Time travel

Have you ever thought about it - time travel?

My first degree is in History and Ancient History - I knew aged 7 that I would study history at University - I LOVED visiting castles, I loved how my imagination would travel back in time -

and I soon discovered that I preferred the really old history where there was still some kind of creative licence to piece together the puzzles of what was or what it could have been by putting the shreds of evidence together...


I have spent a week as a volunteer with Kalmar Läns Museum doing time travel as a method of teaching  history - using actual local history to colour the re-enactment of a specific time in history - when I was there I did the middle ages with seven year olds, the 19th century with 16 year olds and the viking era with 14 year olds etc

I adapted my experiences at Kalmar so that they would work with with 2-6 year olds travelling back in time - to the first Thanksgiving - the children getting new names once they had travelled back 400 years - the ACTUAL names from the first Thanksgiving (like Wrestling) - and then doing lots of Thanksgiving activities for the day, like washing the dolls clothes by hand... Of course to do time travel like this DOES require a lots of research - but for me that is such a fun part - and I would compile information packs for colleagues to enable them to go into character and make the time-travel more authentic.

I have also done time travel with three year olds as part of a dinosaur investigation - which was GREAT fun to see how the children built their time machines in groups and then used them in role play - and how when they travelled back in time some of the children turned into dinosaurs.

 Time travel can happen - and I am quite keen on giving it a try -
yes it may be 2013 here in Sweden right now - but next month is the Islamic new year and it will be 1485! In China it is 4711! In Ethiopia it has just turned the year 2005 - you get the idea - time travel is a possibility - just depends how you look at things -

And then there is the time differences between one side of the planet from the other (and in between) - the whole idea that right now it is tomorrow already in Australia - that is just SO wierd - I mean tomorrow today - which means that we are yesterday for them... more time travel.

At the age of 5 my daughters had this totally worked out - it's part of the reason Father Christmas could make it round the world because the night is sooo much longer than you think. AND they had also worked out that not everyone celebrates Christmas - and  that Christmas is not even celebrated with the same Father Christmas/Santa - here in Sweden it is a Tomte that comes in the afternoon of Christmas Eve... and yes, they had thought of time-travel in the sense that time stands still for him to fix the rest...

And WHY is it that sometimes five minutes can feel like forever - and other times an hour can feel like five minutes?

 Time is a VERY funny thing once you start thinking about it...