The Romans - 2009 Project

We have started our roman topic Each group made a different character to decorate our walls and help us learn more about the clothing worn at the time. Move your mouse over the pictures for more information about each one

Just Kidding! - The picture above and to the left is a fine picture of clothes worn by the celts at this time. He reminds me of a great book by Jacqui Wilson called "The Illustrated Mum". Have you read it?

We have been learning about the Celtic people who lived in our lands before the Roman invasion. They lived in round houses and Joshua showed us how to make one from card. I think we will make a whole village because the Celts lived in tribes with a chieftain. They protected their settlements with ditches and fences and sometimes forts.

We have been learning about the Roman army and the invasion of Britain. We are going on a visit to the Antonine Wall on 18th February and will have a workshop at Callendar house too. Today we designed and made our own roman shields and roman chariots.

Ben made an especially nice shield and you can see that in the daily diary because he has been awarded the "good work" award for this week. Well done Ben !!

Class Outing to Callendar House

We had a great morning at Callendar house. The children learned about the uniforms worn by Roman soldiers. They used a simulator to build a roman wall. They were able to handle real Roman artifacts and try to guess what they were and looked at lots of exciting things found on the estate.

Then they were given a helmet and shield each and they went on a march into the park. They learned how to use the shield to defend themselves from the barbarians (Mrs Boyiatjis and Mrs Davidson armed with balls to throw at them). They got their own back though when they were told to chase the barbarians! Poor Mrs Davidson and Mrs Boyiatjis had to run for their lives!

Everyone said it was the best school visit they had ever had. See more pictures on the diary page.

Roman Baths

We were learning about the roman baths this week. The Romans did not only go to the baths to get clean but also to meet with friends and exercise. There were also places to eat, rest, play games and read. The baths were very cleverly made as they always had to have a constant supply of water. The water was either piped in or brought to the town by an aqueduct. The water was heated by the central heating system called a hypocaust system. There were different parts to the baths including the cold bath (frigidarium) the warm bath (tepidarium) and the hot bath (caldarium).

The Romans didn't use use soap, a slave would rub sweet oil on them and scrape it off with an instrument called a strigil. There is a picture of a strigil, below.

Our group challenge this week is to design and produce a visitors guide to the Roman baths. I hope to show you the completed guide soon

We are loving our Roman topic. This week we have been learning about the Roman Gods. The Romans adopted many gods as their empire expanded and sometimes they found that they had the same function as their own Gods, so, they just combined them. We have been matching the major Greek Gods with the major Roman ones.
Did you know that the planets are named after the Roman Gods? We learned about that today. We also learned to order the planets. We know a mnemonic to remember the order, My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Up Nine Pizzas. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

We made Roman coins which usually had an emperors head on one side and a building or landmark on the other.

Here are the Roman mosaics we made. The Romans often decorated their floors with mosaics. They were beautiful and often showed gods or emperors. I like them. We have a carpet in our classroom and I think it would look so much nicer with a mosaic on the floor. Don't you?

Also this week we produced "For Sale" Brochures for the Roman villas. We used our imagination and our knowledge about Roman houses and numbers and towns, to make the brochures

Our latest challenge was to design a board game which would teach something about the Romans. Here are a few of the designs

We were learning about this week. We used chalk and charcoal in our pictures using, iconic corinthian and doric designs.

Angus went to Rome last summer and saw some Roman buildings. You can read about his trip here.