Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! Have a happy, holy and fun day!

Christmas Games!

Happy Christmas! The holidays have arrived! Here are some fun games for you to enjoy during the holidays. Make sure you go outside, read a book, play some games and help your family at home too!

Have a wonderful, happy and peaceful Christmas; be good, be safe, come back in one piece!

CBBC Christmas Quiz:

 Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/games/christmas-quiz

Trim the Tree:

Source: http://www.northpole.com/clubhouse/games/Tree/

Thank You and Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from St. George's Class! Thank you very much children, and your families, for all of the very generous cards, gifts and kind wishes. We are all very grateful- thank you! Have a wonderful Christmas holiday- have lots of fun and stay safe!

ACE Awards!

Congratulations to our ACE Award winners for the Christmas term!

Achievement: Darcy

Courtesy: Nabi

Effort: Maria

Well done!

Congratulations again to Maria, who won the class prize for having  the most Class Dojo points this term! Super effort Maria, well done!

Next Week...

Monday 15^th: Children will be going swimming as usual. Please bring in a large carrier bag today, as you will be taking lots of things home this week. Today we will welcome Mrs Herrera back to school and into St. George's Class! Hooray!

Tuesday 16^th: Christmas Lunch.

Wednesday 17^th: Class Christmas parties (please see the bookshelf inside our classroom door for the sign-up sheet should you wish to bring in an item of food or drink for the party).

Thursday 18^th: Carol Service at St. Thomas More, at 2pm.

Friday 19^th: ACE Awards Assembly at 9am, followed by ‘Toy Day’ in class. You  are welcome to bring in a small, non-valuable toy that is not electric or battery operated. Soft toys, cards or board games are great ideas! 

School will close at 2pm for the Christmas holidays.

Our Class Museum!

Thank you to everyone who came to visit our St. George's Class Museum! The children were very proud to show off all of the hard work they have completed this half term. Be sure to ask them about the Ancient Egyptians- they are all experts now!

A Fantastic Trip!

Yesterday afternoon, we visited Dulwich Picture Gallery for another fantastic art session. Our teacher, Liz, showed us round the special exhibition by Emily Carr. Emily Carr is a Canadian artist and we learned that she particularly likes to paint trees and objects from 'First Nation' communities in British Columbia. We looked at some Totem Poles, masks and instruments, as well as some striking paintings of trees.

We then had a chance to make our own mask, in the style of Emily Carr. One of the animals that featured most in the exhibition was the raven. The 'First Nation' communities tell many stories about the raven and how it saved the sun. The raven could even shape-shift!

Firstly, we coloured the mask template using traditional First Nation colours. We tried to make the patterns symmetrical.

Then we carefully cut out the pieces. We had to follow some quite complicated instructions to attach one piece of the mask to the other! Once they were attached, we added the strap to keep it tight on our faces.

Then, so that they would look like Emily Carr's masks, we added raffia around the top of the mask.

Exploring the Tomb of Tutankhamun!

Yesterday, after break, we arrived in our classroom to find that it had turned into Tutankhamun's tomb! We had to be archaeologists and work in teams of four to complete a Reconstruction Relay.


We took turns to enter the tomb and crawl through the corridors between the chambers. We had to use a torch to look at the artefacts in the tomb, then rush back to our teams and 'draw what we saw'! We had to be very careful because we could only enter the tomb for 10 seconds at a time. Due to the tomb being sealed for thousands of years, it was filled with poisonous gasses- we could only be exposed for 10 seconds at a time.

We had to work well as a team to look for each of the 6 artefacts and to draw them in detail. At the end of the challenge, the judges chose two winning teams. The winners had clearly looked for the details on each object and one team had even labelled what they had seen! Well done to the winning teams!

Beautiful Egyptian Silhouettes

 
Yesterday, we made some beautiful Ancient Egyptian themed artwork.

Firstly, we learned what a 'wash' is and how to make one. We used inks to make these beautiful backgrounds, as they blend so smoothly and give really strong colours.

Once the backgrounds were complete, we designed our silhouette foregrounds. We wanted to set them in Egypt, so most of the children chose to include an iconic pyramid and many included a camel or a palm tree.

After we had carefully designed the silhouettes, we cut them out and stuck them onto our backgrounds.

Pyramids and Lego Stop Motion Animation!

This week we have been learning about the pyramids, particularly those in Giza. We used this excellent website to look around Giza and learn about some of its features.

Source: http://www.childrensuniversity.manchester.ac.uk/media/services/thechildrensuniversityofmanchester/flash/pyramid_panorama_stamp.swf

We also watched some short BBC clips about the building of the pyramids. We learned how archeologists have been able to discover how the pyramids were built.

Can you remember why the Ancient Egyptians buried their dead on the West of the Nile?

Yesterday, we combined the animation skills we have been learning in Computing with our knowledge about Ancient Egypt to make these wonderful videos. We used an app called 'Stop Motion Studio' to produce these stop motion animations. Instead of stone, we used Lego to build our pyramids!

'Pyramid Marvellous' by Group 5

'The Pyramid of Four' by Group 4

'Pharaoh's Lego Pyramid' by Group 3

'Building of the Great Pyramid of Lego' by Group 2

'Khufu's Epic Lego Pyramid' by Group 1

Fantastic work, St. George's! These animations are very impressive- well done!

A Fantastic Trip!

On Thursday, we went to the Horniman Museum for a fantastic workshop. We had a wonderful teacher called Danny who helped us to become Egyptologists for the day. He began by telling us all about Mr Horniman and how he started his museum. Can you remember where the museum was when he first opened it?

Mr. Horniman travelled to Egypt to collect some items for his museum. When he was there, he met a student who helped him find what he needed. Can you remember which famous Egyptologist it was?

We were incredibly lucky that Danny decided that we were 'serious students' of Ancient Egypt. He was very impressed with how sensible everyone was and with your fantastic knowledge. You were able to answer every single one of his questions and shared some excellent information!

As we were 'serious students', we were able to touch some very special objects from Ancient Egypt. Some of the children couldn't quite believe that they were real! We had to wear special gloves before handling the objects, so that we didn't damage them. Some of the very fragile objects were in small glass cases.

We got to hold and look closely at some real amulets, a piece of a wooden coffin with tomb paintings on it, a mummy mask and a scarab beetle amongst other items.

We also got to see a real mummified falcon, just like Horus! It was fascinating to see the falcon's body and some of the bandages still remained on it.

 Some of us felt like doctors or scientists, when we were able to look at the x-ray of the falcon and we could identify its rib cage, feet and spine.

Following our session with Danny, we went down to the 'African Worlds' exhibition. There is a small collection of Ancient Egyptian artefacts in the museum. We were all very excited to see some real Canopic Jars, as well as a sarcophagus, some shabtis and most interesting of all... a mummy!

If your parents haven't seen these items in the museum, perhaps you could take them one weekend or during the Christmas holidays and tell them all about what you have learned!