Autumn 1 - Lost In Time
Rationale:
After discovering an unusual ‘den’ and artefacts in the school grounds, the children are challenged to bring this important period of history, Stone Age, to life. Through recreating life during this time and recounting events through story, our historians will create a time tunnel re-enacting everyday life through the Stone Age, Bronze and Iron Age.
Children will endeavour to bring methods of communication, artefacts and cave drawings to life using mediums of art within our time tunnel. Our invited guests will leave having been immersed within this period of history.
In order to ensure a greater understanding of chronology, the children will also study the theme of farming linking this to two other periods of history and modern-day life.
Hook:
The children were amazed to find a strange den had appeared in the school playground. They were excited to explore and looked carefully at the artefacts to try and work out who had left it there.
They soon realised it was not someone from our time - and worked hard to try and deduce what period in history this came from.
Historical Timeline:
Whoops! Mrs Lynch had dropped all her timeline cards on the playground as she was rushing in from lunch! The children used the prior knowledge of historical events to order them. They then deduced from which period of history our mystery school visitor may have come from.
Stone Age Cave Art - Hand Prints
We looked at photos of Stone Age Cave Settlements found by archaeologists. One of the ways they painted their caves was hand prints. Nobody really knows why!
We had a go at creating our own external and internal handprints - using sponges (they would have not had these in this time - we wondered what they might have used - animal fur? leaves?
Butser Ancient Farm
We travelled back in time to experience what it was like to live in the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age!
At Butser Ancient Farm, there are replica homes and we discovered how dark and smoky their round houses would have been!
We had the opportunity to have more hands on experience with artefacts (primary sources of historical information) and had the challenge of trying to work out what the different pieces were.
We tried our hand at some different skills from these time periods, including cordage and jewellery making.
Stone Age Diary Writing
Having read and explored the story "Stone Age Boy" in Reading Skills, the children wrote diaries from the point of view of a character (we suspended belief, as we now the Stone Age people couldn't write!). We had to try and keep historically factual, rather then telling a story - which was tricky!
We practiced and applied the grammatical features of expanded noun phrases, fronted adverbials and began trying to paragraph.
Here are a few examples of our writing:
Bronze Age Beaker Pots
In art we learnt about the historical background to Bronze Age Beaker Pots.
We then used the sausage technique to attempt our own replicas. It was challenging to get the shape of a bigger pot - as our pots became wide rather than tall!
Home Learning
For home learning, the children were asked to create a prehistoric settlement diorama for either the Stone, Bronze or Iron Age.
What was created was outstanding!
Project Outcome
We invited our parents in and took them through a time tunnel of time, so they could learn about the Stone, Bronze and Iron Age. The feedback comments were lovely.
One of the activities we really enjoyed at Butser Farm was jewellery making, so we had great fun doing this with our parents too!
