Bourne Abbey and Bourne Elsea Park Primary children visit Great Wood Farm to learn about the Stone Age

Children from Bourne Abbey and Bourne Elsea Park CE Primary Academies recently had an incredible opportunity to travel back in time to the Stone Age when they visited the fabulous venue of Great Wood Farm.

With brains already bulging with their historical learning about the Stone Age, they were incredibly enthusiastic about spending a day exploring the skills needed for survival out in the wild.

Readily equipped with wellies and coats, they enjoyed a fantastic day marching across lamb filled fields and into the woodlands to their various base camps.

As the day progressed, teachers were increasingly impressed with the team work and problem solving that they could see as the children developed their foraging and den building skills, even creating their own wattle and daub to build the walls.

Map skills were practised after lunch as our intrepid nomads moved to their next base finding key features along the way, such as conifers and standing water before marking them onto their maps whilst using compass points to check their directions. Further adventures enabled them to hone their survival skills as they were challenged to grind wheat into flour, whittle sticks, make dough and cook it over the fire.

Responses to the taste of the bread were varied but everyone showed courage and resilience in having a go.

More opportunities for den building, stone age cave art and mud kitchen play produced a wealth of fabulous responses from the children such as “This is the best day ever, I would have loved living in the Stone Age!’ and ‘No wonder progress was so slow during the Paleothic if it takes this long just to build a house!’.

Stephanie Davey, Year 3 teacher at Bourne Elsea Park, said: “What a wonderful day, breathing life into their classroom learning about British history, fun filled, fact filled and exhilarating.

"Well done to all of our Year 3 children from both schools as they showed off their 'wow factor', motivation and enthusiasm all day.”