On Wednesday, Year 3 thoroughly enjoyed their visit, supporting their history learning, to Butser Ancient Farm. The children sat around a fire in a roundhouse and learnt about how they were built. Did you know that the fire in the roundhouse had many purposes? It not only kept the roundhouse warm but also meant the Celts could cook their food. The smoke from the fire would stop bugs from living in the rooves (which were made from wood and straw) which helped their roofs lasted longer. They could also use the smoke to preserve meat so that the animals they had killed would feed them for longer. The Celts used to live in the roundhouses and before the Roman invasion. To really understand the process of how they built a roundhouse, we learnt the art of wall-building which involved crunching, chalk (which we had to crush to dust fist), straw, mud and water!
We made our own Celtic jewellery and found out that they used their jewellery to hold their clothes together because they did not have zips, buttons or velcro. Did you know the Celtic men tended to wear more jewellery than the women?
Our visit to the Roman villa allowed us to hear a little more about what life was like as a Roman. The mosaic in the villa had hundreds of thousands of tiles in it and after getting to see it we had some fun creating our own mosaic designs. We saw Roman toilets and found out that they used to play board games with each other while sitting on the toilet! We couldn’t believe it when we found out that only boys got to go to school in Rome while girls were expected to stay home. We had such a great day and learnt so much! History was brought to life.