Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Back yard Archaeology!

What a fantastic afternoon this turned out to be! We are studying explorers and right now we are looking at the Vikings. We were reading about the settlement that was discovered in Newfoundland and how the archaeologists uncovered it, proving that there was a viking settlement there right about a 1000 years ago. So today we set up our own dig, and pretended that we were looking for evidence that people had once lived in this area. What fantastic artifacts we found.

Ariana sifting through the dirt, being careful not to damage anything.
The dig site and archaeologists from above.
In Ariana's quadrant she found what everyone decided was one of the most important discoveries. A coin showing that the people who did live in this area had some kind of money system.
Each archaeologist dug in their quadrant and recorded what they found. Then we all got together and shared what each one found, speculating over what something may have been or what it was used for.
Teigan carefully cleaning the dirt off one of the found "artifacts".
Liam and Ariana, finding one of his treasures to share about.
Teigan filling in the rest of her grid, while Ariana is showing her the exciting coin!
Samuel showing Liam one of the finds so he can draw it into the proper quadrant.
This whole activity took about two hours and the kids were right into it the whole time. What a great afternoon!

1 comment:

Amber said...

That was sooo much fun!! Ariana actually cried all the way home because she wasn't going to see Teigan for four days!