This was a lovely session as it was great to hear the children discussing their views on a soul and what they think it is responsible for. One child was a little shy about sharing how they believe God is responsible for our soul but we encouraged them to be proud of their beliefs. Children then drew what they thought a soul looked like which was really interesting.
Today in our RE lesson we considered what makes humans special by exploring beliefs about the soul. We first of all recapped humanism then we watched a video clip ‘What makes me me?’ We paused at different points to answer questions. We then moved onto thinking about the inner soul and the soul. We discussed the two terms and children’s thoughts and feelings on these. We then looked at a variety of quotes on peoples views on the soul and we discussed them in mini crews. We then thought about what our own soul may look like and we had a go at drawing this. We wrote words around our drawing to show what we thought our inner self or soul does. We then took part in a gallery walk where we looked at everyone else’s drawings. We discussed what we saw in mini crews and how our own drawing were similar and different to others.
In RE last week, we learned about Humanism. We discovered that Humanists don’t believe that God created the world but that we evolved through Science. The world started with a single organism and these continued to multiply and adapt. We discussed what makes humans special and it was lovely to hear the children share their thoughts on this.
In RE, we have been comparing the way Christians, Hindus and Islam pray. We compared different prayers from each religion but realized that although different religions, they pray for similar purposes.
Today we continued learning about what it is like to be a Muslim in particular how important charity is to them. We focussed on the third pillar of Islam ‘Zakat’ which is all about placing a great importance on donating to charities whether that is donating money, clothes or food. We also discussed how charity becomes even more of a focus during Ramadan. During this month, Muslims make personal sacrifices as fasting helps them to remember those who go without food, shelter and water. Next, we discussed that not all charity has to be about donating something physical. We looked at what children could do and focussed on what actions they could do, we called these ‘good deeds’. Something as simple as a smile could make someone’s day. We created an anchor chart with what we had learnt and what we could do to help people particularly those less fortunate than us. To finish, we read a story ‘The Two Brothers’ where we talked about how kind the two brothers were to one another. We even acted this out. We really enjoyed this sessions today. Well done Crew MI.
In RE last week, we started to learn about how Hindus pray. We found this really interesting especially with how they give a food offering and how they have shrines within their homes where they’ll pray to their chosen God.
Today we thought about and discussed why prayer matters to Muslims. First we watched a video clip showing Muslims performing salah. We watched this with no sound first of all and tried to observe the prayer movements. When watching again we observed the rak’ah and sketched as many prayer positions as we would pick out. For each position children annotated the sketch to explain what they think the movement might mean or say about the worshippers’ inner feelings and beliefs.
From here we watched the clip again with the sound turned on. We listened to the meanings of each movement and compared these back to our own ideas. We then had a go ourselves at performing the different movements. We then thought about what Muslims may be feeling when praying then considered why people pray and how it makes them feel. Some great discussions today MI 🙂
For today’s RE lesson we looked at a story called, ‘The Monkey King’. A story told by Buddhists about how to show care to others. We learnt how initially the Monkey King was selfish and didn’t want to share his mangoes with the other monkeys because they tasted too good! But then when the Human King caught one and wanted more and was willing to kill the monkey tribe for them, the Monkey King knew he had to make a sacrifice! He quickly used his body as a bridge and let the other monkeys climb over him to get across the river to safety. The Human King saw this kind action and recused the Monkey King for being so kind and let all of the other monkeys live. They then all shared the tropical fruit together. We all learnt a lot from this story, especially how to be kind to others and why being kind and caring is so important. We thought about questions that we might ask the Monkey King such as, why did you decide to help your tribe? Did your feet hurt? Did you think you were going to die? etc. We also thought about the different characters feelings at different points in the story. At the end of the lesson we shared some of the sacrifices that we have made for others.
As part of RE this week, we have started to think about what we know about Jesus. We looked at who he was, what he did (including his main life events) and why he is so important to Christians. Lots of us could remember that he was born in Bethlehem and that the celebration of Christmas celebrates his birth. From the lesson we learnt that he was a great teacher (he taught people about God’s love), he had 12 special friends (his disciples), died on the cross (for his people) and rose from the dead. We also learnt that he was kind and caring and helped many people.
In RE, we discussed the story of Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) and the guest. We discussed what was important about the story and what a sacrifice was. Then, we renacted the story in small groups including the key people and scenarios.
