Activities Primary Resources

A Collection of Stone Age Activities & Teaching Resources

In this category you'll find our collection of KS2 Stone Age activities for children. They are all teacher-made with your teaching aims and constraints in mind. You'll find quick crafts - like these print-out Stone Age cone people - research aids, writing activities and more.

Get hands on with recreating Stone Age tools or even recipes! There are general introductory PowerPoints and more specific ones - like this one on the Neolithic settlement Skara Brae.

Take a look at this Stone Age Word Search for an interactive Stone Age resource.

'KWL' grids to help children track the existing knowledge, gaps in what they know, and their research aims. Use Stone Age activities to practise other skills like reading and writing with reading comprehension tasks and extend the time spent learning about the Stone Age into other lessons. Plan your own Stone Age Activities using teaching materials like Matching cards or vocabulary cards to bring variety to learning and teaching about the Stone Age.

Why Learn About the Stone Age?

Learning about the Stone Age is one way for children to study a way of life very distant and different to their own but which also has many similarities. Get children to compare Stone Age tools with present-day tools - do some of them look quite similar? What about clothing - what materials was Stone Age clothing made out of? Are any of these still used today?

The Stone Age is a key part of the National Curriculum for England's history requirements as it stands as the starting point for their chronological understanding of history.

Studying the Stone Age at KS2 gives children lots of opportunity to learn about hunter-gatherers and early farmers. A good capsule study of early farming is the settlement Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands.

Facts to Bring your Stone Age Activities to Life!

• In France and Spain paintings on the walls of caves have been discovered. They are believed to be around 30,000 years old. They sometimes show activities like hunting as well as animals like horses and bison, hand prints and hand stencils.
• Cave paintings were made using things like charcoal, coloured stones, plants and animal gums which were ground down to make paints - how similar are these to today's painting and drawing materials?
• During the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) period the wolf was domesticated into the dog to help us hunt and protect ourselves. How many of the class have a family dog today?

Stone Age Activities and Lesson Ideas

From learning about Stone Age animals and the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, to creating cave art and Stone Age crafts, here are a few activities for your KS2 lessons:

• Become a Stone Age hunter-gatherer by creating a Stone Age hunt in your outdoor area
• Stone Age word search
• Make your own Stone Age stewed fruit
• Create your own cave drawings by finding stones and replicating Stone Age drawings on them
• Make your own Stone Age bowls using clay
• Stone Age people used natural dyes, you can use juice from different fruits to experiment with dying cotton
• Using twigs, sticks and moss, you can create your own Stone Age houses
• Build your own Stonehenge using classroom materials like cardboard
• Using clay and shells, you can re-create your own Stone Age jewellery
• Make Stone Age tools using our handy paper models
• Design a Stone Age outfit
• Stone Age timeline matching activity
• Discover and explore the settlement of Skara Brae
• Research Stone Age musical stones

For an eye-catching introduction to your Stone Age activities, share this video with your class.