​Saxon Experience​​
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​LEAVE ONLY FOOTPRINTS
​Saxons in the Meon Valley

This programme focuses on Anglo-Saxon's life in the Meon Valley and current practices here at the Sustainability Centre.

Your class will join us in our outdoor woodland classroom, set up as a Saxon longhouse, to look at replica and real artefacts of the period. We discuss the domestic life, hand crafts and warrior kit of Saxon peoples. Partake in some fun games depicting some of the chores children would have had to do at the time. 

Children engage in a hands-on challenge to find evidence from pottery found in archaeological sites as well creating their own piece of Saxon pottery. Pupils will also have the opportunity to weave mini-hurdles with willow, while learning about coppiced woods used by Saxons to build homes and fences.

Depending on seasonality children may be exploring the site’s plants, herbs and ‘hedges’, a word derived from Anglo Saxon ‘haga’ meaning enclosure, we see how people then and now value biodiversity in the landscape. Finally pupils hear about the evidence left behind by Saxon settlements and consider what impact the buildings on our site have on the land and what evidence will be left for future generations.

CURRICULUM LINK

• KS2 History - Pupils should be taught about Britain’s settlement by Anglo-Saxons and Scots.
• KS2 History - Pupils should be taught about the Viking and Anglo-Saxon struggle for the Kingdom of England to the time of Edward the Confessor.
• KS2 History - Pupils should be taught about a local history study.
• KS2 History - Pupils should be taught about a study of an aspect or theme in British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066.

Meet a saxon

​Awards

We offer the John Muir Award in the South Downs National Park. Pupils can work towards both the Practical Environment Skills and the John Muir Award during their placement.
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Quality

The quality badge for Learning Outside the Classroom is a national award that we have earned for our education provision. It recognises the essential elements of safety and learning for all types of outdoor provision.