Suggested Activities Part 1

Activity 1: Making a picture timeline

The teacher would need to have a selection of pictures (examples: Farm work in the past/Farm machinery/Shops in the Past and Present/Cooking then and Now/Milking then and now) and a blank timeline for each group of students.

Method

• The children use the pictures to construct a timeline from old to new.
• Example - a horse drawn machine and a modern harvester.
• They place the pictures on the timeline with blue tack so that their order can be changed if necessary.
• Words, captions and dates can be sorted and added to the pictures.
• Timelines are later displayed.

Children orally complete a 'Think about Our Timeline Pictures' workcard. It will have questions based on the pictures such as:
- What is the oldest (item?) on your timeline?
- How does the modern machinery seem the same or different to the older machinery?
- Can you see any ways that the older methods of farming might be better than modern types?
- Which machine does your group think made farming easier?

The focus of the interview is to do with food and food production or sale. The interview needs to be based on a specific area.

Example: food and/or farming in the past or shopping for food long ago... (A rural location might lend itself more easily to interviews concerning farming.)

• Children can ask parents, grandparents or an older relative or neighbour.
• Devising a simple questionnaire with set questions to be asked of the interviewee is important for third and fourth class children. It ensures that children are familiar with what information they are trying to gather.
• Example: What did you eat for breakfast when you were a child?
• Children could rehearse asking these questions in class.
• Children can be encouraged to get the adult to help them to write the answers.
• Follow-up: The teacher will devote time periods to sharing of information in pairs and to the class.
• Children will make deductions about some common findings. These can be listed on a wall chart called 'What we found out about.. in..'.

This activity could be done in conjunction with Section 1 of the unit, The Stone Age, where there is a mini-dig activity.

Terms which children would need to be made familiar with are:
- excavate/excavation
- ancient
- fragments
- archaeologists
- layers of soil
- destruction of artefacts

• Using some post cards or pictures from places such as The National Museum children examine the picture in pairs/small groups and speculate on the where the item was found, where it is now kept and how it is connected to the theme of "food and farming".
• Children will show their picture to the class and share their ideas.
• Teacher will direct the learning so that the children can "discover" more about their item through a series of clues given to them in stages.
• Children will need to understand that items such as pottery, cooking utensils and bones of animals often give important evidence of what foods were eaten in the past and how they were cooked.
• Children could find out that even very small artefacts such as pollen grains or fish bones can tell us a lot about the diet of people in the past. Links should be made to recent excavations and discoveries of artefacts. (See the National Museum of Ireland website: www.museum.ie)