This week in year 4 has had a decidedly Anglo Saxon flavour and has been dominated by two main events.

First, our trip to Butser Ancient Farm on Tuesday. As you will see from the photos, the sun shone and we had a great day.  The children were able to get a real idea of how the Anglo-Saxons lived through spending some time in the replica buildings, complete with real (and rather smoky!) fire. They then turned their hand to some Anglo-Saxon crafts and showed surprising skill at sewing as they stitched an Anglo-Saxon rune, learning about this ancient form of  writing at the same time.  It was wonderful to see the children applying their WE CARE skills as they all helped each other with this task. Another favourite activity which had the children thoroughly engrossed  was chalk carving using a flint. We were impressed by the creativity they showed with this.   We also learnt a little about archaeology and unearthed all sorts of treasures (and some junk!) in the digging pit. We then had to infer whether the pieces found were Anglo-Saxon or not. The thrill of discovery was only matched by the thrill of being able to rebury our artefacts!

Our other main focus this week, also in the Anglo-Saxon time period, has been preparing for our performance of Beowulf. Script writing has begun in earnest, parts have been allocated and costume letters gone out.  Watch this space...