Ancient Celts Unit Study: A Field Trip to Butser Ancient Farm

This was a field trip we took to Butser Ancient Farm, whilst we were studying the Ancient Celts in 2012.  It seems like yesterday!  B4 was a baby, so was in a sling for most of the time, but the older children thoroughly enjoyed themselves:

We focused on the round houses first:

These were, as their name suggests, round with a hole in the roof.  Each house had a fire burning and it was easy to see just how smoky it could get:

The older girls tried their hand at baking some flat bread on the fire, which they could then eat with some of the honey produced by the farm:

To the side, each house contained a huge weaving loom, where the women would have woven all the cloth required for their family.  Here you can see the way the walls had been decorated with pigment paint which the Celts would have made themselves:

Afterwards we were shown the outside loo.  It’s funny, this was much more developed than I thought it would have been.  Never the less, I’m fairly certain it would have been a bit chilly mid winter!

After perusing the insides for a while, we then went and tried out some of the outside activities.  grinding grain was a favourite and they were all surprised at just how hard it was.  Here is C doing it with just a large stone:

whilst L and T used the primitive stone mill which was marginally more productive and produced finer flour.  Here is L being shown how it works:

and T feeling the flour it produced:

The children also tried their hand at an archaeological dig, which was quite productive:

C with the head of a goat (?):

T with some chards of pottery:

After we left we created some note pages of our visit:

as well as a collage from all the photos:

Aaahhh, good times!

For lots more Celt related activities please do visit my Pinterest board: