Hello historians and welcome to today's history lesson.

I'm Mr. Moss, and I'm incredibly passionate about history, and I can't wait to teach you today.

With you today, you need to bring your looking eyes, your listening ears, and your thinking brains, as well as that, someone or something to talk to would be excellent, and having something to write on and write with would also be really helpful.

All right, let's get straight into today's history lesson then.

I can't wait.

In this history lesson, we're going to be thinking about one of Britain's most significant monarchs.

We're gonna be considering Victoria's melancholy childhood.

The outcome will be, I can explain why Victoria's early life was melancholy.

Here are the key words for today's lesson.

The first word is monarch.

A monarch is the king or queen of a country.

The next word, which was in our outcome is this word.

My turn, your turn.

Melancholy.

Melancholy is a feeling of sadness.

So in today's lesson, we're going to be considering why during her childhood Victoria felt this sense of melancholy.

Here's the outline for today's lesson.

Remember, we're considering Victoria's melancholy or sad childhood.

We're going to begin by thinking about who Victoria was and why we're learning about her.

And then we're going to consider what her childhood was like, and we're going to consider the evidence that we have to tell us what her childhood was like.

So let's get on at looking at who Victoria was.

Here is a painting.

Look at the little girl in the painting.

This girl here is four years old.

She has no idea of the incredible future that lies ahead of her.

She's going to become one of the most significant monarchs or rulers of Britain ever.

This is a young Princess Victoria before she became queen.

This is her as a 4-year-old child.

That young princess went on to become one of the most important rulers of the United Kingdom, Queen Victoria.

She's seen as one of the most significant monarchs in the history of our nation, and she became queen almost 200 years ago.

This image here shows a statue of Queen Victoria.

What title did Victoria have as a child, a queen, miss, or princess? A title is the name that describes someone's position.

Pause the video now and select the correct answer.

Good job, team.

So we are answering the question, what types did Victoria have as a child? Now we could try saying each of these alongside Victoria.

Queen Victoria.

Hmm, I've heard that title used with that name Victoria before, but I didn't think she was a queen when she was a child.

Miss Victoria.

That doesn't sound right.

But Princess Victoria, that was her title when she was a child before she became queen.

She grew up as a princess.

Queen Victoria ruled the United Kingdom for longer than any other monarch had ever ruled for before.

At her time of death, she was the longest ruling monarch that this country had ever seen.

And you can see here, we have a painting of Queen Victoria as monarch.

You can see that she has a crown placed upon her head.

She's remembered as one of the most important or significant monarchs in British history.

Today, there are impressive statues of her in many towns in Britain and in other places around the world.

And we've already early on in this lesson looked at a statue of Queen Victoria.

And here we can see another statue of Queen Victoria, seated this time.

This is a statue celebrating her.

Often significant monarchs and rulers will have statues built in their honour perhaps during or after their reigns.

True or false, Queen Victoria was monarch for a short amount of time? Pause the video and select the correct answer.

Great.

Absolutely.

This is false.

At the time of her death, she was in fact the longest ruling monarch in British history.

Queen Victoria was monarch for longer than any other king or queen had ever been before her.

For our practise task now, what I'd like you to do is complete the sentences by filling in the blank with a word from the box below.

So the words that we have in the boxes below are important, child, longer and queen.

And our sentences are: when Victoria was a mm, she was a princess.

Victoria became mm almost 200 years ago.

Queen Victoria ruled for mm than any one had before.

There are many statues to Queen Victoria because she is remembered as being very mm.

Consider what we have learned about so far in this lesson.

Say the sentences and fill in the blanks with the correct words.

Off you go, team.

Fantastic job.

You've clearly picked up so much information in this lesson so far.

Well done.

So here are the completed sentences.

Let's go through them and see how you did.

When Victoria was a child, she was a princess, and we know that that was her title when she was younger, before she became a queen.

Victoria became queen almost 200 years ago, and that was then her title when she ascended to the throne.

Queen Victoria ruled for longer than anyone had before.

At the point of her death, she was the longest ruling monarch.

There are many statues of Queen Victoria because she's remembered as being very important, and as we've said, historically important or significant figures often are remembered by statues being built.

So key learning from this learning cycle is that Queen Victoria was a princess when she was a child.

She became queen almost 200 years ago.

She ruled for longer than any other monarch had before, and she's seen as being very significant and important, and is therefore remembered by having many statues of her built.

Onto our next learning cycle then, which is, what was Victoria's childhood like? So we've considered who Victoria was, but now as historians, we want to do a bit of research and consider what her childhood was like, and how we know what it was like.

So we know a lot about Queen Victoria's childhood because of historical evidence.

We have a variety of sources that can tell us accurately about what her childhood was like, written evidence from the time.

So some primary sources, including writing by Queen Victoria herself, helps us to know what her life was like.

And you can see here on this page, we have a copy of a letter that the 9-year-old Victoria wrote to her mother.

She says, "My dear Mama, I congratulate you on dear Grandmama's birthday.

I hope you'll have a very happy day.

Your very affectionate Victoria." And it's even dated January 19th, 1828.

So this was before she became queen when she was a princess.

So Queen Victoria kept many records, wrote diaries, and sent letters to people.

And as historians, it's really important that we are able to use this evidence from the past to paint a picture and build up our knowledge base of what Victoria was like.

In her own words, she described her own childhood as rather melancholy.

Say that word for me, melancholy.

That was one of our key words, wasn't it? And it means incredibly sad.

She felt sad for a lot of the time when she was young.

And here we have another example of a historical source.

We have a copy of a sketch that Princess Victoria drew of herself at the age of 15, so when she was a teenager.

This perhaps tells us that she was quite artistic.

So what evidence do we have about Victoria's childhood? Think about what we just discussed.

Think about as historians, the evidence from the time that we can use to paint a picture of what her childhood was like.

Diaries, emails or letters.

Pick the piece of evidence that we have about Victoria's childhood.

Off you go.

Brilliant job, team.

I'm really impressed by your historical thinking here, and you're considering the time period in which she was alive, and also the piece of evidence that we would have.

Indeed, Queen Victoria did write an extensive set of diaries about her life.

Emails.

Unfortunately, email was not a thing when Queen Victoria was growing up, so she wouldn't have sent any emails.

That would be a more modern piece of evidence.

Letters, yes.

We even looked at one a moment ago, we looked at a letter that she had written to her mother.

So diaries and letters, as well as that sketch that we looked at a moments ago were all sources of evidence for us to learn about Victoria's childhood.

And remember this childhood in her own words was one of sadness and melancholy.

So her melancholy or sad childhood started when Princess Victoria, so before she was a queen, was just 1-year-old and her father died suddenly.

This was incredibly hard and sad for her.

Victoria's mother was also very sad and she became very protective of the young Victoria, the baby princess.

Here we can see another source, a painting of Princess Victoria with her mother.

So Princess Victoria here is on the right, she is the young girl here, and her mother is on the left.

Interestingly, the young Princess Victoria's mother was also called Victoria.

This painting perhaps shows us the caring nature of Victoria Duchess of Kent towards the young Princess Victoria.

Part of the reason for her melancholy childhood was that the princess also had no friends.

After her lessons, she would spend her time playing with toys like dolls.

As she got older, she had a dog called Dash for company.

We can see here a painting of a melancholy Princess Victoria with her dog.

Again, a painting can be used as a historical source of evidence.

We can see Victoria here not looking particularly happy as a youngster, and we can see here that she's playing with her dog.

So how many different ways can you think of to describe the young Victoria? Consider what we've looked at so far this lesson, the piece of evidence that we've looked at.

You could consider her character that we've picked out from the sources.

You could consider some of the titles that we've used.

You could consider what she would go on to become.

Share your ideas now with your partner.

Off you go.

Excellent job, team.

I love the fact that we've clearly been learning from some of these pieces of evidence that we've looked at today to come to some conclusions about what the young Victoria was like.

So here are some of the ideas that I heard you saying, but that I've also thought of as well.

The first is we could describe her as a princess, which is what she was before she became a queen.

She was royal.

She was part of a royal family.

She was the future monarch or future queen.

Remember that keyword monarch means the king or queen, the ruler of a country.

She was melancholy.

Another one of those keywords.

Remember what this word means? Yes, it means incredibly sad.

And we know why she was incredibly sad because she spent a lot of time in her childhood alone with no friends, and her father died when she was incredibly young.

She was sad then.

Another way of describing melancholy.

She was loved.

Who was she loved by? Well, we have evidence to show that she was loved greatly and protected greatly by her mother.

Lonely.

Yes, we know that she spent a lot of time alone after her lessons and didn't really have very many friends.

Artistic.

What piece of evidence did we have for this? When we had her wonderful sketch, her portrait of herself from when she was 15 years old.

And a dog lover.

Again, we know that she had a dog called Dash and we have paintings to show her spending time with this beloved dog.

So Victoria's childhood was melancholy, sad.

What made Victoria so sad as a child? Think back to what we've looked at so far in this lesson.

Don't make answers up.

Consider the evidence that we've looked at and the information that I've given you.

Could you share your ideas with your partner? What made Victoria so sad as a child? Victoria was sad as a child because? Talk to your partner.

Off you go.

Incredible job, team.

I'm so impressed.

I love hearing your well-reasoned answers there.

Most importantly, your full sentences were also excellent.

You were giving me excellent reasons as to why Victoria was sad.

And most importantly as well, you've not been making things up.

You've been thinking like historians.

We have to use the evidence that we've gathered from the lesson, and also from historical sources to back our ideas up.

So here are two examples that I heard as I was listening in.

"I think she was sad because she didn't have a dad.

He died when she was just a baby." Indeed, her father Prince Edward died when she was just one years old.

"She had nobody to play with except her dolls, so she must have been lonely too." So yeah, we know that she spent a lot of time isolated and alone as a child, so she had very few friends to pay with.

We do know though that she loved her dog Dash greatly.

So in this lesson, we've been considering Victoria's melancholy childhood, her sad childhood.

We've looked at who Queen Victoria was.

She became Queen of the United Kingdom about 200 years ago, and she ruled for longer than any other monarch before her.

She was an incredibly important and significant monarch, and as such, there are many statues of her built.

Many of these statues can still be seen to this day.

Some of this evidence includes things like images, sketches, letters, and diary entries tell us that Victoria felt that her childhood was melancholy, which is one of our key words.

This word melancholy meant very sad.

This means she was very sad for a long time when she was young.

We know for a fact that her father died when she was very young, and this impacted her childhood.

As well as this, she spent much of her childhood alone.

And finally, Victoria is remembered as one of the most important rulers in British history, and this is why we are learning about her.

Great job today, team.

Keep up the great history learning and I'll see you again soon.