Amazing Mayans

As part of Class 4's topic on Amazing Mayans we having been finding out about Mayan stelae; a stela is a large statue of Mayan ruler complete with glyphs (Mayan picture writing) . The Mayan stelae tell important information about the rulers such as dates ruled, other tribes defeated and other accomplishments.  

Class 4 sketched their own glyphs and designed a stela. Over  the past two days they have been creating their stela from clay using a variety of techniques.

Creating a stela from a block of clay.

The finished stelae 

Tudor Christmas

Yesterday Class 4 celebrated Christmas in Tudor style. They spent the morning cooking and preparing for a Tudor banquet and learning about the different traditions and their meanings.

After lunch we lit the Yule log ; a tradition dating back to Viking times. The Yule log was kept alight for the whole 12 days of Christmas

Class 4 returned to class to enjoy a Tudor "feast"- gingerbread and mince pies.

We elected a 'Lord of Misrule '  who was in charge of the entertainment . Groups had put together Tudor dances and we learned the Tudor carol ' Boar's Head'  singing it with much enthusiasm!

We finished the afternoon by making wreaths using willow and decorating them with yew, holly and laurel.

What lovely wreaths !

Making pomanders and instructions

Earlier this term we found out about Tudor times and to finish off our term we are finding out about Christmas in Tudor times. Our first foray into this has been making pomanders, a common Christmas gift in those days. We have made pomanders and then written instructions about how to make them. Here are some of the results...

Christmas Carol Service Rehearsal at Bressingham Church

Tomorrow evening we shall all be at Bressingham Church to celebrate Christmas with family and friends; it will be our Carol Service.

Year 6 are leading the Service: announcing, reading and singing solos, so this was our chance to practise reading and singing our parts, 'throwing' our voices in the wonderful space that is 

Bressingham Church. 

Singing Club also had a chance to practise...both singing and actions!

Slap Jack instructions...

Instructions is one of the different types of text that we learn how to write. Today we made up our own instructions for a card game called 'Slap Jack'. As you can imagine, a safety tip was an important element of these instructions!

Here are some excerpts from our instructions for the game...

Then it was time to try out our instructions!

Class 4 cook, Latin American style!

Wow! What an amazing day! After several planning and preparation sessions, when groups chose a Latin American country, then investigated food in that country, before choosing a recipe to make, whilst also starting PowerPoint presentations about their food project, the cooking and presentation day finally arrived!

Each group worked hard all morning to make their dish and take photographs and video clips ready to add to their presentations.

Cleaning up...

Some of our proud cooks...

This was the first time that many of the children had given presentations using Powerpoint to an audience beyond their classmates. They did incredibly well. 

Finally it was time for tasting and our large and evidently fairly peckish audience joined us in eating almost every morsel! It was great to have so much support from the children's families. Thank you all for coming...

Christmas Decoration Afternoon

As it is the first day of December, we have had an afternoon preparing Christmas decorations for the corridor in school. This is an opportunity for children to work together in mixed age groups, with the older children taking some of the responsibility for the younger children as they do the activities and move on from one activity to the next. This is important practice in working as a team for all our children, but especially for Year 6 who have been our team leaders this afternoon; it is one of their 100 memorable events to lead a team and they have done a fantastic job.

Here are some photos of the afternoon...