House and Home

Key ideas: Home. What is home?

 

Stimulus

Show the children a picture of a house and ask the following

Task Question: Is this a home? Why?

 

Further Stimulus

Bring up a picture of a person sleeping rough (could also have a tent/campervan)

Task Questions:

• Is this home?
• Is ‘a house’ the same as ‘a home’?
• What is home?

The above is to get them thinking about the idea of whether home is connected to having a house. There might be tangential discussions about whether it’s home if you own it or whether you sleep there.

Regarding the refugees and the EU question, I thought it might be interesting to get them to think how broad the term home is/should be. What do we mean when we say ‘Britain is my home’?

You could have pictures of (or just write the words on whiteboards):

• Your school
• Your town
• London
• The Uk
• Europe
• The world
• The universe!

Task Question: Are any of these home?

 

Extension ideas

Pliny the elder, a Roman Philosopher once wrote “Home is where the heart is”

​Task Questions:

• What do you think he meant by that?
• Was he right?
• Can your home be somewhere you hate?
• Is home a place? A feeling? An idea? A person or people? Something else?

 

Further Explorations Online:

Click the link for a short article on the Hellenic view of home. It talks about some of the ideas above but also got me thinking about the idea of home as a non-physical entity, a state of being, comfortableness, love or freedom.

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