We began our new adventure with some Imagineering. We found a photograph of a scene of Ancient Greek ruins and decided to investigate this further. We imagined that the classroom was the ruins and each group had a secret mission. We travelled around and labelled up the features of the scene using our secret mission. We then used these fantastic ideas to write wonderful setting descriptions!

In Geography, we began thinking about the location of Greece and how the land has changed over the years. We noticed the names of the countries had changed but their position was still the same.

We've been working really hard on our historical enquiry skills this week. We began by thinking about timelines and chronological order and thinking about how long ago the Ancient Greek time period actually was. We ordered events on a timeline once we had reminded ourselves what AD and BC meant. We then spent lots of time learning about Ancient Greek life. We researched clothing, education, family life, diet and fun and games using secondary sources. We looked at how to use a Content Page and Index to find the information we wanted in a non-fiction book. Below are some of the different activities we did around Greek life.

Using all of the wonderful information we found out in our history lesson, we used this to write fantastic explanations of how to become the perfect Ancient Greek.

Next, we found out lots about Athens and Sparta - 2 rival cities in Ancient Greece. We learnt about the different cities and what life was like in those cities. We then decided where we'd prefer to live and why, the children came up with some fantastic ideas!

We found out that Sparta was well protected by mountains, however Athens was quite easy to spot because they built a huge temple on top of a hill (basically a sign saying hi, here we are!). In art, we created beautiful collages of the Parthenon using coloured paper to create the background and art straws for the building.

We learnt about the Battle of Marathon. We were really interested in the facts and the conversations between Athens and Sparta. Some of the children acted out their conversations as you can see below! 

Next, we settled down to find out about some of the traditional tales from the past. We found out that the Ancient Greek's were quite good at telling stories and creating stories to explain things, known as myths. We studied some famous mythical creatures and used the inspiration to design our own!

We replaced The Minotaur from the myth Theseus and the Minotaur with our beasts and wrote some fantastic stories using lots of brilliant SPAG features and did some brilliant editing too!

We loved learning about The Battle of Marathon last week so decided to investigate another - The Trojan War! We found out about the plan and how it worked and then created comic strips to retell the stories.

It was then time to get creative! We were set the mission in DT to create our own Trojan Horse. The design brief said it had to have wheels, a door and that was it! We were really exploratory and experimental in our work and even had to rope in the expertise and tools of Mr Cockcroft! Our finished Trojan Horses were AMAZING!

Meanwhile, we began thinking about different instruments in an orchestra for our music topic this half term. We learnt about the different parts of an orchestra and created a map. We then listened to 3 songs from Disney's Fantasia and thought about the pitch, tempo and instruments we could hear.

Our adventure continued and we found out more about how sport started. We learnt that the Ancient Greek's were pioneers in sport and founded the Ancient Greek Olympics! We found out lots of information about the games, why they were created and some of the different events in them.

Using the school laptops, we created fact files on Purple Mash about the history of the Olympics. I was so impressed with the children's speed of typing and ability to switch between tabs and use the copy and paste feature!

We discovered that the Olympics were a festival to celebrate Zeus. This led us to find out more information about the Greek Gods. The children made Top Trumps cards using the God's traits to help them decide the ratings. We then played Greek Gods Top Trumps with the rest of the class.

We were visited by Dave from D:Side who did some work with us on RSHE. He taught us about the effects of alcohol on the body and how to be safe. We then also had a go at beer goggles and some children had to complete some really simple tasks which were made really difficult by the goggles.