What an incredibly busy first week we have had!  It has involved place value, Lord Sun and a special Maya day! Read on to find out more…

In English this week we have begun our new English topic of Narrative stories, based on a story set in the time of the Maya. The Rain Player is a book that details the battle between a skilled pok-ta-pok player and the God of Rain. We looked at the cover of the book and thought about what it told us about the setting, as well as how we would use our descriptive techniques to create a passage about the stories setting.  We finished off the week by thinking about how Akin-Mai may have felt knowing that his village was going to struggle because of Lord Sun and his terrible heat.

In Maths this week Year 4 have been looking at place value in connection with understanding thousands.  They have used number lines to help understand thousands, they have also partitioned them and understood numbers up to 10,000.  Can you explain this True or False question to your grownup?

Year 5 have been working on understanding numbers up to 1, 000, 000. They have done this in stages throughout the week and have thought about partitioning, place value charts and reasoning and problem solving. Can you explain this True or False question to your grownup?

We had a brilliant week in Topic this week. It started off with us introducing our Maya topic.  We thought about what we wanted to know about the Maya people and how they lived.  We also created a timeline of important times in history for both the Maya people and other historical periods that we have looked at.  This helped us cement our understand of BC and AD. 

We had the wonderful opportunity to spend the day with Dr Diane on Thursday.  The only Maya archaeologist in the UK, who travelled all the way from Wales to be with us.  She started of the day by giving us an incredibly interesting presentation on her time on Maya archaeological digs, sharing with us some of the things that she has found, as well as some of the wonderful, and sometimes terrifying, animals that she has encountered in the jungle.

We then all got the opportunity to look at some incredible replicas of Maya artefacts, that she and other archaeologists that she has worked with have discovered. The children thought about what the pieces were made from, what they were used for and who they were created for or owned by.  Please ask your children to share some of the wonderful myths that she busted for us, as well as some of the wonderful facts and experiences that she shared with us.  If you would like to look at her website, which has a wonderful number of activities and information about the Maya follow this link: https://www.mayaarchaeologist.co.uk/

Thank you to the Puffins for a wonderful first week.  I have blown away by the way that they have started this year off.  They have been sensible, kind and respectful and very ready to learn and take on the challenges of this new year! An amazing start to what I can tell is going to be an incredible year.

Have a lovely weekend,

Stay safe!

Mrs Karamucki