As part of their History work on the Romans, year 4 had a fun and interesting day at Arbeia Roman Fort.  After a brisk march to the Fort, the children enjoyed their first workshop which was an object-handling archaeology investigation.  The children rifled through the leader’s ‘rubbish bag’ to find out what the items told them about life in 2023, then went on to handle Roman artefacts using their observational skills to discover what the objects told them about the life of the people who lived and worked at Arbeia Roman Fort.

Our second activity of the day was an interactive tour of the site utilising real and replica artefacts to bring the history of Arbeia and the lives of the Roman soldiers to life.  The children visited the Fort, looked at the site where the granaries were, the barracks (soldiers’ and centurion’s quarters as well as the commanding officer’s house) and the latrines!

After lots of research and lots of walking, the children were ravenous and tucked into their lunch with gusto!

The afternoon was spent in the museum, looking at various artefacts, quizzing on them and drawing them to create a beautiful frieze that we took back to display in school.