Year 3 – Dig and Discover

What a fantastic first half term we have had in Year 3! We have been immersing ourselves into our project ‘Dig and Discover’ and enjoyed our school trip on Friday to Stonehenge. In Science this half term, we have carried out many investigations to learn about how rocks are formed, the 3 types of rocks, the hardness and permeability of rocks.  We also recreated and made our own fossils understanding the fossilisation process: 

We started by adding our fossil.	After this, we started building up the layers using playdough.	Over time, the layers became more and pushed down on the fossil.	We then pealed away the layers to reveal our fossils.

Another experiment we moved onto was to investigate soils. Our question we wanted to solve was ‘Are all soils the same?’ Over the summer holiday’s our teachers had collected samples of soils from all around the UK. We started by examining each sample to describe it before setting up our experiment. We filled a jar with some soil, then added water, we shook the jar for five minutes and then left the jars to settle for at least an hour. Once they were ready we could look at the results. Clay has the smallest particles which would go to the top. Silt has medium sized particles so would go to the middle and finally Sand has the largest particles so will go to the bottom. 

In History, the children have loved finding out about the Stone Age. We have taken the time to understand the meaning of pre-history and how archaeologists have discovered what it was like in the past. We used soaps to recreate our own stone age tools by carefully chipping away as we sat around the fire and could see how we left behind evidence for archaeologists to learn more.

On Friday, the weather was on our side as we headed to Stonehenge and what a great day we had! As teachers we were extremely proud of all the children. We had several members of staff and volunteers around the site said how well behaved, polite and inquisitive the children were! Well done Year 3! We loved looking at and going in the Neolithic houses, we were shown lots of artefacts – including some shoes that looked extremely cosy, we travelled on a bus to the stones and learnt so much from the super volunteers.  

We look forward to the week ahead, where we will learn what happened after the Stone Age and more about the Bronze Age and Iron Age. Thank you for your on-going support.

Year 3 Team