Bourne Abbey Church of England Primary Academy
Striving For Excellence, Caring For All In a Loving And Caring Christian Environment.
Year 3 Tomb Raiders
The 4th November 2020 started in a rather odd manner. As we arrived to school we were told that we were banned from leaving our classroom. What was going on? The corridor seemed to be in darkness, there was strange music heard in the distance and no answers came our way…so we worked with our partners to explore ideas of what might be happening. Was it a surprise party? Had the power gone off or something linked to Ancient Egypt maybe? Well, what seemed like hours later, we bravely crept out of the classroom and in to the corridor and what a remarkable sight we saw. Unexpectedly, we had entered a mysterious, dark and somewhat aromatic tomb of a Pharaoh we were yet to meet. His bandaged body was laid out in a sarcophagus, artefacts surrounded him and most grotesquely, there were real life organs stored in jars. Using torches, we shone the light on his reflective death mask and we discovered treasure in a hidden chest. But why had this happened, what did it all mean?
Confused and intrigued we returned to our classrooms, to then find a message from the Pharaoh directed only to the Year 3 children. We were frozen in our seats, as we heard him explain that we had entered his 3,000 year old tomb and he had now transported us back into Ancient Egyptian times! We didn’t mean to enter but there was no easy escape from this curse. The wicked Pharaoh had assigned us all a role, inside an envelope we were to choose our role, without any clue as to what this role really meant. We chose from scribes, servants, craftspeople, farmers and pyramid builders.
Without warning, he appeared again! This time he explained that we had an important task that must be completed in order to return to 2020. Our heart beat fast, we were in a bit of a panic, we scanned QR codes to find out more about our task and boldly we accepted. The talented scribes tea stained paper and learnt how to write secret messages from beyond the grave using hieroglyphics. Busy farmers set to work on building shadufs to help the Egyptians collect water from the Nile. Our strong pyramid builders used their perseverance skills by building pyramids with only spaghetti and marshmallows, these were exceptionally tricky but my goodness they were amazing. Skilled servants learnt how to sew on newly designed embellishments for the Pharaoh’s royal garments. Finally, the creative craftspeople got to work on symmetrical, mosaic and quite frankly rather glamorous collar necklaces.
Exhausted but rather proud of ourselves we hoped and prayed to the Egyptian Gods that we had done enough in time to lift this dreadful curse, and as if by magic, the Pharaoh appeared once more. On the edge of our seats, with our eyes fixated on this extraordinary figure, we listened to the Pharaoh lift the curse and allow us to return to our modern day. A sigh of relief echoed around the classroom alongside smiles as large as the pyramids. We had achieved so much in such a short space of time and one thing is for sure, we could not be more ready to further our learning about the remarkable Ancient Egyptians in our Term 2 topic, ‘That’s Not My Mummy!.’ We have one final message to spread, if you discover a secret tomb, ONLY ENTER IF YOU DARE!!
‘The surprise of the Pharaoh’s undiscovered tomb captured the children’s interest immediately. We were so proud of the children as they took on the roles from Ancient Egyptian times so maturely and applied their Christian Value of perseverance to complete them. Excitement is definitely in the air for our new topic ‘That’s Not My Mummy!’ We cannot wait to dig a little bit deeper in to the fascinating world of Ancient Egyptians.’ Miss Helen Fleming (Year 3 Leader)
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