The British government released the following recipe to teach the British public how to make a trench cake. The goal was to create a cake which could be sent to soldiers in the trenches from home. It became affectionately known as 'Trench cake' because of its dubious ability of not going bad over time. It…
Category: History – World War I
Ration Scones {World War 1}
The girls made these ration scones, with or without the dates, a few times during our World War 1 unit study. They are very simple to make and, whilst they are not as fluffy as normal scones, ration scones are delicious. Ration Scone Recipe Abigail in particular enjoyed making these Ration Scones multiple times over…
Gallipoli Campaign and the ANZACs
The Gallipoli Campaign took place between April 1915 and January 1916, on the Gallipoli peninsula. It was an attack by the allied forces (the British Empire, including the ANZACs, and the French) against the Ottoman Empire and the Germans. The purpose of the attack was to break the stale mate on the western front and…
Battle of Ypres {World War I}
The Second Battle of Ypres was a defining moment in the First World War. The Germans, who were forging their way through Belgium, were fighting for control of the city of Ypres. Of course, the Belgiums wanted to stop them. The British Empire and the French came to their aide, to thwart the Germans’ advance…
Battle of Marne {World War I}
The first battle of Marne took place between the 5th and 12th of September 1914. It was between the Allied powers (the French army and the British Expeditionary Force) and the Central powers (the Germans). The Precursors to the Battle of Marne The Germans were executing the 1905 Schlieffen Plan to surprise the French and…
Make a Gas Mask Model {World War One}
I had an enormous amount of fun working out how to make a gas mask from World War One. This is junk modelling at its best. I used what we had on hand (I always have a box of junk to use for such a thing as this). I try not to plan what we…
The Christmas Truce {World War I}
The Christmas Truce refers to the only time during the Great War when both sides downed their weapons. Together buried their dead, sang Christmas songs together and exchanged gifts. They also played that now infamous game of football in no man’s land, the land occupying the space between the trenches of the allied forces and…
How to Make Princess Mary’s Christmas Tin
In this post, I will describe how we made a replica of Princess Mary’s Christmas Tin. Mary, 17 at the time, wanted to show the soldiers her appreciation and gratitude for them fighting on the frontline. At first, her goal was to pay for them herself. But she soon realised that was not going to…
Life in the Trenches {World War I}
Life in the trenches was like nothing the soldiers had ever experienced before. ‘Digging in’ as it was called was a fairly new phenomenon. But living in the mud and squalor surrounded by giant cat-sized mice become wearisome very quickly. The young men had signed up to fight for their country and believed that excitement…
Siege of Liege Activities {World War I}
World War One is complicated and convoluted, and (IMHO) should never (ever) have happened. Learning about it is like watching a line of dominoes falling over and being completely unable to prevent what happens next. I have had to teach myself, over and over, to fully understand what happened to create the breeding ground for…
Causes of World War 1 {World War 1)
The causes of World War 1 are both complex and unbelievable. I mean, people are killed by terrorists everyday, but those deaths don’t tend to cause a world war to break out. So how did the death of one man, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, create a war which lasted four years and killed an untold…
How to Make a First World War Map
Making this First World War map was trickier than any of my other map making endeavours. Because I am pretty relaxed about how any of my maps end up looking, I free handed it. This is not for the faint hearted, especially when you have teenagers looking over your shoulder pointing out what you’ve missed/forgotten…