Year 3 trip to New Barn field centre

A bright, crisp autumn morning greeted the Year 3's as we travelled back in time to the Roman conquest of Britain during our trip to New Barn activity centre in Dorchester. On arrival we were greeted by our Roman legionary guide, who explained that he had been left behind after the conquest of Southern Britain by the II Legion Augusta. He decided put our skills to the test straightaway by teaching us solider commands in Latin and getting to us all to march in formation, which proved very tricky!

Afterwards, he then invited us into his Romano-British house and explained how it was built and how Roman settlers would live during the occupation. Then he got us working again! The legionary split us into groups and tasked half of us to make flour using Roman, Celtic and Neolithic querns and the others to make butter. Both proved to be lots of fun and slightly messy!

We had built up quite an appetite, so stopped our activities for a yummy Friday lunch! After this was finished we burnt off some of it by doing more marching drills and then finished the day using flint to make carvings into chalk rocks. The ideas for our carvings were very imaginative. A thoroughly enjoyable time was had by all!

"Using the querns to make flour was lots of fun! The Celtic saddle quern was really hard work but the Roman rotary quern was a lot easier. We made lots of flour and even bread out of it!" Cecily

"I loved making butter! It was fun but really hard work as we had to keep whisking the butter in the bowl. We got really really messy!" Adbullahi