Home School - Roman Museum

With the new start of term a couple of weeks ago we started our new topics, one of which is Romans.

 

We have been looking more at the soldiers and their uniform and weapons but I decided that we should look more at other aspects of them.

 

I decided then to take them down to Canterbury and to visit the Roman Museum.

 

 

 

 

We started looking at the comparative pictures of what Canterbury looks like now compared to then. William thought that Roman Canterbury looked far nicer than Canterbury now; something that I could completely agree with. Although I do quite like the historical features now like the Castle Walls and the Cathedral.

 

We have looked a lot at the uniform and the different styles but considering that it has all been book knowledge William, and James, both enjoyed seeing it first hand; they both actually showed prior background understanding.

 

 

One room was separated into little sections, all of which showcasing a different aspect of Roman Life. The above was a fresh food seller; in this stall we saw them selling fish and oysters.

 

We saw a display of someone making leather shoes. James, as you can see above, was quite confused how the leather sandals were their regular shoes and nothing like ours!

 

We saw another stall selling fresh fruit and vegetables as well as someone selling pins and broaches. Interestingly here William new that the pins were made of bone; I was surprised at this as we haven't studied this.

 

Around the museum on the floor we could see different styles and patterns of mosaics.

 

We saw the inside of a Roman kitchen. Both boys found it interesting at how the kitchen was very similar to ours.

 

We saw remains of a hypocaust as well as a collection of pottery that was discovered "on site".

 

As well as pottery we saw the foundations of a villa and a collection of Mosaics.

 

The next, and final, area I loved and mainly because of the below sign:

 

 

 

 

We had a chance to build our own mosaic; the boys absolutely loved doing this and if we had time to do it all day I am sure they would have done.

 

The boys then had a chance to dress up as Roman soldiers.

 

This was a great little museum to visit and we absolutely loved it. It added so much to our prior learning and to top it off it has given us a few idea to try and do on our topic.