A slightly different set of activities is proposed for Year 3 pupils to better match the cognitive development of the children.
We focus on understanding:
✓ the chronology on a large scale;
✓ key aspects of geography through land use.
Pupils will learn to place Sumer on a timeline
and understand how Sumerians adapted to a challenging environment.
During “A day in Sumer”, Year 3 pupils will get acquainted with Šibum, the Sumerian musician and discover different ways of living.
Šibum introduces the children to the Land of Sumer, by “telling” them about his everyday life (a set of original short texts).
The “day in Sumer” for Year 3 also counts four sessions,
lasting approximately one hour each:
✓ With the “Standard of Ur”, pupils get to know the various characters of the Sumerian society.
They better realise the importance of agriculture, and are told how Sumerians have considerably modified their natural environment by using artificial irrigation on a large scale (by contrast with Egyptian).
✓ Through the "pictogram game", pupils will conceive other means of communication.
They learn to read few signs of the first writing of human history and create their own pictograms.
By doing this, they figure out by themselves how and why cuneiform writing has evolved.
Children get to know Sumerian every day life with Šibum who tells them about
✓ the house of his cousin in the countryside;
✓ and the city where he lives.
Pupils compare their way of life with Šibum’s one.
They themselves use ancient sources like “real” archaeologists to investigate the past: they study archeological plans and pottery sherds dating from III millennia BC (loan from the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge) to better understand what they tell us about the past.
At the end of the day (if there is some time left), they study Sumerian “fashion”, and dress the “Queen Puabi”!
