Last week, Year 3 took a trip to the Horniman museum to learn more about prehistoric Britain for our history topic this term, The Stone Age to the Iron Age.
While at the museum, we explored the various galleries, gardens and animal walk to find objects and creatures that would have played a part in life in Britain thousands of years ago. From woolly mammoth tusks to stone axe heads, we went in search of all the museum had to offer in terms of prehistoric life.
After lunch, we took part in a handling workshop where we learnt more about the different eras of the Stone Age, from the Palaeolithic period (the old Stone Age, 2.5 million years ago), through the Mesolithic period (the middle Stone Age, 12,000 years ago), to the Neolithic period (the new Stone Age, 10,000 years ago), and a little bit about the Bronze Age (around 5,000 years ago).
We were met with a covered skeleton surrounded by objects and had to use our archaeology skills to work out what they would have been used for. We then explored a number of activities where we used our knowledge to figure out what tools were made from and what they would have been used for, find out where someone would have lived and how, and also explore the move from being hunter gatherers to farmers.
There were three objects that really stood out for Year 3: the 8000-year-old hammer stone that had been worn away to perfectly fit a thumb; the fossilised mammoth tooth that was larger than some of our heads; and the 300,000-year-old stone hand tool!