For teachers and parents
A Day in the Past is designed for Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3, and for curious families at home. Here are some ways to use it.
Five-minute history starters
- Today in history: put today’s page on the board and read the “Did you know?” story together.
- How long ago? Ask pupils to work out how many years ago each event happened — a quick subtraction warm-up with real dates.
- Put them in order: choose four events from the day and ask the class to arrange them on a timeline.
- UK and the world: compare what was happening in the UK with what was happening elsewhere in the same century.
- Birthday detectives: pupils look up their own birthday and find someone famous who shares it.
Printable worksheets
Every day has a one-page worksheet with a list of events, a “how long ago?” table, a timeline-ordering task, a quick quiz, a drawing box and answers at the bottom. Try today’s worksheet, or open any day and choose Printable worksheet. You’re welcome to print copies for your class or family.
Difficult history
Stories that mention war, violence, deaths, disasters or crime never appear in the calendar grid. On day pages they sit in a closed “For older readers” section with a content note, and they keep Wikipedia’s original wording. We recommend reading that section yourself before sharing it with a class. The sorting starts with an automatic check, so please let us know if something needs moving.
Explorer badges and topics
Every story gets a topic badge — kings and queens, science, space, inventions, explorers, sport, the arts, transport, laws and government, war and peace, nature, places and buildings, and festivals. The topics page gathers our written-up stories for each badge, in calendar order, which can be useful for topic work.
Useful links
- National curriculum in England: history programmes of study (GOV.UK)
- BBC Bitesize: primary history and BBC Bitesize: KS3 history
- Simple English Wikipedia — encyclopedia articles written in easier English
The “Find out more” links on each day usually go to Wikipedia, which is written for adults. For younger children, we suggest an adult reads those pages with them.