Which era was the most important for early civilisation?

In the Through the Ages project, your child will learn about three different periods of British prehistory: the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age.

This is a history-based project in which they will discover terminology relating to time and sequence dates to make a timeline. They will explore the changes to people, homes and lifestyle throughout the different periods and investigate examples of prehistoric settlements, monuments, burials and artefacts in detail. They will also study how technology improved over time, including how the discovery of different metals changed the way that people lived.

The children will also complete some companion projects over the Autumn term which are Skeletal and muscular systems (Science), Contrast and complement (Art), Prehistoric pots (Art), Cook Well, Eat Well (DT) and One Planet, Our World (Geography). The coverage of these is included below.

For the first part of our companion project, we learnt about the Beaker Folk and Bell Beaker style pottery. We then had a go at designing our own pot ready to make later in the week. 

3T have enjoyed making Bell Beaker style pots. They used sticks and stones to add decoration as the Beaker Folk only used natural materials. They then wrote a set of instructions about how to make a pot. 
 

Ask your child: What happened to the pots of male Beaker folk once they had died? Why?

Brilliant resilience from all of 3T while making their own Bell beaker style pot. They used their design and try to recreate the pattern on their pot using natural resources. 
 

Ask your child: When you evaluated your pot, what rating did you give it? Why?

3T have been looking at human nutrition and the Eatwell guide. They discussed the importance of a balanced diet and sorted food into the correct food group. They also learnt that a balanced diet does not need to have sugary and salty foods. 
 

Ask your child: Which two groups should take up one third of the plate each?

As part of our ‘animal nutrition and the skeletal system’ companion project, 3T looked at the human skeleton. They learnt about the bones in the body and where they are and then labelled the skeleton as a class before using their knowledge to label their own. 
 

Ask your child: Which is the longest and strongest bone in the body? Where is your patella?

While learning about joints, 3T had a go at putting a cardboard tube over their elbow and lifting something to their mouth as if they were drinking. They found that they couldn’t do this and we discussed how joints help us. They then had a go at threading a straw onto a piece of string and tried to get the two ends of the string to meet. After each go, they cut the straw in half and re threaded it, showing lots of small joints were more effective. In this lesson, the children learnt about pivot, hinge and ball and socket joints. 
 

Ask your child: Can you point to an example of a hinge joint on your body?

For our Science innovate, we had to think of some questions that we could investigate the answer to. We either chose ‘what makes the spine so flexible?’ or ‘how many joints are in the human body?’ We then set up an investigation in groups to help us answer them.

Ask your child: What did you find out from the experiment?

In computing with Mr Carlton, Year 3 looked at the laws around computing and were given scenarios that they had to role play in a court of law. They then had to decide if the defendant was guilty or not guilty. 

In History, 3 T have learnt about Celtic warriors. We looked at a presentation and then read a piece of text. We then had to draw what we thought they would have looked like! 
 

Ask your child: What did Celtic warriors do with the heads of their enemies?

in art, 3T have started their companion project, ‘contrast and complement’. They started with exploring watercolours and learnt that more water makes the colour lighter. During the next lesson they also learnt about the colour wheel, cool colours, warm colours, tertiary colours, complementary colours and contrasting colours. Lots of new knowledge!

Ask your child: What is a contrasting colour? What is a tertiary colour?

For the first part of our Geography project ‘One planet, our world’ we revisited some previous learning on human and physical features. We worked in groups to sort the pictures into groups and then shared our answers as a class. 
 

Ask your child: What is the difference between a human and physical feature? 

In this lesson, we looked at atlases and talked about what they show us. We worked together to find certain countries and then tried to colour them on a blank version of the world map. 
 

Ask your child: What continent do we live in?

In geography, we looked at four figure grid references. We discussed which way to read them to allow us to be accurate with describing a location. 
 

Ask your child: How do you take a four figure grid reference? 

Year 3 have been learning about the layers of the Earth for our geography companion project. After they had learnt about the main 4 layers, they each made an edible representation. They used angel delight to show the layers and topped it with crushed Oreos for the soil. They then took it home to enjoy!

Ask your child: What did each layer represent?