Welcome to the land of Ancient Rome…where the pizza is truly outstanding!!!
That’s right, we stuck on our best toga, straightened the laurel wreathes and headed to Birdwell Primary School for our end-of-topic celebration!!!
We had gladiatorial games! A Roman-style feast and (my favourite) a slave auction (kind of like Blind Date but with Mr Swallow as Cilla!)
” slave number 1, if you were a pizza topping, what would you be and why?”…Brilliant!
We have used Google Sketch Up to design our own boats in 3D. We based our designs on classic designs from around the world, throughout history:
To make sure our boats will be built to last, we are learning joining construction techniques…
For thousands of years, it has remained locked tight and hidden away from the world. Will our children be able to complete every challenge in order to break the curse and allow the chest to be opened?
The treasure chest took some opening! Once we had managed to complete all of the challenges Mr Mathieson (just) managed to lift the chest onto a table between the 2 classes…we then had to say the magic words and the chest opened!
Out poured (biscuit) Gold Bars, (jelly) worms and spiders and dozens of (chocolate) gold coins!!! A treasure fit for a Pharaoh! Well done Year 3, you managed to finally lift the Pharaoh’s curse…I wonder what our next topic will be?
Can our teams use their knowledge of the Nile valley and their understanding of the water cycle to become museum curators and explain how it all works to you at home?
A cryptic video message…ancient and mysterious relics…a tricky puzzle to solve…it looks like we are going to need all of our knowledge about Ancient Egypt to succeed!
The Pharaoh’s ancient stone tablets are littered around the school field.
The children will use all of their finely honed archeology skills to locate the tablets and decipher the hieroglyphs to crack the code. Once they decode every word and reassemble them in the right order, they will be able to solve the ancient riddle left by the Pharaoh centuries ago…
Well done everyone…I think most groups got most of the words (no thanks to the wind and rain doing their best to make all of the clues disappear!!!) The answer is…
Boom boom!
We are going to risk life, limb and laundry on our quest to find the Pharaoh’s relic…behold the tunnel of terror!!!! Somewhere in all of the gunk, leaves and creepy crawlies lies the relic that will help us unlock the chest!
Can I just say a huge thank you to all of our parents! Today was so much fun! The rain didn’t stop us and every single pupil went through the Tunnel of Doom. We had LOTS of squealing and screaming but all of them had a ball! Even the ones who were really scared before they went in wanted another go!
Thank you so much for sending their old clothes and allowing us to get them in such a state! We have been really frustrated that we haven’t been able to take them on a trip to the museum so it gave us the chance to end a truly fantastic topic in a way they will remember! Thanks again.
After our 2 mins silence in class, we joined Mr. Bailey in his ‘Memory Garden’ to plant our poppies in the ground and reflect upon what we are grateful for.
This morning, we were joined in Year 3 by 2 strange looking chaps:
They were 2 dummies that Mr. Swallow had brought it so we could see the way that the Ancient Egyptians removed the organs from a body when they mummified it. We concentrated on:
Ask your child if they can tell you what each organ does and where it is in their body!
We are also focussing upon our skeletal system We have learned the names of the most important bones and what their job is. Ask us all about it!
How did the Ancient Egyptians make a mummy? Click the links to see a variety of informational texts and videos about the process.
Religion played a big part in the lives of the Ancient Egyptians. They believed in a wide variety of gods and goddesses. These gods could take different forms, usually as animals. The same animal may represent a different god depending on the area, temple, or timeframe.
Major Gods and Goddesses
There were some gods and goddesses that were more important and prominent than others. Here are some of the more important ones:
Ra – Ra was the sun god and the most important god to the Ancient Egyptians. Ra was drawn as a man with a hawk head and a headdress with a sun disk. At one point Ra was combined with another god Amun and the two made an even more powerful god, Amun-Ra. Ra was said to have created all forms of life and was the supreme ruler of the gods.
Isis – Isis was the mother goddess. It was thought that she would protect and help people in need. She was drawn as a woman with a headdress in the shape of a throne.
Osiris – Osiris was ruler of the underworld and god of the dead. He was the husband of Isis and father of Horus. Osiris was drawn as a mummified man with a feathered headdress.
Horus – Horus was the god of the sky. Horus was the son of Isis and Osiris. He was drawn as a man with the head of a hawk. The ruler of the Egyptians, Pharaoh, was thought to be the living version Horus. In this way Pharaoh was the leader of the Egyptian religion and the people’s representative to the gods.
Thoth – Thoth was the god of knowledge. He blessed the Egyptians with writing, medicine, and mathematics. He was also god of the moon. Thoth is drawn as a man with an Ibis bird head. Sometimes he was represented as a baboon.
Temples
Many Pharaohs built large temples in honor of their gods. These temples would have large statues, gardens, memorials, and a place of worship. Towns would have their own temples as well for their own local gods.
Some famous temples include the Luxor Temple, the Temple of Isis at Philae, the Temple of Horus and Edfu, the Temples of Rameses and Nefertiti at Abu Simbel, and the Temple of Amun at Karnak.
Was Pharaoh considered a god?
The Ancient Egyptians considered Pharaoh to be their main intermediary to the gods; perhaps more of a high priest than a god. He was, however, closely associated with the god Horus and may have, at times, been considered a god in human form.
Click these links to find out more about the Gods and even take a quiz…
We found out that the Ancient Egyptians worshipped certain animals. They treated some of them better than people! The animals were seen as special because they either belonged to a certain God or even that the God lived through them!
We found out that they even mummified some creatures so that they could be buried with their owners, to keep them company in the afterlife!
We took lots of pride in the work in our topic books, take a look at these faces of concentration…
We really did look like Indiana Jones today!
We heard from a trusty source (Mr Swallow) that there could be priceless Egyptian necklaces buried on the school field. So, we took our trowels, sieves and paintbrushes down there to investigate and ended up with the find of the century!
We had to be careful to sieve all of the sand we moved as Mr Swallow had warned us that there could be precious gems hidden in the sand.
Like all good archeologists, we tried on everything we found!
We have been very busy this morning making our own (extremely authentic-looking) Egyptian neck-piece. The children GOT THEIR OWN EQUIPMENT from our shelves, then COVERED THE TABLE THEMSELVES and finally, GOT THEIR OWN PAINTS AND CRAFT MATERIALS!
That’s how grown up we are in Year 3!
However, that is not the most impressive aspect of our lesson! We also tidied up ourselves! I didn’t help AT ALL! The kids put all of the resources away and tidied up the rubbish themselves. Take a look at our classroom after a full lesson of painting, sticking and glitter…
So, when they make one of these for their homework, they’ll be able to do the same at home!
Well done kids, I’m very proud of you all!
We have been learning about the Ancient Egyptian writing system. known as hieroglyphics. We wrote our names in hieroglyphs and then carved it onto a stone tablet (well, actually it was a bit of wallpaper that we made look like a tablet but don’t tell anyone!)
We were so good at it that we decided to write a secret message in hieroglyphs!
Then, we became real-life archeologists and chose another person’s book so we could try and crack their coded message!
We came across all of the problems that archeologists face in real life…spelling mistakes, symbols that could be interpretted as more than one letter and words that didn’t seem to make sense! however, we persevered and did really well decoding the messages. It was lots of fun!
We know that the Ancient Egyptians lived a long time ago…but we were surprised to discover just HOW LONG AGO! We also discovered that they were around for A VERY LONG TIME!
We even discovered that the end of the Egyptian empire and the rule of Queen Cleopatra was actually closer to TODAY than it was to the building of the pyramids!!! WOW!
Take a look at our timelines to see what happened, when.
I did my cave art using sandpaper to draw on so it look s like a cave wall and oil pastels to add colour.
by Syd
As we are coming to the end of our Roman topic, we have created a small game on Tiny Tap to show off our learning. Enjoy!