiting to be discovered about them and I've hardly scratched the surface! Much of this will be too detailed for Kindergarten, but gives some of the background to begin to bring the story alive to them.

I’m not sure how much depth you will be able to into for kindergarten aged children but good for you potentially getting a grant out of it! :-)

The Tower of London would be a good place to start although you might want to avoid the head chopping angle ( or maybe not?). The Crown Jewels would probably be fun for the children with lots of teaching options.

Windsor Castle would also be good as well as Hampton Court Palace. Children love the maze at HCP and Queen Mary’s Doll House at Windsor Castle could be interesting to look at.

There are literally 100s of castles across the country that you could visit if you wanted to go further afield than London. North Wales has a good few close to each other.

For the pilgrims, some on the Mayflower pilgrims (James and Mary Chilton) came from Canterbury which is reachable from London. (I found this out when I did a friend's family tree and found she was descended from one of the Chilton siblings) I’m not sure what pilgrims related stuff is in Canterbury but it’s an interesting and very historic town to visit anyway.

As adults you may enjoy a visit to the Mayflower pub in Rotherhithe, located where the pilgrims set sail from. Outside London I would also consider a visit to Battle to see the location of the Battle of Hastings. (In addition to everything mentioned above.)

France doesn’t seem particularly relevant to your curriculum as stated. Spanish colonialism obviously had a huge impact on the development of the US so that seems a better trip to make.

You certainly cover a lot of ground in Kindergarten. They’re 5?

Grant writing is definitely an important skill, and really helps with funding of significant programs. I got many as a SPED teacher, and the more you apply, the better you get. Good luck on getting your grant, and I hope it all goes well with the project. Good for you all for teaching!

although you might want to avoid the head chopping angle ( or maybe not?)

Emma’s got lots of meaningful suggestions, and if you did include another head-chopping incident (or you could also leave that part out, too, but the location is still marvelous), there’s the Banqueting House in London. Whitehall Palace was a humongous complex, but a fire wiped out everything but the Banqueting House, which was also the first Neoclassical building in Britain. It was used for banquets (natch) and also Masques (plays with music and dancing). The basement has displays describing some of the inventive ways that sets were created for masques 400 years ago, and royalty and nobles often participated in performing in the shows (which had royalty and courtiers in the audience). Almost the Sistine Chapel of Britain, it features lavish paintings by Peter Paul Reubens (maybe you don’t want to teach the kids Reubenesque?) on giant canvases in the ceiling of the main room, but not frescoes.

When we went pre-COVID, they had costumes of royalty and courtiers that visitors could try on in front of a mirror, and a throne upon which to sit. Both children and adults seemed to love the costumes (hint, hint).

After COVID, the Banqueting House was closed for an extended time, but I now understand that it’s open occasionally. You’d want check the schedule well ahead of time, as I believe tickets are now getting rapidly sold out for the times it is available.

The head-chopping part - during the English Civil War in the mid-1600’s, Charles I was beheaded, having been declared guilty for attempting to “uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people” (imagine someone doing that today!), and this happened in front of the Banqueting House, before a large crowd. I don’t suppose a lesson plan might involve ways to use an axe?

The present King Charles III is, of course, related to Charles I.

Hi, what a fantastic opportunity! I'll suggest Kensington Palace--in particular the rooms dedicated to Queen Victoria's childhood.

As teachers of young children, I think you'd be interested in learning more about the Kensington system, seeing the little opera theatre (I thought this was so neat!), and the dress-up trunk, etc.
https://www.hrp.org.uk/kensington-palace/whats-on/victoria-a-royal-childhood/

The present King Charles III is, of course, related to Charles I.

Embracing my inner history geek….
Charles III is distantly related to Charles I but isn’t descended from him. Charles III route to the throne comes from Charles I older sister, Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia.
Interestingly Prince William IS descended from Charles I via Diana. Two of her ancestors were illegitimate sons of Charles II.

Speaking of CharlesII, are you aware of the BBC series Horrible Histories which is brilliant especially its songs. He’s the king that brought back partying…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA5abHKvUBQ

The Monarchs Song is definitely educational!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSvKc-8frp8

I'm trying to not be terribly critical, but given that the U.S. was established because people did not like being ruled by England and its king, and not having royalty is a big point with Americans, and the American ideal that we're all equal, I'm wondering why there's a unit on kings and queens and royal families.
Museums and what I call "house museums" are trying to do more to tell the stories of the ordinary lives of all the people who lived in the great houses, including servants (don't know this depiction is happening at any of the royal residences). I think Sambourne House, in London, does this, as I recall from my visit last year. That would allow you to talk to the students about the lives of various classes of people, and their living conditions. With some searching, you might find other places like this. I found the Museum of the Home to be quite interesting, and it depicts everyday life throughout London's history. Also check out Dennis Severs' House; a visit there would provide great stories for your students. And, I can't believe I've never visited, but apparently Charles Dickens' home in London, where he lived for two years, is depicted as a middle-class Victorian house, so another place to get a feel for how ordinary (or not so ordinary) people lived.
In terms of explorers, I do not believe that the English crown directly funded expeditions to the New World, especially not in the same way that Spain did. The same, I think, is true of France. The Pilgrims were more what we would call today privately funded. Older students might understand this difference.

"don't know this depiction is happening at any of the royal residences"

It's covered in reasonable detail at Kensington Palace and Hampton Court, albeit the latter is a former royal residence.

The British and French monarchs sponsored plenty of American exploration, not only under the hybrid model of a royal charter but mostly private investment (such as Virginia), but more directly also. Examples are John Cabot’s voyage to Newfoundland commissioned by Henry VII in 1597, and Verrazano exploring the east coast of North America for the King of France in the 1520s. Also the French exploration of much of inland North America including the Mississippi valley, and in the Pacific Northwest, Royal Navy captains Cook and Vancouver.

There is actually a genuine royal palace in the United States: Iolani Palace in Honolulu, seat of the Hawaiian monarchy in the late 19th century. It’s a very interesting place.

It wasn't just the Spanish influence on the history of the US- regarding the explorations some of the early colonisers were the Dutch (New Amsterdam/now New York), and even the Swedes with New Sweden (Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania).

And, although French exploration of North America is more applicable to Canada, they certainly had an influence on the USA- being in the modern day Florida and Louisiana before the Spanish. And they were around the current New York actually before the Dutch (actually Italians sponsored by the French).

In fact I think one of the interesting things is how some of the early European colonies switched around between different countries.

Now how much of that could be used to grant fund a fact finding trip to Europe may well be a different matter.

If it’s Great Britain and history, what child isn’t fascinated with Stonehenge, the Neolithic age, and their knowledge of astronomy. If you need Neolithic royals, the Druid priests fill the bill.
Sutton Hoo burial site and objects.

I was the child who did the extra credit or built the models on pre-historic sites but fell asleep during castles and jewels.

Sorry if I am stating the obvious, but one angle you could look at is the connection between US place names and Kings and Queens. There’s just a few!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_in_the_United_States_named_after_royalty

For the lives of the common people there are a number of museums where you can see old buildings and people in period dress showing what life was like. In London, the Docklands Museum is easy to get to and has a lot on life in the east end of London up to around the 1960s when the docks declined.

But, in my view, probably the best for life of ordinary people is Beamish Open Air museum (in the north of England, near Newcastle) where several 'towns' have been created using real buildings that were dismantled and moved to the large site. The oldest is (from memory) around 1800 and there is now a 1950s town (embarrassingly I can still remember things in it from when I was a kid). You can't really see it all in one day, but the ticket lets you enter as many time as you like in a year. There are others (but smaller as I recall) at the Black Country Museum and Ironbridge Gorge.

There are a number of royal palaces, as others have said but these don't tell you what life as a royal was like (often surprisingly miserable if you read any royal histories - so no change there then). I have not been there, but Osborne House on the Isle of Wight was where Queen Victoria and her husband Albert tried to create a family home for their large family.

"Sustain your position by offering details of what school district is being represented and please provide the kindergarten syllabus demonstrating this unit is real."

To me this is an unnecessary call out. We are not being asked to donate to the cause. OP, a newcomer to the forum, is asking for "destinations and sites to see and also experiences for my colleagues and I in the U.K. and possibly France" and not anything further. Thus no need for any kind of supporting details. They'll get plenty of that from the grant review committee.

Steven, I agree with Pam. If you have a problem with the thread and if you think it violates some of the community guidelines (and I don't think that it does), you can always report it and ask the staff here to review it. The OP does not answer to you or to any of us. No poster here does. And they are certainly under no obligation to provide a syllabus to you.

If you don't like what they're saying, just move on.

We are all guests of the RS Forum and should have a right to raise issues, without being rude or antagonistic, when concerned about the basis of the content. My greater concern is the post reads as being dis-ingenious of seeking to help kindergarteners education when the real need is simply trying to seek info to help complete a grant application.
BTW, I am a longtime reader of your posts and do take into consideration the gravitas of your opinions and experiences. Do you have concerns about a growing impact of AI/ChatGPT being utilized to create posts containing an underlying manipulation of the forums intent?
Note to all: I do not seek to waylay the comments into a cesspool of ill intent and will delete my comments in order to avoid such.
To the OP, please help me better understand your initial post.
Thx

Do you have concerns about a growing impact of AI/ChatGPT being utilized to create posts containing an underlying manipulation of the forums intent?

I’m not sure I understand you, Steven. Are you saying that AI was used to create the OP’s post? Even if that were true, and I very much doubt that it is, it’s best to just report it and let the tech staff deal with it.

Hello Steven, Please feel free to look up the Amplify CKLA Literacy curriculum for kindergarten on Google or whichever search engine you prefer. You should be able to find your answer there. That should provide sufficient evidence of this curriculum without me supplying you with a syllabus or my current employer information. I am simply trying to get some good ideas of places to visit that would be valuable to me and my colleagues. Should we get this grant, we will have a limited time/budget and would like to get the most bang for our buck, so that we can experience and collect as much info as possible for the students in our classes and district. We neither need, nor have asked for, any assistance with our grant writing. We are highly-educated teachers (Masters+) and can handle that on our own. Have a great day!

Laurie,
Thanks for taking the time to respond and clearly amplify the validity of your needs. How the need is being expressed still spins my head a bit, but clearly the intent is well and just. Unfortunately I have come into contact with several k-8 micro schools who have aggressively commenced seeking grants utilizing more “spin” than facts to purloin monies. With the plethora of private and charter school growth perhaps using the credentials of Amplify will help increase your mission success.
Steven

Steven, I teach in a very large, suburban public school district. This post was just an informal/casual way for me to seek some additional information as I've only been to the UK once, and it was a 12 hr layover. Providing specific curriculum names and a syllabus did not even cross my mind as being necessary. As a first time poster, I didn't think I needed to be so formal, nor did I think simply seeking this type of information would be problematic.

As a first-time poster, I didn't think I needed to be so formal, nor did I think simply seeking this type of information would be problematic.

Laurie, you don't need to be formal, and I'm sorry that your question generated problems for you. I think I can safely say that the above poster is speaking for himself and NOT for Rick Steves and his staff, who are solely responsible for content here. i wish you the best of luck with your grant. I do some substitute teaching now that I'm retired, and I love teaching kindergarten. They're so eager and excited about the learning process

...NOT for Rick Steves and his staff, who are solely responsible for content here.

Actually, I think that the RS organization goes out of its way to distance itself from content on the forum:

Content provided by members of our community reflect the opinions and experience of those members, not Rick Steves or his staff.
We do not check the accuracy of posted content and accept no responsibility for loss, injury, inconvenience, or bad pasta sustained by any person using the free advice received from Rick Steves Community members.

I think this thread has gone way off the rails, and should be closed.

I'll add a suggestion for the Weald and Downland museum near Chichester. It sure is nice to see stately homes and artifacts behind glass. But that artifact behind glass and in climate control has lost so much context. In a museum like W&D you get a tiny bit closer a functioning living space at the early modern era.

To the OP i work in museum education focused 16th to 18th century US & English history so please feel free to message me anytime.