
Today, Year 5 were lucky enough to have a Norse visitor who shared his knowledge of the Anglo Saxons and the Vikings who raided, traded and settled in Britain from AD 786.
We thought about the role of archaeology and studied artefacts. We looked at them closely and tried to decide what they were made of and how they would have been used.
We tried on clothes and helmets and held swords.
We looked at runes and used them to make a leather key ring.

Fieldwork is when you go outside the classroom and find things out for yourself.
Today, Year 5 started our geography fieldwork by trying to answer the question- How busy is Morthen Road?
We counted the different vehicles and made a tally chart to collect our results. Everyone took part in the time sampling. We will create a line graph to show the information we have collected.

In Year 5, we have started our science work by looking back at what we already know about plants. We have looked at the plants in our local environment and the fruit and seeds they have produced.
Dispersal is the spreading of things over a wide area. Dispersal of seeds is very important for the survival of plant species. If plants grow too closely together, they have to compete for light, water and nutrients from the soil. Seed dispersal allows plants to spread out from a wide area and avoid competing with one another for the same resources.
We then created paper seeds and observed how they moved.
This will link with our work on forces.

If you were an Ancient Egyptian, would you want to be re-joined with your body in the afterlife when you die?
Today, Year 5 found out more about the process of becoming a mummified person.
The first step is to wash the body. This can be done with wine, Nile water, or both.
Next is the removal of your brain. The brain was thought to be useless, as ancient Egyptians believed that we thought with our hearts, not our heads.
Getting the brain out is tricky, and quite disgusting. To do it, a long hook is inserted up the nose and swivelled around to blend the brain, which is then poured into a bowl.
Then a cut is made on the left side of your body, so that the liver, lungs, intestines, stomach can be removed.
Your heart might be removed too, but only to be dried and put back in later. Ancient Egyptians believed that the heart was the most important organ in the human body, and that you needed it in order to enter the afterlife.
All of these organs need to be cleaned. The liver, lungs, intestines and stomach get put into special containers called canopic jars, which allow the organs to be rejoined with your body in the afterlife.
Each of the jars have a different Egyptian god’s head on them:
- Qebehsenuef (pronounced kay-beh-sinoo-uf) has a falcon head and holds the intestines
- Hapy has the head of a baboon and holds the lungs
- Duamutef has the head of a jackal and holds the stomach
- Imset has a human head and holds the liver
Your body is now filled and covered with special Egyptian salt called natron – which gets rid of moisture and prevents decay – and you’re left for around 40 days, depending on how long it takes to dry you out. The natron will be changed on a daily basis.
Next your body is dressed in linen binds.
Finally, a mask is put over your face, you’re placed into a casket, and lastly put into a sarcophagus ensuring you’re ready for the afterlife.

An experiment to see whether some mixtures can be separated by filtering
First, we collected all the apparatus we needed. Next, we folded the filter paper so that it would fit into the funnel. After that, we poured the water and soil mixture into the filter paper, making sure that the liquid did not go above the filter paper. Once all the liquid had been filtered, we removed the funnel from the container and observed the liquid obtained.