Ancient Greece at the British Museum

This week, we went to the British museum to begin our new topic this summer, Ancient Greece. The British Museum has a fantastic collection of Ancient Greek statues from the Acropolis of Athens so we started there with a tablet tour. Working in pairs, each child had access to a tablet which guided them through the exhibition helping them to learn about ancient Greek religion and how the Parthenon’s architecture celebrated Athena’s greatness and communicated the power of Athens.

Taking advantage of the tablets, we discovered that we had access to a tablet tour for Sutton Hoo as well as the Parthenon. Earlier in the year we learned about the Anglo Saxons and we used the British Museum’s website to investigate artefacts from Sutton Hoo so today was a great opportunity to see the artefacts we studied earlier in the year up close and personal.

Once we finished with the tablets, we had a presentation about Greek myths to enjoy. It was a fascinating presentation focusing on Ancient Greek pottery and looking at how the decorations would tell the stories of Greek myths. We were introduced to heroes such as Heracles, Gods such as Poseidon and Demi gods such as Medusa, their narratives and characteristics displayed clearly on pottery dating back over 2000 years!

After lunch, we decided we needed one last visit to the Ancient Greek exhibitions because we wanted to find the pottery discussed in the presentation. We managed to track down not only the pottery we had seen in the lecture theatre but also other great examples of Ancient Greek pottery telling the stories of Greek myths.

It was an excellent introduction to our new Ancient Greek topic and we can’t wait to explore the gods, myths and ancient civilization in greater detail!