We were lucky in Year 5 to have a drama workshop all about the Maya, which is our current History topic. We started with some true or false questions, then created freeze frames of different parts of Maya life.
Here we are acting out Pok-A-Tok (a Maya ball game where the players could not hit the ball with their hands, and the objective was to get the ball through a stone hoop at the end of the playing field.)
The Maya built many temples and painted them red, although we can’t see the red colour any more.
The Maya had a hierarchy in their society: slaves were at the bottom, followed by farmers, warriors, astronomers, priests and finally the king (known as the ajaw).
To finish off our workshop, we acted out the Maya creation story.
The two creator gods were able to think of anything they wanted, and it would appear. So they thought up trees and mountains. Then they realised they needed something that would praise them, so they thought of animals.
However, they realised the animals couldn’t speak to praise them, so they made people out of clay. But the clay people just crumbled to the ground.
The gods then decided they needed the people to be stronger and harder, so they made men from wood.
These men could not speak to praise the gods, so they destroyed them. Finally they made men from corn paste. These men could speak and praise the gods, but they could see too much so the gods removed some of their vision. They didn’t want the humans to be as powerful as them.
We had so much fun and tried so hard with our acting!
