Treasured objects

• Why are these objects important to this time? As a class discuss what each object says about the belief or superstitions in 1888. Find out where this belief in hiding objects for luck may have originated?

• Students take photos of eight items they would place in their own time capsule. They create a box to hold the pictures and add a letter explaining why these objects were chosen.

Student Activity Sheet H13.11 List all the hidden items

• Indigenous Australians are important in the historical puzzle. Research Australian Indigenous history and find accounts that document what was happening at this time. Discuss with students what life was like for Indigenous children and how their lives may have differed from Victoria's childhood.

• Ask students to give voice to the Indigenous girl and write a diary entry on how she viewed Victoria and her siblings that day at the creek.

Student Activity Sheet H13.12: Diary entry

• Have students view the clip and, as a class, discuss what the children are doing in the clip and why they are doing it. Giving up their objects would be difficult for each child. In Victorian times, children had very few possessions. Compare the number of toys and belongings students have today and those that Victoria's family had. Ask students to consider how difficult they would find giving up special objects.
• Explore how this scene has been edited, cutting back and forth between the children collecting the objects from different places and the children sitting in their bedroom, planning what to do. This technique gives a good overview of much of the children's home and world.

• Ask students to list the places that the children go to, both inside and outside the house, to hide the objects.
• The children in the clip hide mysterious treasured objects in their house. Have students pretend to be one of the children and, as that character, write a letter to someone in the future describing this day in their life in 1888. Refer to Student Activity Sheet E13.9.

Student Activity Sheet E13.9: Hidden treasures

• The way people dress and the colours they wear can evoke different meanings for different cultures. Miss Müller is a mysterious figure who dresses in black. Ask students to consider why this might be so. Does her dress signify the importance or solemnity of her role? Ask students to identify the other characters in the episode and consider each character's dress and what this signifies about them.
• Ask students to discover information about how colours may reflect a person's occupation, status, gender and beliefs in at least three different cultures. You could give the example of the colour purple indicating royalty for the ancient Romans, or show how contemporary western society uses blue to signify boys and pink to signify girls.
• Discuss with the class the importance of using colour to denote status and meaning, and what the filmmaker may be suggesting by the colour and choice of costume for each character. Note that the characters in the episode are also framed differently to establish their importance to the story.

• Ask students to examine how the filmmaker treats each character. Ask them to make a list of characters and describe how they are dressed, the predominant colour of the costume, the style and the status being portrayed. They can then select their favourite character and design a costume for them that gives a completely different impression to the one given by the filmmaker.

Student Activity Sheet E13.10: Clothes make the man

• View the whole episode and observe what objects the children hide in the house and garden. Ask students to list who hides each object, why they chose that object and what value they place on it. Discuss why the children feel they need good luck.
• As a class, list objects that could relate to creating a magic spell to ward off misfortune. Name some cultural superstitions and the objects that represent them, such as black cats for bad fortune, blue birds for happiness, or red and green for luck in Chinese culture.

• Luck and good fortune are represented by different symbols, or objects, in different cultures. Have students name the symbol or object associated with luck in various cultures.

Student Activity Sheet E13.11: Good luck to you

• This episode has an unresolved ending as the viewer isn't shown if the children's father is able to keep the house he built. In the next episode a new family has moved into the house.

• Discuss with students possible endings to Victoria's story. What might happen next to her family? Ask students to write a short story or film script, which is set two years into the future, in 1890. What has happened to Victoria's family? Where might they be now?

Student Activity Sheet E13.12: Into the future