Year 5 - Mayan Society

This week in Science, we took part in separating items once they had dissolved into the water. We tried using coffee filter to separate sand and water and it worked! The water dripped into the bucket and the sand stayed in the filter. We also used magnets to separate paper clips and soil because paper clips are magnetic and soil isn’t. The paper clips flew up to the magnet but the soil stayed put.  

‘It was very exciting to see things that had already come together separate again’. 

We have also been learning about the Mayans’ timeline and where they lived. They had a long civilization (2000 BCE – 1500 CE ). There were three periods: pre-classic (2000 BCE- 250 CE), Classic (250CE- 900CE) and the post-classic (900CE – 1500 CE). Did you know that the Mayans lived in Mesoamerica now known as Central America?  

We also acted out as Mayans society where each table got given a job or role. The jobs were farmers, priests and merchants but two tables were chosen as a poor family and royal family. The farmers had to farm and trade with merchants, with their crops. The priests had to organize ceremonies and religious rituals such as bloodletting ceremonies. Merchants had to trade gemstones for crops. The poor family had to try and earn items to support their family. The royal family had to do bloodletting ceremonies by pulling a spikey rope through their tongue and choosing someone to get sacrificed.  

On Wednesday, we went to Forest School and we learnt how to make sparks with a flint. Some of us found it harder than others, but we kept on trying until we all succeeded. There was also a clay competition and it was very hard to find clay. We all made sculptures such as a teddy bear reading a book in the shade. It was a lot of fun but we were impressed by other people’s sculptures and their creativity - somebody made Winnie the Pooh and it was amazing!  

On Friday, we had PE and art. For PE we played dodgeball medic, which is a game that has one person that is the medic. If the other peers get eliminated from the game the medic can revive them. If the other teams medic gets out then the team that lost the medic loses! We had four teams play against each other. Our class was very competitive! One of the team won and we felt very jubilant for them. For art, we drew realistic fruits and we had a choice of bananas, apples and oranges. We used lots of different pencils for the shades. At the end we stood up and looked around other peers drawing. Most of our favourite part was adding the shades.