Stonesfield Primary School

Jane Bowley writes

At Stonesfield school Amanda and I worked together on the same afternoon talking to the seventy children in years 4 and 5 (year 6 were away on a field trip) to set the scene.

I was able to tell the children about the special nature of the limestone grassland habitat of Stonesfield Common and the ancient woodlands at Wootton Wood and King’s Wood. Amanda showed them old photographs of slate miners, fossils and dinosaur remains and told them about the roman remains from the villa that was discovered at Stonesfield.

The fossils and slate that really fired their imagination and they talked at length about fossils they had found at Stonesfield and other places. We then spent time with small groups looking at the old maps and again they were very involved in working out where changes had occurred and what buildings were shown on all of the maps.

As this was such a large group of children Sally and Tom split them into two working groups. The year 4s worked on the tapestry on the first day and the year 5s on the second day. The younger children worked more slowly so some of them carried on during the second day and were so enthusiastic it was difficult to get them to stop at the end of the day.

The fossils and stony nature of the area is definitely reflected in the images that the children have created. They were also fascinated by the concept of layers of life underground and the burrowing of animals through the layers. One piece shows a huge number of stars and they said this was because they are very aware of the night sky due to the hilltop location of much of the village.

As the children had been promised two days of art work they worked with related art techniques with the school art co-ordinator when they were not working on the tapestry and created some fabulous pictures of animals using pastels.

During the course of researching the local history we met a local landowner who has a slate mine on his land that he occasionally opens up for public visits if a safety ladder is hired. There are plans to work with geologists who know the history of the slate mining industry to offer visits to the school and local residents later in the summer.

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