Spring 1 Review – The Hive

It’s been a busy first half term for The Hive as we began our ‘Ancient Egyptian’ topic. We have been unpicking what everyday life would have been like living within Ancient Egypt and understanding the timeline of events that led to their rise and fall within world history. The class particularly enjoyed a visit from a specialist, who brought to life the process of mummification, pyramid building and gave us a chance to play traditional games and past times enjoyed by the Ancient Egyptians.

Having gained a wealth of knowledge within our History learning, we have been exploring the gory process of mummification in a little more detail. Paying attention to the chronology of the events, we have written clear instructions within English to guide someone who has never carried out the mummification process before, luckily no one in our time period!

As part of our topic, our key text has been ‘The Egyptian Cinderella’, by Shirly Climo. This has allowed us to explore an adapted version of the well-known traditional tale of Cinderella. Using this as our inspiration, the Hive have written their own versions of Cinderella, whilst applying the features of traditional tales.

Within Maths, the children have been demonstrating motivational attitudes when exploring fractions. We have learnt how to identify equivalent fractions, add and subtract fractions and calculate fractions of amounts. It has proved to be a tricky area to master, but we are so proud of the determination and resourcefulness shown by all pupils.

In Science, The Hive have been learning all about forces! As part of this topic, they have been comparing how objects move on different surfaces by linking it to their understanding of friction.  When carrying out a scientific investigation, they were required to think scientifically and ensure that their test was carried out fairly. They concluded that the rougher the surface, the more friction will be caused!

In Art this term in the Hive we have been learning about Egyptian symbolism especially the various royal headdresses and symbols on tomb paintings. The children created their own Egyptian portraits using photographs of themselves with Egyptian royal headdresses added using their own designs. We also experimented with making papyrus using a similar method to the ancient Egyptians and used this to mount the children’s portraits, finishing their work off with hieroglyphics spelling out the children’s names or detailing their greatness as pharaoh!

 We have been adding to our French vocabulary with Mrs Grimes, where we have been learning how to say and identify numbers up to 100 - we are very proud of them all!

In Computing, we have been learning to code a maze game with an Egyptian theme. We have had to be creative when considering our sprite selection, algorithms for the code and what features will make our games appealing. We have really enjoyed trying out many tomb maze games that our classmates are producing.

In RE we have been adding to our learning about Hinduism by exploring the Hindu beliefs surrounding karma, samsara (the cycle of death and reincarnation) and moksha (being with god). The children had some great discussions about how these beliefs could influence a person’s life and the children considered how these ideas fit in with their own thoughts and learning about other religions. In PSHE we have been learning about the social structure in Ancient Egypt and comparing it to life in modern times, considering the types of jobs and roles people took in Egypt and in Britain today. We also thought about what makes a good leader, exploring the leadership of Cleopatra as well as considering how the children are sometimes leaders themselves.