Stone Age Shenanigans

This week we took a deep dive into the Stone Age. I got a few formal resources, but we also created our own and explored a place right on our doorstep!

The UK has very interesting ancient history remains, and some of them aren't far from us at all - we took a trip out to Stanton Drew stone circles, three large stone circles in a field second only in size to Avebury. Stonehenge isn't that far from us either, but you can't go up to the stones there whereas these were touchable, we walked the circles and talked about how and why people in the stone age worked so hard to transport these huge rocks and arrange them like this.

After getting up close and personal with the rocks, we decided to draw them - N(8) drew just one rock, whereas D(7) decided to create a diagram of the way the rocks were arranged in a circle.

After visiting the field, we took a walk into the village of Stanton Drew and looked around the small church - not quite stone age, but historic and interesting nonetheless.

At home, we talked through what life in the stone age was like, the different periods - paleolithic, mesolithic and neolithic - and the kids created lapbooks with the kind of information they found most interesting. They each got to try and draw a 'cave-drawing', using rectangular crayons which were a bit more like the rocks people in the stone age used to draw with, rather than pens/pencils.

N(8)'s lapbook

Stanton Drew stones on the right, deforestation and a neolithic house to the left

Cave drawings!

D(7)'s lapbook

D's cave drawing

Kind of tying in with the theme - well, it's autumn and there are conkers, and there were conkers in the Stone Age, so there you go: conker crafts! They made animals: a dog, a giraffe, and a happy animal I can't quite identify...

There was also an 'archaeology day' at the local museum, and we talked a lot about how we know about Stone Age people at all (archaeologists!) so we went. The focus there was more on Roman times, but lots of fun was still had getting dressed up and playing Romans!

That was a fun and interesting week for us all! Finally, we watched this old classic about the Stone Age (not sure my British friends will know this?)...

... and we're still working our way through this classic!

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