Year 6: Move It Like The Mayans

Year 6 have been diving into their new history topic 'How mean were the Mayans?' Recently, they have discovered that the Mayans invented the idea of zero as a number; that it was the Mayans who first invented a complex 365 day calendar system and that the Mayans used the land and skies around them to tell them when to perform rituals and pray to their Gods. 

Today though, Year 6 studied the leisure activities of the Mayans. Did you know that the Mayans used to play a sport that involved a rubber ball, a small stone hoop and a system of passing and scoring to team members with a very odd body part...their hips! Of course, our year 6 children had to have a go (though we experimented with a slightly safer sponge ball and a plastic hoop). 

"Playing the sport was fun, but it definitely requires a lot of team work!" Riley, Acer

"The Hip-Ball game was fun...maybe that's where basketball comes from?" Razvan, Palm

Palm and Acer rounded off their afternoon with a bit of healthy competition: class v class. Unfortunately, our athletes still require some training as there were no scorers. Just as well really, the Mayans believed it was an honour to be deemed 'best player of the game' and those given the title often found themselves sacrificed to the Gods in a hope to bring luck to the team in the next game!