(click any picture to start the gallery)
The following is a shared account put together using bits from the work of three pupils: James Moir, Martha Cross and Caitlin Hall:
On Tuesday 27th January, Class 5 went to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford with Mrs Guppy, Mrs Doyle, Mrs Sammuel, Miss Williams and Mr Hall. In class we are learning about the Ancient Greeks, so we went to see the Greek Gallery and Egyptian galleries (our last topic was Ancient Egypt). We travelled on a coach. Some of the girls were singing the whole journey! I was really excited and curious about what I might find.
When we arrived we parked facing the wrong direction so Martha thought we were going somewhere different! Once we were facing the right way, we saw large columns on the outside and big, extra-swivelly doors, but we were not allowed to through the swivelly doors in case one of us got stuck! (It would be epic to go through a swivelly door!).
Next we went into the Education Room and hung up our coats and bags and split into our groups. Cheryl (our tour guide) introduced herself and we went to a higher floor where she showed us a gigantic, marble statue of Apollo (it was quite funny because it was naked!) Then we went across a few bridges: they were so high up that I was a little bit scared. We went outside to see Apollo – another one on a pediment on top of the museum.
After that we were told we going to see a surprise. It was a new exhibition…Guess what? We were the first group to go in there! Amazingly it was a coloured statue exhibition.We saw a giant statue of Nike; she was starting to fly. Cheryl gave us a pack of cards with statues on. One of the statues in the pack wasn’t there in the exhibition. We had to find all of the statues on our cards and find which one wasn’t in the room. We finished in the nick of time! The statue that wasn’t in the room was the discus throwing man. The one with no head was Nike: the goddess of victory.
Soon after that we went to find a statue of Zeus and lots of pots. We got a sheet to do about finding different pots. Then we got into groups and got given a coin and an artefact for each group. We had a silver coin with Athena on and a body scraper.
After that we looked at some of the olympic sports that the Greeks played. Furthermore we looked at some myths and legends, followed by an activity looking around the cases. We then acted out sports. We were given two cards for each group, an ancient and a modern. We had: ancient-spear throwing, modern-archery. Then we had to act them out for the rest of the class to guess. We were each given a laurel wreath to wear and we marched to the statue room and got a photo taken.
Lunch was next, finally! I was starving! We walked to get our lunches out of the Education Room, washed our hands, said prayer and had lunch.
Finally we strode to the Egyptian galleries and did a scavenger hunt – at this point I was over the moon! The things to find were: a sparkly object, a blue object, a scary object and an object you would like to take home (I put ‘all the jewellery’). I found the mummy slightly scary. I also discovered a secret entrance into a carving.
I really enjoyed it especially the scavenger hunt. My least favourite bit was leaving! I would love to go again if I had the chance; I think it is a sensational opportunity.