Certain museums, including the British Museum and Science Museum, London; Eureka, Halifax; Royal Armouries, Leeds; the Deep, Hull; and B.MS Belfast, London, offer sleepovers. The child plus bedroll joins a group at the museum, has a special child-friendly tour and then ‘sleeps’ alongside the mummies or whatever. They are hugely popular so book up early.

If you live in the north or are visiting on holiday a simply wonderful day can be spent at the Reamish Open Air Museum, near Newcastle (www.beamish.org.uk; Tel: 0191370 4000). Here children can see and experience life as it was in the 1800s and 1900s. It tells the story of the effect of the Industrial Revolution, and its buildings, shops, houses, mines and industrial machinery bring it all to life. Allow a day to visit if possible. Throughout the summer there are endless special events.

EASY OPTIONS

After school or over a weekend, when the children need to unwind or you wouldn’t mind some peace and quiet, these ideas will give an immense amount of fun to children and provide a welcome break for you. Set them off with the ideas and let them get on with it, or just join in when you want.

Pretend Games

These are very popular with younger children and can range from a dolls’ tea party to a secret language such as Eggy Peggy. The secret language of Eggy Peggy came from one of Nancy Mitford’s books and was spoken by my (Eleo’s) husband and daughter. For some reason I could never master it. When you both get practised you will be surprised how fluent you are and can have secret words on buses and in shopping queues, and time will fly by.

This is how it works: add ‘egg’ before each vowel. For example ‘Mary had a little lamb’ becomes ‘Meggary heggad egga leggittlegge leggamb’.

Another idea is to ask a child what they imagine they would like to be when they grow up. If it isn’t fireman or ballerina it may be prime minister, doctor, teacher, the Queen, etc. Then ask them to imagine what you were like when you were a baby or their age. You may be surprised.

Fancy Dress

Charlotte and Lucy after school

I loved creating our fancy dress box – it’s huge by now and in it, among many other things, are a couple of ancient frilled silk shirts from my mother’s childhood, old school ties, daughter’s fairy dress and bridesmaid outfit and misshapen fur hats, a bowler and a couple of fezzes. It takes a bit of time but it’s pretty easy to build up something similar of your own. Family, friends and the local charity shop will usually be able to provide a few cast offs, and bring back odds and ends from foreign holidays. Scour your drawers for those ethnic beads you never wore, that old skirt with a net petticoat, those tie-under-the-chin scarves that have had their day, and so on, and gather everything up in a large cardboard box or spare drawer. The children can role play to their heart’s content – or even put on a fashion show.

Fancy dress can move on into little plays, which can involve you, teddies, dolls or other children. You only need to ad lib but if the child is keen small parts can be written up.

To take it even further, if you have time and a handful of children, a real play or show can be rehearsed and put onto a special audience, along with tickets, programmes, rows of chairs and master of ceremonies to make it all more real.

While we are talking about shows maybe do a version of a real television show. A while back three sisters I know, aged ten to five, put on their version of Blind Date for us. They took it in turns to be Cilia, the lucky girl and her wannabe suitors. They each held a ‘microphone’ and their mannerisms were perfect. We all nearly died of laughter. These days X Factor, I’d Do Anything or Dr Who might make good subjects.

Dens

A den is a great addition to the world of pretend. This can be inside or outside, a short-term affair for an afternoon that relies on a couple of upside-down chairs and a rug or two, or amore substantial structure built in the garden. In a den they can leave behind all worldly concerns, forget about homework, times-tables and other necessities of life.

Art

Why not hold an art exhibition, possibly for a children’s charity? You will obviously need to plan far ahead so enough drawing, painting and modelling can be displayed. The children could also draw a picture of you or other members of the family – you will be surprised by the results. The children can spread the word around and family and friends can attend. Again, leaflets, tickets, pricing and displaying must be done ahead so everything runs smoothly on the great day. One grandchild can be in charge of drinks and nibbles, while another helps with the money – children can be wonderfully mercenary on these occasions and charm extra cash out of the grown-ups.

Nanette by her granddaughter Lily

Be a Reporter and Make a Newspaper

For older children this is great fun and will keep them occupied on outings. Arm them with a notebook and pencil and either brief them or let them decide who to be. They can interview each other, you, family and friends, and even friendly shopkeepers provided they have time to answer. It will help them enormously when they get round to their GGSE geography interviews in the local town or wherever.

Shops

This was one of my favourites as a small child. I watched with huge envy as my aunt created one for the vicar’s son. The grown-ups collected little tins and cardboard boxes, small change (farthings at the time), scales or measuring cones. Food consisted of bowls of raisins, biscuits, spice packets, rice, nuts, fruit, etc., all carefully placed on the ‘shop shelves and counter’. It’s so easy to create from a couple of old boxes and gives enormous pleasure. The eager shopper can make out little lists and the shopkeeper can make out the receipts as the cash till pings. It’s great for basic counting and money skills.

At the Dentist/Beauty Parlour

Perfect if you want a lie down. Let the children play- act a trip to the dentist or beauty parlour with you on the couch. For the dentist you will have to put up with a bit of prodding and probing so you may go for a beauty routine instead. A beauty parlour session needs you in a good mood, happy with the childish hand manipulating a warm flannel over your face, applying globs of Pond’s Gold Cream, bits of cucumber to the eyes, a leg and arm massage, some bright nail-varnish on toes and fingers, their version of an Indian head massage (which might be surprisingly relaxing) and finally a hair- do that might just hurt a bit as your hair is tugged about. Children will adore it even if you don’t come out looking quite as lovely as before. But you will have had a lie down and you can tell the children to take their time.

One Final Thought

What about Mixtures? Two grandchildren I know say this is the very best end-of-day game of all, and my grown-up daughter had a happy faraway look on her face when I said I was putting it into this book. It needs aprons, bowls, spoons, bags of flour, chocolate powder, vegetable oil, dry pasta, any other harmless food which you won’t miss, a bit of food colouring and an indulgent blind eye as they play contentedly on the kitchen floor mixing it up together with water. The result is always repulsive but they will have had a lovely time.

ANCIENT EGYPT

Young children simply love ancient Egypt – they are fascinated by pyramids, mummies, strange animal gods and Tutankhamun’s treasure. If you ask any small boy what his favourite subjects are he is likely to say Egyptians, Romans, sharks and dinosaurs. So here, for young children everywhere, is a short history of the Egyptians.

Ancient Egyptian civilization began in the fertile valley of the River Nile and lasted for an incredible 3,000 years. It is strange to think that we are closer in time to the last ancient Egyptians than they were to their own first kings. The desert sand and the hot, dry climate have preserved much of that civilization, not just their great temples, statues and the tombs of their kings, but other things too, such as books and even private letters.

Pyramids and Tombs

The Sphinx with the Great Pyramids behind

The most famous buildings in Egypt are the three Great Pyramids at Giza. These were tombs built by the pharaons (kings) and they are 4,500 years old. The stones used to build them were floated down the Nile on wooden rafts and dragged to the site by thousands of labourers. It took these labourers and skilled workers thirty years to build the pyramids, using levers, rollers and pulleys to move the stones around.

The pharaons were buried in secret chambers deep within the pyramids approached by narrow tunnels, which were then sealed up. The builders created empty chambers, false doors, dead-ends and deep pits to try and fool any robbers who tried to find the tombs. The oldest and largest pyramid of all is the Great Pyramid, which was built for King Khufu (or Cheops) and completed around 3560 BG. The next largest pyramid was built for King Khafre and the smallest for King Menkhare. Later on pharaons were buried in tomb chambers cut into the sides of mountains in other parts of the Nile valley, particularly in the Valley of the Kings on the other side of the river from the capital, Thebes (now called Luxor). As time went by most of these burial places were covered by desert sand and hidden.

Close by the pyramids is a massive rock carving called the Sphinx. People think that the Sphinx was made to guard King Khafre’s pyramid. It has the body of a lion and the face of a man (probably Khafre) and is carved out of a single piece of rock. The Sphinx originally had a beard, but this was knocked off at some point (as was its nose) and buried in the sand. The beard was eventually found and is now in the British Museum.

Famous Pharaohs

The temple of Ramesses II at Luxor

The pharaoh was the most powerful person in Egypt. The ancient Egyptians believed that when a pharaoh died he became a god. One famous pharaoh was Ramesses II, also called Ramesses the Great. He had over one hundred children and he built more monuments and statues of himself than any other pharaoh so that he would never be forgotten.

Hatshepsut was another interesting pharaoh. Though she was a woman she ruled as a pharaoh in her own right and even went into battle. She ruled Egypt for twenty years and images show her wearing a beard to show she was a pharaoh.

The pharaoh we perhaps all know best is the boy-king Tutankhamun. He was only nine years old when he came to the throne and reigned for just a few years before dying mysteriously when he was still only eighteen or nineteen. Was he murdered or not? No one knows. He is famous because of the astonishing treasure found in his tomb.

Tutankhamun’s Treasure

Over the centuries most pharaohs’ tombs were robbed and when they were found again thousands of years later, little had survived apart from beautiful wall paintings. However, in 1922 the archaeologist Howard Garter and his patron Lord Carnarvon discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, which still had its fabulous treasure of gold and jewels. The tomb was packed with furniture and other objects the king would need in the Afterlife (life after death). The mummy of the boy-king lay undisturbed within three coffins and wore a fabulous golden mask.

Mummies

The ancient Egyptians believed that when someone died they went on to live another life – the Afterlife. Important people, such as pharaohs, were specially prepared for this journey to the Afterlife.

First the body was taken to a tent and washed with sweet-smelling palm wine and water from the Nile. A cut was made in the left side of the body and all the internal organs such as the liver, lungs, stomach and intestines were removed. The heart was left inside, as it was necessary for the body to have a heart in the Afterlife.

The organs were washed and then packed in a salt mixture called natron to dry them out. They were then put into special jars, called canopic jars, which were buried with the mummy.

Ganopic jars

Now for the nasty bit. A long thin hook was pushed up the nose and wiggled around to mash up the brain, which was then pulled out through the nose!

The whole body was covered in natron to dry it out. After forty days the body was washed again with Nile water and covered in oil to keep the skin soft. The empty body was pa eked with sawdust, leaves and linen bandages to fill it up again so that it looked lifelike. Later the method changed and the organs were put back into the body, but they still put empty canopic jars by the mummy.

The whole body was then wrapped round with bandages – now it was a mummy. This embalming process was so well done that even thousands of years later, when mummies have been unwrapped, the bodies, though dark and shrivelled, are still in amazingly good condition.

Finally the mummy was encased in one or more human-shaped coffins and placed in a large stone coffin called a sarcophagus. Egyptians were afraid the body would not be able to eat or drink on its journey to the Afterlife so cups, forks and sacred drinks, along with many other small objects and mummified animals, were placed inside the coffin to accompany the body on its long voyage.

Anubis, god of mummification, tends to a mummy

Gods and Goddesses

The ancient Egyptians believed in hundreds of gods that looked after the people of Egypt. Some ensured that the sun shone, the rain fell and the crops grew, others protected the people from bad things. The gods lived in temples, which were built specially for them and where people came to worship them.

Bastet

Many of the Egyptian gods and goddesses were represented by animals. A very important god was Re, or Ra, the sun god. He is represented in many ways – sometimes as a hawk and also as a dung beetle, which pushed a disc representing the sun across the sky. Others were Apis, a bull, and Sohek, a crocodile. The Egyptians loved Sohek and built special pools by their temples so they could keep crocodiles, and they even covered the crocodiles with jewels. The Egyptians also worshipped cats, as they believed they had magical powers. Bastetwas the cat god–sometimes she was a lioness and sometimes an ordinary cat. She was the daughter of the sun god Re and was responsible for the sun ripening the crops. There were many images of her in the temples and hundreds of cat mummies of her have been found in little cat-shaped coffins. When they mummified a cat they did it very carefully – they used separate bandages to wrap its legs and tail and whiskers! Anuhis was a jackal who looked after the dead and was the god of embalming. Thoth was the moon god; he had the head of an ibis (a sacred bird with a long, curved beak) but occasionally Thoth took the form of a big white monkey. He helped and protected writing, mathematics and medicine.

The River Nile

The River Nile flows from East Africa to the Mediterranean, and in Egypt on both banks there is a narrow strip of fertile land. Every year the Egyptians waited for the Inundation which was when the Nile flooded and the waters covered the surrounding fields. The Egyptians had special stones with measurements on them to record the height of the water –they were called Nilometers. When the waters receded they left behind a rich river soil on the cultivated fields. The soil was so rich that harvests could take place throughout the year and the ancient Egyptians could grow a huge variety of crops, including cucumbers, beans, melons, dates, apples, plums, peaches, garlic and leeks. They had cattle and fished but at first they didn’t eat chicken or eggs. In fact one pharaoh kept some chickens in his zoo. Thousands of years later in 1970 the Aswan Dam was finally built across the Nile which meant that the annual flooding of the land could be controlled and farmers knew exactly when the waters would flood their fields.

Hieroglyphics

Hieroglyph of an owl, which means the letter M

The Egyptians didn’t use letters as we know them. They had a form of picture writing called hieroglyphics and other simplified scripts. For centuries nobody understood the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 that unlocked their secret.

The stone was discovered by chance by a French soldier who was in Egypt with Napoleon’s army. He was in charge of some fortifications at Rosetta when he spotted a strange black stone that had been built into a wall. He reported this to an archaeologist who was with the army, and the rest is history. When the French army surrendered to Britain the stone was handed over. It is now in the British Museum.

The stone had three different types of writing on it – ancient Greek at the bottom, a simple script called demotic in the middle and hieroglyphics at the top. They all said the same thing so because scholars could read both the Greek and the demotic, they knew what the text was saying and could decipher the hieroglyphs. Writing was a very important part of tomb decoration. The writing on the walls in a pharaoh’s tomb helped him to get to the Afterlife.

The End of Ancient Egypt

Queen Cleopatra

The ancient Egyptian civilization lasted remarkably unchanged through many centuries. Even when Egypt was invaded by the Persians, and later by Alexander the Great, the Egyptians’ way of life changed little. The Greeks left behind a new dynasty of Greek pharaohs called the Ptolemies. The most famous Ptolemy was also the last – Queen Cleopatra. After her death Egypt became a Roman province, its civilization declined, and eventually its great buildings and monuments were all covered by sand. The land was finally conquered by the Arabs in AD 640.

Where to Go

You can take young children to see mummies, both human and animal, statues and the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum. There are also collections in many towns including Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle, Birmingham and Liverpool, and in Canada at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. Another good collection is at Highclere, home of Lord Carnarvon: Highclere Castle, Highclere, Berkshire (www.highclerecastle.co.uk; Tel: 01635 253204).

See these websites: www.ancientegypt.co.uk; www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/childrenscompass (British Museum); www.mfa.org/Egypt (Museum of Fine Art, Boston, USA).

Have a look at DK’s Eyewitness Ancient Egypt.

FOOTBALL

It’s hard to avoid football. Certainly that’s what my grandchildren feel, with a grandfather and fathers who are passionate about it. If the boot’s on the other foot, and it’s you who feels a little less enthusiastic, it’s probably best to go with the flow: at the very least it’s a shared subject to talk about. Of course, if you can bring yourself to take them to a match (and can afford it – an important consideration these days), so much the better – most children seem to find the spectacle completely entrancing. But choose carefully: the team you pick is likely to stay with them for life !

The Origins of Football

When Italy beat France in the 2006 World Gup final, three billion people round the world watched the game on television. That’s about half of all the people alive today! Football is truly the most popular sport in the world. But where did it all begin?

Nobody really knows who invented the game. Perhaps it was the people who lived in ancient Mexico. The remains of pitches have been found all over the area, and local myths refer to a game that sounds like football. Also the Mexicans knew how to make proper balls: the rubber plant was then found only in tropical America, and the Mexicans had discovered how to mix its latex juices with the roots of other plants to make a solid rubber ball.

But the real game as we know it today began in Victorian Britain, first in the public schools, then in the industrial cities that were growing up in northern England and Scotland. The spread of the railways soon meant that teams from different parts of the country could play each other. Men would finish work at lunchtime on Saturday and go off to watch a football match.

Some of the early rules and practices seem strange to us. For example, teams changed ends after every goal was scored. And teams lined up with a goalkeeper, two defenders, one midfielder and seven forwards! Players didn’t pass to each other very much either. In an 1877 England–Scotland game, the Hon. Alfred Lyttleton said to one of his teammates who had complained about not being passed the ball: ‘I am playing purely for my own pleasure, sir’! Can you imagine Steven Gerrard saying that to joe Cole?

But by the time the Football League was established in 1888 most of the rules we know today had been fixed, including the crucial off-side rule which stopped players just lurking near the goals. As a result football is a low-scoring game –when a goal is scored, it’s a real event.

There were 12 teams in the original Football League, all from the cities of the north and the Midlands; the Scottish League was founded five years later. Football was then taken out to the rest of the world by British soldiers, teachers and merchants, with the result that today it’s the maj or sport everywhere, apart from North America, India and Australasia.

Women’s Football

Football has always been popular with girls as well as boys. In 1920, 53,000 spectators saw Dick Kerr’s Ladies play St Helen’s Ladies at Everton’s ground, the kind of attendance you would find at a Premier League game today, but the following year women’s clubs were banned from proper stadiums by the FA. As a result women were excluded from the game for a long time. Now they are playing it again in great numbers – especially in America. In 1999 Brandi Ghastain scored the decisive goal in the penalty shoot- out against China to win the women’s World Gup for the USA. In her excitement she immediately pulled off her shirt. Her photograph was in every newspaper round the world the next day, and suddenly women’s football had become very famous indeed!

Local Clubs

Because many clubs are now at least a hundred years old, and have deep roots in the community, studying the history of a team is away of exploring local social history. Here are just six short examples showing that even a club’s name or nickname can reveal some interesting facts.

Northampton Town Northampton was traditionally a centre of shoemaking and other leather industries, most of which have now disappeared from the city, but the football team, which was founded in 1897, is still known as the Gobblers.

Luton Town Just down the Mi motorway from Northampton, Luton Town are known as the Hatters for a similar reason: that Luton was once a centre of hat-making.

West Ham United The origins of the club are in the Thames Ironworks team, founded for workersfromtheTham.es shipyard of that name. In 1900, they changed their name to West Ham, but as well as the more familiar name Hammers, they are still known today to their supporters as the Irons: ‘Gome on, you Irons!’

Arsenal Now a famous north London club, Arsenal started in south London as Woolwich Arsenal, with players from the local Royal Arsenal factory, which made guns and explosives for the British Army. This explains why the team is nicknamed the Gunners. In 1913 the club moved across the river.

Chelsea The club’s most famous nickname is the Blues, after the colour of their kit. But they are also known as the Pensioners – the name comes from the war veterans who live in the nearby Royal Hospital.

Sheffield United Sheffield was a great steel-making city, and United are known after one of its specialities – making cutlery. They are known as the Blades.