Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.

It is difficult to think of an area of primary history that has had a more transforming effect on the subject than that of artefacts. The idea of giving children a ‘real' experience of the past through a concrete and tangible contact was revolutionary when it was first mooted in the 60s. In many ways its history is my history. As a young teacher in the 1970s I soon became aware of the powerful impact objects had on children's historical imagination, whether they were grand or humble, real or replica, whole or fragmented. All offered something and persuaded me that history could be taught as an active, ‘living' subject in the curriculum.