This year marks 100 years since the start of WW1 and later on in the year there will be a number of different things to commemorate it. In order to prepare my children a little bit, as, after all it is quite a difficult topic especially for younger members of the family, I’ve been looking into resources. So far, I’ve found this amazing website: http://www.greatwar.co.uk/ We have also taken trips to the Imperial War Museum Duxford in order to try to bring the aircraft and battles to life. Alongside this we have been watching Horrible Histories and trying to read appropriate level books. One of the challenges has been to find appropriate level books for the children.
I was delighted discover that Usborne books, publishers of my most favourite information books when I was little, have a really wide an extensive range of books about WW1 all aimed at particular age groups. We were given a copy of See inside The First World War by Rob Lloyd Jones and Illustrated by Maria Cristina Pritelli. This had proved to be an amazing resource and my 5 and nearly 7 year olds have spent hours discovering different aspects of the war enjoying lifting the flaps to find further snippets of information. In fact, to be honest, I’ve actually learnt quite a lot with them. I knew all about the horses from reading WarHorse, I didn’t know that 8 million horses died in the war for example. This is a perfect introduction for the KS1 age group (and older).
Alongside this book there is a series of handpicked First World War books on special offer at the moment via The Book Mums, my friend Lisa’s Usborne book website which has the entire Usborne Book catalogue- rather too tempting!
The First World War is a rather dry and in many ways quite a difficult topic for children to tackle. I don’t think you can go wrong with Usborne books, they are pitched perfectly at children and have appealing illustrations which help to keep their interest.
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