Support your Year 4 students in their History: Experiences of People in Australia’s Past unit of work with the Spice Up Our World task.

Created to coincide with Year 4 History Australian Curriculum, this activity will provide students with the opportunity to investigate explorers who travelled the world during the Age of Exploration.

Students will track the journeys of world explorers Vasco da Gama and Ferdinand Magellan, who sailed parts of the routes to Australia, on a map that includes a compass and key. They will categorise spices, a highly sought-after resource at the time, by colour-coding lids to indicate their place of origin: India or the Spice Islands (modern-day Indonesia). Students can then illustrate the spices, or alternatively, they can glue real spices to the jars (provided there are no classroom allergies). To avoid any mess, the spices can be covered with clear contact or tape.