Gunnersbury Park Museum

Earlier this week, Year 3 had a brilliant day out at Gunnersbury Park Museum to help us with our learning about Ancient Britain.

We began by exploring the museum, which has a vast collection of items providing an insight into the rich heritage of the local areas. The items found locally dated as far back as the stone age showing that this area has been populated for thousands of years (the stone age items included arrowheads and tools made from stone). Each room was dedicated to a different theme and age: for example the fashion room enabled the children to try on clothes from different periods of history and the industry room showed us how technology in the area has advanced over the last 200 years.

After lunch though our focus was Prehistoric Britain and we took part in an excellent workshop called ‘Stone Age Survival’. We got the chance to explore authentic primary source stone age items and we were even allowed to touch them. Once we were outside in the park, we got to be hunters, throwing stone age spears at a wild boar. We also made shelters from animal skins (although these ones were fake for health and safety reasons!) and we all had a go at wattle and daub: an ancient method for weather proofing neolithic buildings by filling in the gaps between twigs and branches with manure and mud (we used clay!)

It was a long day and we ended up getting back to school late but it was definitely worth it because we had such a great experience. Thank you to everyone who ran the workshop and helped with the organisation!