In today’s RE lesson we learnt all about the month of Ramadan and what Muslims do during this month. During this time, Muslims fast during the daylight hours to demonstrate self control and discipline as well as empathy towards those people who unfortunately have to starve on daily basis. This time is especially important because it brings the family closer together and it is a chance for Muslims to reflect and be close to Allah. Throughout the lesson, we had great discussions and watched a couple of video clips to help us to understand what happens during this special month.
Category : RE in Action
Exploring Hinduism
Today we have started our third case study, Hinduism. We have explored the key facts, did you know that hinduism is the worlds oldest religion? Most Hindu’s live in India, in Doncaster there are approximately 1,294 Hindu’s. We discovered that Hinduism is third largest religion worldwide, after Christianity and Islam. To finish off our first lesson today we carried out a Kahoot quiz to assess our understanding, needless to say, Leo had remembered lots of key facts!
Exploring the Islamic faith
During our expedition lesson we have been exploring mosques, an Islamic place of worship for people of the Muslim faith. We discovered that Mosque buildings have large open spaces inside, with mats or carpets covering the floor. Men perform prayers, under the guidance of an imām, who is a worship leader in the Muslim community. When women pray in the mosque, they must be in a separate space to the men. We discovered that Muslims pray five times a day and a special prayer mat is used to ensure cleanliness between the worshipper and the ground.
Comparing how people pray
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.
Visiting our Local Church
Year Two took a lovely scenic walk up to our local church at Owston to complete our first case study in Christianity. Along the way we ensured we were stewards of our local area and collected litter, we were praised by the public for our lovely manners and care to our community. When we arrived at the church we were excited to explore the grounds and noticed lots of old artefacts which dated back to 1086, Owston Church we discovered was also mentioned in the Doomsday Book. A fantastic piece of history, right on our doorstep!
RE continues in MI
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.
Hinduism
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.
RE in MI
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 🙂
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.
