The Ballast Hills Burial Ground Project will be taking part in Home Educators Day at the Great North Museum: Hancock (GNM:H) on 13 February 2026, offering hands-on activities and a rolling presentation designed for home-educating families.
Discover how a burial ground becomes a classroom
Using Ballast Hills Burial Ground as a case study, we will show how burial sites can support cross-curricular learning across history, literacy, numeracy, geography, and creative work. While we draw on Ballast Hills, families and educators can apply the same ideas to their own local cemetery or burial ground.
Activities throughout the day
Design your own gravestone
Explore how inscriptions, symbols, and materials tell stories about people’s lives, then create your own design.
Build a family tree
Map out your family connections and discover how ancestry is traced through records, stories, and archives.
Historical occupations challenge
Interpret real job titles recorded at Ballast Hills and explore how work and society have changed over time.
Education Activity Sheet: Bringing the Evidence Together
A guided set of activities will help students and families to investigate how different types of evidence connect. Topics include:
- Bills of mortality and how deaths were recorded
- What graves tell us about families and relationships
- Dates, ages, and life expectancy
- Living conditions and longevity
- Memory, forgetting, and who is remembered
- Walking on history and recognising hidden landscapes
- Bringing different sources together to build a fuller picture of the past
Explorer’s Guide
Take away ideas and prompts for visiting and studying your own local burial ground, turning it into a place of ongoing learning.
Running Presentation
A short, rolling presentation will run throughout the day, introducing Ballast Hills Burial Ground and demonstrating how one site can support a wide range of curriculum-linked activities. Drop in at any time.
Why take part
- Activities suitable for a range of ages and abilities
- Practical ideas for cross-curricular learning at home
- Opportunities to connect history with real places and real people
- Resources you can take away and use in your own local area
Event details
- Date: 13 February 2026
- Time: 9:00 to 14:00 (quiet hour from 9:00–10:00)
- Location: Great North Museum: Hancock
Join us for a day of discovery, creativity, and learning through place. If you have any further questions about this event, please contact a member of the Learning team at the GNM:H by email: learning@greatnorthmuseum.org.uk.
Part of the Ballast Hills Burial Ground Project: unlocking the past, enjoying the present, and planning for the future.