As part of our Cultural Week celebrations, Year 1 were given Morocco as a country to learn about. We started off the week learning about where in the world Morocco is and some of its geographical features.

We have looked at the art work of Hassan Hajjaj - A Moroccan-born contemporary artist and photographer. We were inspired to create our own art pieces. First we painted a bright background onto our paper. Then we noticed the repeating patterns that Hajjaj uses and added these to our works with pastels. On the 3rd day we used coloured paper to add a bright border like you can see in the artists work. Finally we took pictures of us in our cultural clothes and will add them to the front of our pieces.

We have also been learning about the different instruments that are played in Morocco and enjoyed listening to clips of each instrument. You can use the link to listen to some at home with your family. Which one did you like the most? Why?

On Wednesday we learnt about Moroccan cuisine. First we looked at pictures to see if we could identify any of the foods and dishes. We learnt about bread and dips being an important part of Moroccan meals and how sharing brings a group together. Then we made our own flatbreads with flour, salt and warm water. You could have a try at home. Once they had been cooked we made some dips to share. Which dip was your favourite? Can you remember some of the ingredients we used? 

We learnt about the wildlife in Morocco. We looked at 3 different habitats, the mountains, the desert and the coast. Then we identified 4 different animals from each habitat. We used some of this knowledge in our Maths lesson when we created a pictogram showing the classes favourite Moroccan animal. Once we had collected the data, we talked about the most popular, least popular and compared some of the numbers by saying how many more there were.

We have had a fantastic week celebrating Morocco! We are really looking forward to tomorrows feast and parade where we get to celebrate cultures from our class and school community!