Class Three- Maya Workshop
22 May 2024
On Thursday we all met at Grewelthorpe Primary School for a Maya Workshop. This was a brilliant way to finish off our work on Maya. The children have really enjoyed this topic and have been interested and intrigued by this ancient civilization.
To begin our day, we were introduced to the staff leading the workshop, a Maya archeologist and they explained what would be happening during the day.
We completed lots of different activities in groups. These included; examining real Maya potsherds from the late classic period and investigating what they can reveal to archaeologists about the people of the Maya lowlands.
Finally we completed an activity called Poo to you. Which involved a search through ancient Maya poo. To identify the contents of the Maya diet and compare this to modern poo.
After lunch we went into the hall for a busy afternoon. We explored a scale replica of a Maya house and its contents. We looked at the similarities and differences between houses today and thought about whether we could see everything we expected to see.
We played the trade game using cacao beans and the Maya counting system. This game also reinforced the stratified nature of Maya society.
After this we moved on to think about what the Maya wore, the children had an opportunity to try and replica Maya clothes and complete quiz questions in teams.
As we had been very busy we had worked up an appetite and we got the chance to make Masa, which is the basic foodstuff of the Maya and was used in a variety of ways.
We had already looked at the Maya Gods in class but during the workshop we were given the opportunity to rehearse that knowledge by matching the Maya God with their role using clues.
Finally we pretended to be archaeologists, we examined a wide array of Maya objects and images and then solved the puzzle of how they are connected, just like an archaeologist would.
I am not sure we could have squeezed anymore into a day if we had tried.
Have a wonderful half term and we will see you all in a week.
Miss Rogers and Mrs Lewis