Pink is still talking about the Stone Age people and how they lived in caves and needed fire to survive and is very keen to know what happened next.  In her words “mommy surely they did not go from using fire for everything to having stoves like we do, there must be something else that happened.”  So I wanted to encourage her thinking but I did not want to overwhelm her with too much detail as she is 6 years old.

I printed out the stunning World history timeline from Twinkl (platinum package).  Yes I know I have been using the Twinkl resources a lot lately but honestly this is one of the nicest resources I have seen.  It really is worth having a look at.  I know we are going to be using this a lot in the coming YEARS.  And yes it does take some cutting and pasting to put it all together but I honestly feel it was worth it.

Pink and I laid the timeline out on our lounge floor and we spoke about how it has taken many years for the progression from the stone age to us using our stove to cook.  I pointed out a few highlights briefly and we even spoke about areas that she would like to learn more about (the Egyptians and the vikings seem to appeal to her).

The following day after reading her book  Archaeologists Dig for Clues (thankyou to my friend who recommended this lovely book).   We got out some of our air drying clay and made some of our own pots and items that we thought could be similar to what they could find when they excavated a site.  Both kids loved this although Blue did not actually make anything he just played with the clay.  We used some toothpicks to make patterns on the clay pots.

While we made our pots I talked about how people started using pottery to help them with their day-to-day living and how they started building their own houses.    We had a look at this lovely Bronze Age display poster (Platinum package on Twinkl).

We had a look at our house and thought about the modern items that we use and how it makes our life easier and how would it be if we lived in a simpler house with fewer items, no electricity, no TV, stove or hot water – my little girl did not like this she loves her warm baths and her comfy bed.

Pink then asked if we could make our own bronze age house.  We made our basic structure using some of the modelling clay as a base and some lolly sticks as the walls.

Building the house actually became a wonderful exercise this week as I had no idea how to do the roof and as a result we have ended up making a  number of different versions and had some great fun in the process.

Our first idea was to use a basic cardboard cone shape and then Pink used her tissue paper to cover it (we cut the tissue paper into long strips).

I also tried to use the card board to make a frame for the kids to weave the tissue paper through – but this was not that successful.  So we then tried to glue some of our lolly sticks to a thick cardboard circle to make the frame for the roof – this was much better.

We then weaved our strips of yellow tissue paper through the frame.

Pink is now very excited to learn about the Egyptians but Blue wants to do a dinosaur dig so think we might do some digging for dinosaurs next week while I plan our Egyptian activities.

Update – here is the link for the air drying clay that we used

UK readers – Das Terracotta modelling Material air drying clay 485g Net 500g

US readers – Fila Das Air Drying Clay Craft Modelling Clay , Terracotta 500G

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