Hi, and if you are a presenter of this Tom Crean slideshow, I thought it best to give you some background to my own work of researching Tom Crean’s life. Firstly, I’m confident that the children you present this slideshow to, will enjoy it and I personally present the show at schools whenever I’m able to. The feedback from both teachers and children has been wonderful and I’m fully aware of how difficult it is to hold a young child’s attention for the 45-50 minutes that the show lasts. I’ve included helpful information within the notes to assist teachers in presenting the slideshow. My two daughters, both teachers, forewarned me that children become easily distracted and holding their attention for more than 5 minutes can be quite a task. Armed with this, I felt the key was to entertain as much as educate and I believe I achieved that in this presentation. I’ve been a student of Tom Crean’s life for many years now and my interest was sparked when I was younger and visiting my relatives in the village where Crean was born. My father was born a few miles away from Crean so I developed an almost personal connection to his amazing story. In 2017, I began researching for Crean’s biography and found that a host of events and periods in his timeline were absent from previous accounts that had been written about him. I was also shocked to find a number of inaccuracies had been written about Crean. As a result of my findings I presented all of my sources in evidence to the Royal Irish Academy. After they had examined the evidence they revised the official story in the article dedicated to Tom Crean in the Dictionary of Irish Biography. The biography, ‘Crean-The Extraordinary Life of an Irish Hero’, was released by Merrion Press in May 2023 and to accompany it, for children aged between 6-10 years-old, I released a fully illustrated, self-published children’s biography titled, ‘Tom The Mighty Explorer’ The slideshow here, is a project I’ve been working on for some time and it allows presenters of Crean’s story to utilise it in classrooms all over the world, whilst it gives me satisfaction that the factual story of Tom Crean is now being told to children when previous generations of children had been left bereft of the fuller picture and had digested inaccuracies written about Tom. The images in the slideshow are those I had created for the children’s book and without wishing to blatantly promote sales of my book, it is beneficial to read it to get a more detailed understanding of Tom’s life. It will be available in number of libraries and for ordering purposes, the ISBN is, 9781527277083. I’ve made the slideshow available in both Powerpoint and Keynote and I hope you and your classes enjoy this presentation. I would love to hear your feedback and I can be contacted at timfoley50@googlemail.com

Using images created for the children’s biography written about Tom Crean, titled ‘Tom The Mighty Explorer’, this colouring book with 8 illustrations, is, primarily for me, as someone with a wish to raise awareness of Tom Crean among children, an effective method of introducing children to his amazing story. The book also helps them to become familiar with his early life and the time he spent in Antarctica. Colouring books are an effective means of developing their hand-eye coordination and are a relaxing experience that allows children time out from the digital world that surrounds them. Colouring also gives a child a great sense of achievement and pride in creating their own piece of art. I hope you find this a useful classroom resource and please take a little time out to add a review.

I created this word search resource to help children familiarise themselves with terms related to Tom Crean’s story. In the slide show presentation I created to tell his story to children, the words incorporated into this word search sheet are among the most frequent I use and discuss with the children. For those who may not be familiar with Crean’s story, there are a couple of the words in here, such as Hoosh and Gortacurraun, that may have you wondering just what they are. To explain, Gortacurraun is the townland a mile or so outside of Annascaul village in County Kerry, where Tom Crean was born and Hoosh is the name explorers gave to the mix of pemmican, dried biscuits, fat and water blended to form a nutritional stew that maintained and helped energy levels of explorers. Apparently it’s yukky but I confess to never trying it nor having the desire to do so in the future. I once assumed that young children may be left confused by some of words like some of those I’ve added but in my experience of telling his story to little ones, they do learn quickly to understand the meanings once they’ve been explained to them. Word search exercises are also a great tool to assist children with their spelling. I hope you find this a useful resource and please leave a review.

This Tom Crean wall poster for children is a PDF print quality design that is suitable for printing onto high gloss or matte finish photo quality paper. The design is from the front cover of the Tom Crean biography I wrote specifically for children, titled, ‘Tom The Mighty Explorer’ Tom Crean is a great role model for children and children who discover his story immediately warm to the character - ‘warm’ is a strange choice of word for a person who forged his reputation on Antarctica, the coldest place on our planet but I’m sure you know what I mean.:-) I’ve added a border to the design as I know the wear and tear over the years could fray them edges a little - a good pair of scissors and a steady hand will bring it back to its former glory should this happen. To offer a little more info about the book - because of my research for the grown-ups biography ‘Crean - The Extraordinary Life of an Irish Hero’ which was used to write up the children’s biography of Crean, much of the story and facts will be unfamiliar to those who’ve utilised Tom Crean’s story in the past but his story was officially revised in 2021 after I submitted all of my research to the Royal Irish Academy. As a result, children will require a certain amount of re-educating about his life and career which is far more extensive that was previously known. Hope you like the poster and please provide a review on this resource.

A fun, multiple choice quiz for children aged 6 - 11 years-old, the theme of which is Tom Crean, the Irish Explorer who served on three expeditions to Antarctica during what is known as the Heroic Age of Exploration in the early 20th century. As the questions relate to answers that can be found in the children’s biography of Crean, titled ‘Tom The Mighty Explorer’, it would be helpful if you are familiar with the book as my years of studying Crean’s life gave rise to official revisions and corrections to his story that can only be found in the book. However they can also be found within posts and resources on the website [https://tomcreanbook.com] and within articles I’ve written for other websites. The answers to the questions are a b c b c a a a b c