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������̳ Teach > School Radio > Assemblies and Collective Worship
KS1 audio: Something to Think About / KS2 audio: Together

Gemma looks forward to celebrating Mothering Sunday and finds out about its history.

Before the programme

• If you had to explain the words Parent or Carer to someone who didn’t know what they meant, what would you say?
• What do you know about the lives of servants in Victorian times? What were the duties of a Maid, what would she wear and how would she be treated?
• What do you think is the best present a Mother could receive on Mothering Sunday?

Story synopsis:

Back in Victorian times, Peggy is a servant in a big house and today she is walking home to visit her mother for Mother’s Day. She’s taking home a freshly baked cake and her wages to give to her mother. However, on her way she meets two women in great need and Peggy’s compassionate nature leads to her giving away the cake and the money. She feels guilty about arriving home empty-handed, but her other is delighted and relieved that Peggy has not been changed by living in a big house and is still the same kind-hearted girl as ever. She claims that that is the best present Peggy could have given her.

After the story:

• What was Peggy about to do when she noticed the sobbing woman?
• Why did Peggy give away the money from her wages?
• Who did Peggy give the cake to?
• What did the two women that Peggy helped have in common?
• Why did both women need Peggy’s help? (They were both mothers and both were trying to help their children).
• What did the woman in the street and the boy in the cottage say about Peggy when she gave them her money and the cake?
• Why was Peggy worried about arriving home empty-handed and what was her mother’s reaction?

Follow-up activities:

• Research the lives of Victorian servants and you could play the short dramas about a maid’s life to be found on the School Radio website
• Then write a list of rules that a new maid must learn as she enters ‘service’ in a big house.
• Working in groups, act out two short scenes showing the differences between the lives of ‘The Family’ who own the big house and their servants who do all the work to keep the house running. Can you show how differently they would talk, what they would do and even how they would stand and move?