Celts/Romans in Britain

Spring Term

We really enjoyed learning about the Celts and then about the Romans in Britain. We thought the Celtic settlements looked beautiful and many of us thought we would have enjoyed living in one. We especially liked the roundhouses, however not many of us would have wanted the animals to sleep in there with us at night! We drew our own Celtic settlements and then pretended to be residents of Maiden Castle, writing to a friend about what it was like. We investigated how the use of iron impacted Celtic life, from farming to defence.  

When we looked at the arrival of the Romans in Britain we considered the reasons why their previous attempts to invade hadn’t been successful, especially when their armour was far superior. We asked where they had come from and why they wanted to invade Britain, for example what resources we had that they desired. Initially, we considered why the Celts fought back and resisted the Roman invasion. We looked at the story of Boudicca and used a thesaurus to find words to describe her. Then, we pretended to be her and using persuasive language we wrote speeches imploring her fellow Celts to rise up and fight alongside her. Looking at various maps which showed the decline of Celtic settlements to Roman occupation, we were surprised that the Romans were unable to conquer Scotland. We questioned why this was and looked at pictures of Hadrian's wall. 

We compared the different ways of life between the Celts and the Romans. We pretended to be Celts who didn’t like what the Romans brought, for example taxes, then we looked at it from a different viewpoint and pretended to be Celts who thought the Romans brought good things, for example indoor plumbing. We were surprised to discover that some of the changes the Romans made to Britain are still impacting our lives today, for example our calendar, towns, currency, sewerage systems, roads, and even rabbits!

We created a display for our wall which had a Roman town on one side, a Celtic settlement on the other and Hadrian's wall through the middle. In Art we created Roman Chariots and our own Roman Mosaic Coasters. 

A big highlight of our topic was visiting the Grosvenor Museum in Chester. Take a look at our pictures! 

China

We had lots of fun in Y3 learning about China and comparing our findings to what we know about the UK. We found China on a map and we were amazed how big it is compared to the UK! China has a much bigger population than we do however we noticed that compared to New Zealand, which is a similar size to the UK, we do have a large population too. We saw that China is in the continent of Asia and unlike the UK, which is surrounded by water, other countries border China. 

We thought about the difference between ‘climate’ and ‘weather’ then compared the Chinese climate to the British climate. We discovered that because China is so big the climate varies significantly across the country. 

We enjoyed finding out about famous places in China, for example ‘Gobi Desert’, the ‘Great Wall of China’, the ‘Yellow River’ and the ‘Yangtze River.’ We had fact cards and pictures which we read in pairs then shared with the rest of the class. We found these landmarks on maps then labelled them on our own maps of China. 

We also researched Chinese houses and compared them to our own houses. We had pictures of British houses and Chinese houses and we considered where we thought the houses were from. Some were obvious but some were surprising! We identified that China has some apartments and housing that look just like ours but they also have some older traditional housing which looks very different to ours. We found the houses in Luoyuan Bay particularly interesting as they float far out into the sea covering almost the entire bay! We compared stilt houses in the old fishing villages to our own homes and we found lots of differences. They are built above the water on wooden stilts which means the people in them live close to work and the houses are protected from flooding; you can also dock your boat under your home! Most of us thought it would be really fun to live in a stilt house! 

We were amazed to discover how many inventions originated in China, for example the kite, the toothbrush, origami, paper money, paper, gunpowder, chopsticks, the umbrella, the compass, razor scooters, porcelain, silk, the mechanical clock and so many more! We learnt that in the past the 'Silk Road' facilitated our ability to import Chinese goods, however China's geographical location made them very expensive. However with modern technology and transport it is now much easier to import Chinese products. 

World Book Day

March 2024

Y3 Design Technology 3-D models

November 2023

We have enjoyed creating 3-D models of Liverpool buildings. Some of the buildings we viewed from the school mini bus. We designed our models on paper, thinking about what materials we would need, and then we carefully built our models. We ensured our models were structurally sound then we painted them and added the finishing touches. 

Creative outdoor play

December 2023

We have had lots of fun in year 3 creating a hotel for bugs. We enjoyed watching a wide variety of mini beasts join and enjoy our hotel. 

Nativity 2023

Science - The Atmosphere

September/October 2023

We have had lots of fun this half term learning about the Atmosphere. We have learnt that God has provided an atmosphere around the earth for a specific purpose and that He has made all living things in such a way that they are able to absorb the air they need. We especially loved learning and signing the ‘Atmosphere Song,’ which taught us what happens in the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere and exosphere. We conducted an experiment which shows what happens to air when it warms up. We placed blue ice cubes in a bowl of water followed by very hot red water. We noticed that the blue ice cubes sunk to the bottom, then just like warm air, the red hot water rose. 

We also did an experiment in which we measured our lung capacity. We predicted if we thought everybody would have the same lung capacity or not and why we thought that. We ensured our test was fair and we  recorded our results on a bar chart and discussed what we noticed. 

Local History

October 2023

In Year 3 we have had lots of fun finding out about how our wonderful city, Liverpool, has changed over time. We have used lots of different sources of information, for example photographs, maps, books, old film footage, quotes from newspapers and magazines and census reports. We have thought about the Bible verses Hebrews 13:8, ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever’ and Jeremiah 29:7 which tells us to pray for the city we are living in.

We learnt that Liverpool was established in 1207 by King John and it was initially a fishing and agricultural village. We found it funny that it was first spelt,  ‘Liuerpul,’ which means ‘a muddy pool.’ We looked at a map of Medieval Liverpool which showed just seven streets existed, two of which are modern day Water Street and High street. We looked at pictures of those streets today and thought about what would have surprised the residents of Medieval Liverpool.

We then looked at eighteenth century Liverpool and we thought about how the new wet-dock system caused Liverpool to change. We loved learning about how Liverpool became the most important city after London and how lots of people moved here. We considered a quote by a French Philosopher who said that, ’The spectacle of the Liverpool docks is, I think, one of the greatest in the whole world’. We compared what the Docks were like then, to what they are like now. 

We had fun looking at the 1911 Census. We learnt what a Census is and what information it can give us about the past and the present. We conducted our own Lower School Census and created a bar chart to show our results. We noticed that family size is much smaller now!

We enjoyed looking at pictures of Victorian Liverpool and learning about how Kitty Wilkinson saved lots of lives by creating Liverpool's first ever washhouse. This not only meant that people could clean themselves and their clothes, but it also meant they could learn about good hygiene practices. We found it interesting that although most of us have washing machines in our houses today, Launderettes still exist and they are still important. 

We enjoyed watching old video footage of 1930’s Liverpool. We were surprised to see cars on the streets and that Marks and Spencer existed that long ago! We particularly enjoyed seeing the policeman directing traffic as there were no traffic lights yet. We were shocked to see the lack of health and safety considerations for the  men who were constructing the India Buildings, there was no scaffolding, and no hard hats!

We had lots of fun creating a class poster about 1950’s Liverpool. We had research packs which were full of information and photographs from books. Some of the topics we researched were toys, traffic, playtime, the Queens coronation, transport, housing, shopping and washhouses. When we found information we wrote it in our own words, on coloured paper, then we stuck our facts and pictures onto our class poster. We especially liked the picture of ‘play streets’ where children could play outside more safely as cars became more common in 1950’s Liverpool. We also loved discovering that Meccano was created in Liverpool! We found lots of similarities and differences between 1950’s Liverpool and Liverpool today. 

We tracked the population from Medieval Liverpool to modern day Liverpool and the biggest surprise we had was that the population of Liverpool today is almost half of what it was in the 1930’s!

Self Portraits

September 2023

We have enjoyed creating Self Portraits in Year 3. We began by thinking about the Bible verse Psalm 139 v 14 which tells us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made by God. Then, we learnt about Frida Kahlo who spent a lot of time painting self portraits of herself. We looked at her artwork, then just like she did, we spent some time looking in mirrors. We considered that shapes can be geometric or natural and then we thought about the shape of our own faces and the shapes and positions of our different features. We also thought about which colour hair, eyes and skin God has given us and whether our hair is straight, curly or wavy. When we thought about our hair we were amazed that in Matthew 10 verse 26-31 the Bible tells us that God knows how many hairs there are on our head! 

We used a pencil to sketch our faces and then we began to think about the colour wheel and how we could create the exact shades we needed to paint our faces and hair. We mixed colours to make secondary and tertiary colours, using white to lighten our shades and black to darken them. We also thought about whether the colours we needed were warm colours, cold colours or neutral colours. We thought about how different colours look when they are placed together and how colours can complement each other. 

We completed self-evaluations after we finished our work and although we had a few things we would change next time, we were all very pleased with our finished pieces of Artwork. As we looked at the pictures of ourselves we thought about Genesis 1 vs 27 which tells us that God created us in his own image. We love the fact that we are all created in the image of God!

The Owl who is afraid of the dark - Literacy and Art work

October 2023

In English we have thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, ‘The Owl who is afraid of the dark,’ which is about an adorable baby barn owl called Plop. We liked the beautiful poetic language the author uses to create pictures in our minds and we enjoyed predicting what might happen next. We have found and used adjectives and similes to describe Plop and his parents, onomatopoeia words to describe the fireworks in the night sky and we have used our inference skills to identify what Plop’s character is like. We have used coordinating conjunctions and fronted adverbials in our sentences and we have created our own characters, just like those in the book. We identified the structure of each chapter then we used all of the above skills to write our own chapter. We used pastels to create our own pictures of Plop in Golden Time.

Origami

October 2023

We love making Origami during Golden Time!