Continue to Keep Yourself Busy with Your Family During Lockdown With the Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty

Hopefully, some of you managed to achieve some of the challenges set for you last week. 

This week, we have suggestions of things that you and your family can do from the Geography, History, Law and Psychology departments. 

Geography recommends that you take advantage of the extension opportunities available on the web, many of which are really inspiring.  For example, take a look at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which  added a number of live cams (click link to see) to let you keep an eye on the jellyfish, kelp forest, coral reef, and even the penguins.  The national parks in America have provided virtual tours to help you to walk through them and experience the open, dramatic scenery.  Enjoy taking a virtual walk through America’s national park.  We all love David Attenborough.  Don’t miss out on  David Attenborough’s new geography lesson.  Finally, why not create a grid reference treasure map of your house and garden.  Perhaps actually hide some treasure and challenge family members to find it!

You will have seen that during lockdown many families across the globe have risen to the challenge set by museums and art galleries to re-create art masterpieces within their own home.

For example,

and

and even Banksy with Lego

The law challenge is to recreate the iconic ‘Statute of Justice’ that sits on top of the London Central Criminal Court, ‘The Old Bailey’.

Send your pictures to Ms Knowles at – [email protected] who will provide a prize for the best entry.  Please be aware, though, keep in mind health and safety.  Do not really stand on a ball, nor on top of any building!

Psychology is sure that, whilst we will all remember this bizzare lockdown period, each person’s memory will be different because memories can be influenced by many factors, including our emotional state or where we were when we encoded the memory. Psychologists call these ‘state cues’ and ‘context cues’. Read these articles to find out more about how we construct and reconstruct our memories – and why we may remember things differently from the actual event.

Our memories tell our story.

Why do we remember certain things and forget others?

Why do we remember things the way we want to remember them?

Or just have some fun trying these memory games (all free sites)

https://www.brightfocus.org/alzheimers/memory-games

https://www.helpfulgames.com/subjects/brain-training/memory.html

There are a range of memory games, pictures, spot the difference, matching words, as well as crosswords and sudoku. Send a screenshot of who’s top of your family leaderboard! Email [email protected]

Related to the subject of memories, the History department would love your help to create a book of “Bushey Meads Lockdown Memories”.  Write approximately between 100 to 500 words about your experience of life during the school closure in order to create a historical record of the 2020 Coronavirus lockdown. Alternative, submit a photo that seems to visual sum up your life during lockdown that historians in the future might use as a historical record.  Send your entries to [email protected]. 

Whatever challenge you choose to do, make sure you keep safe and busy during this lockdown.