The Monkey King!

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.

What do we know about Jesus?

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.

Crew MW – End of Spring 2 round-up

We did lots of exciting things during our final weeks of Spring 2.

We planted our own sunflower seeds and can’t wait to see how they grow! We carefully made sure that our seeds had enough compost before looking at our tiny seeds and even whispering kind things to them so that they would grow beautifully. We then made sure that they were well covered and we will keep checking in on them so that they grow into super sunflowers!

As well as planting our own seeds that will turn into flowers, we looked carefully at the different parts of flowers that had already grown. We talked about the stem, the leaves and the petals. We carefully dissected each of the parts, thinking about what they looked like, how the felt and we even smelt the petals! We then used the parts to create natural art. We also used some of the petals to add to our water tray to make beautiful potions and perfumes!

We also looked at the Easter story and talked about why Easter is important and the need for us to celebrate it many years later.

We spent some time admiring our beautiful work from this expedition that is now on display outside our classroom. We enjoyed spotting ourselves and our friends on the pictures, finding our work and talking about all the fantastic learning we have done this term!

Finally, we celebrated our fantastic Spring Term by inviting our lovely grown ups into school to our Celebration of Learning. We performed our song ‘Gingerbread Man on the Run’ before completing Easter crafts with our grown ups. We also shared our beautiful work books and talked about all of the hard work we had done this term.

A big thank you to all the grown ups who came in to share this event with the children – they have worked so hard and we are all so proud of what they have achieved!

A really busy, but really fun term! Well done Crew MW, you are all superstars!

Our Last Week of Spring 2!

Crew MW have had a lovely week exploring all things Easter! We’ve talked about the Christian celebrations for easter and the story behind this, we’ve looked at how plants grow and change and how during the spring time, lots of new baby animals are born such as chicks and lambs! We’ve really enjoyed exploring spring and Easter in our adult led lessons and during provision.

Our Easter celebrations continued throughout the week with our Easter bonnet parade on Wednesday! Once we had shown off all of our fantastic bonnets, we worked as a crew to vote for our favourites. Take a look at our fantastic creations…

Finally, we ended the half term with a visit from the Easter Bunny! He’d left lots of clues around school for an Easter egg hunt! We worked really hard as a crew to find the clues and to answer them. The last thing to do this half term was to celebrate Miss McGlone’s Birthday! Happy Birthday Miss McGlone! What a busy half term it has been!

RE in Crew MI ⛪✝💕🧑‍🤝‍🧑

In our RE lesson today we began by working in mini crews (teams) to use our bodies to create different words such as ‘love’, ‘me’ and ‘yes’. This was challenging yet fun and really got us to think about ‘what makes a good team?’. We came up with a list and some of these were communication, listening, all taking part, having a leader and being supportive. We then looked at Christianity and discussed the quote ‘Now you are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it’ taken from the Bible. We thought about why the church is considered the ‘body of Christ’ and how Christians can also demonstrate the ‘body of Christ’ individually as well as in groups. Some ideas were that the church is the central place where Christians go to worship and pray, and Christians themselves act like Jesus (caring, kind, helpful) and share Jesus’ stories with others. We then discussed the church more and listed reasons why we thought Christians might go to church on a Sunday such as, to worship, to pray, to celebrate and to take part in communion. We also looked at Quaker worship which is more of a silent approach to worship. We then finished our discussions thinking about what is more important, people/Christians or places/churches? We had some really great conversations and all contributed well. We then concluded the session by listing on post it notes everything that we had learnt and there was lots!! 📝

Decisions, decisions, decisions… ♱⛪💕

In RE, today we have been thinking about ‘WWJD’ – What Would Jesus Do? We understand that many Christians follow this daily in their practice and even wear jewellery such as bracelets and necklaces to remind them of this, as well as to help them to work out different situations that are tempting or difficult as well as challenging dilemmas.

In Crew Boswell, we discussed why Christians may do this and how it might help them to live their daily lives and make the right choices and avoid temptation. We further discussed how Christians also use resources such as The Bible and Prayer to support them with challenging aspects that appear in day to day life.

We then looked at some different scenarios in groups and thought about the right and wrong thing to do and ultimately What Would Jesus Do (WWJD), what would modern day Christians do and what we would do in each situation. We had some interesting discussions and it certainly made us reflect on our behaviours. At the end of the session pupils shared that they had learnt to ‘think before I act’, ‘treat others as I would want to be treated’, ‘help others in need even if we aren’t friends’, ‘be kind’, ‘do what’s right’. It was a great session and we all learnt something!

Diwali!

This week in Crew MW, we’ve been learning all about the Hindu festival of light – Diwali! We’ve explored how Diwali is celebrated through looking at photographs and videos, and we have seen that they set off fireworks as part of their celebrations, just like we do on Bonfire Night!

After we had looked at our photos and the videos, we had an exciting visitor! Miss Shelley came in to do a Diwali dance workshop with us all! We had so much fun and learnt lots of new dance moves!

After our Diwali dancing, we looked at Diva Lamps and thought about how we could make these out of clay. We rolled the clay into a ball, squashed it down and then used the end of a rolling pin to make indentations for the candle. Once we had shaped the lamps, we used the clay tools to create patterns on them. We can’t wait for them to dry out so that we can paint them!

In provision, we have also been using the beads, pasta and coloured sand to make Rangoli patterns! We’ve loved learning all about Diwali!

RE in Crew MI

In RE, we looked at what generosity and greed look like today. We watched a video which told the story of the widow’s offering where a widow gave all that she had to the church. We discussed this act of generosity and thought of other ways we could show generosity and kindness.