Being Archaeologists

Yesterday we read the second part of 'How Do We Know What Happened?' in our History book. It talked about archaeology and to try it out a little, we collected some artifacts that would give clues to how we lived if they were dug up in the future. The girls chose a crayon, a clothes peg, a toy tractor, a brick, an old pair of trousers, a fork, a cup, a food tin and a toy animal. They buried them enthusiastically in the sand pit then we left them there overnight! Today we marked out a simple grid using wool and pegs and added paper markers inscribed A and B, then 1 and 2 down the side.

Faith chose the quadrant B2 to dig in first and was very excited to make her first discovery - she spent a long time carefully digging out and brushing the sand away from her 'find'.

Eve decided it was very hard work moving lots of sand and was surprised by how hard it was to find things that they had buried only yesterday!

All the finds were recorded on a grid map. I showed the girls how to draw their own grid and to mark it A, B and 1, 2 then how to work out where the find should go on their map relating to where they dug it up from. It took a whole hour to find and mark all the artifacts, the girls really enjoyed themselves! It was really effective as well, and got the girls using some new vocabulary!