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Adventure 1: Mysterious Mayan Mission

Our Adventure Song

A music video sung to the tune of Royals by Lorde. Created for a Grade 6 history class studying the Maya.

To kick start our adventure, we were contacted by a man named John Lloyd Stephens. He told us that he had built a time machine which could take us back in time to the Ancient Mayans. This time machine was however, located in Central America. We therefore needed to locate this, using maps to help us. We looked at where it was, what countries it consisted of, and even looked at the different time zones across the world in order to work out what time it would be once we arrived. 

 

After travelling back in time to Ancient Maya - we needed to try and fit in a little better!

We looked at how the Mayans chose their names, and used their method to give ourselves Mayan names. Take a look below!

 

After travelling back in time, we arrived at a place called Chichen Itza, during its construction. We wrote a setting description of all that we saw and experienced.

 

 

In order to help us fit in a little more, we designed Mayan Headdresses to wear. We looked at their importance in Mayan Society, and chose one for a different type of person.

 

  

It turns out that our Headdresses are magical! We used them to help us write a story about their powers and where they took us. 

We began our Writing by looking at some story examples, identifying the key features and annotating our copies. 

 

In order to help us use some fantastic vocabulary in our story, Westwood Word Wizard gave us 5 words we needed to try and include. 

After looking at their meaning and seeing them in context, we also look at some synonyms. We tried to match the words to their synonym and meaning, giving us a bank of some excellent vocabulary. 

 

Here is our finished story!

 

Whilst in Central America, we found lots of Mayan Temples. We decided to look into Mayan religion, comparing it to Christian Faith. 

 

After looking at Mayan religion and finding out about the different Mayan Gods that were worshipped, we researched more in depth about 3 of them. We used this information to write our own chronological report. 

 

    

We then looked at a famous Mayan artist - Frederick Catherwood. We looked at his style of art and practised drawing in perspective like him. 

We then had a go at drawing our own Mayan inspired picture in his style. 

 

We suddenly received an email, asking us to travel to Central America to the Yucatan Rainforest to unearth some buried artefacts. 

We imagineered our trip and then wrote a newspaper report on our findings. 

 

We then began to look at Ancient Mayan Hieroglyphs. We chose a word that we wanted to represent, designed it and then made it out of clay. 

 

  

We then looked at the history of chocolate and the impact that the Mayans had on its discovery. We decided to make and try our own Mayan inspired hot chocolate, adding chilli powder and cinnamon for an authentic taste!