KS1: Why does Christmas matter to Christians? Autumn 2 and Spring 1

Why does Christmas matter to Christians?

This is our second question of the year.  We started this enquiry before Christmas and continued it until February half term.

Year 1 began their enquiry by looking at signs of Christmas and then at a picture of baby Jesus, they talked about what the picture tells them about Jesus.

Year 2 began their enquiry by looking at pictures of 3 different children and talking about what these children are good at.  They realised that we couldn't say what the children are good at as we do not know them, they also talked about how baby Jesus did not look special on the outside.

Christians believe that God came to Earth to be with His people and show them how to live.  Year 2 learnt a new word called 'incarnation', this means 'in the flesh'.  Jesus was God in the flesh.  Not everybody knew that Jesus was God in the flesh, we made a list of people who did know.

The children had great fun pretending to be a character from the nativity story and being questioned by the class.

Jesus was a king but He did not look like the sort of king we imagined and He was not born in a castle.  He was given special gifts from the 3 wise men which show that they knew how special He was.

In year 1 the children listened to the story of the nativity and compared their ideas of a bedroom for someone special to where Jesus was born.

Botticelli painted a fantastic nativity scene which is called 'Mystic Nativity'.  The children used a 'window frame' to look at parts that they found interesting, puzzling or important.

Look at how amazing the picture is:

The nativity is celebrated around the world.  We looked at 3 different crib scenes and compared them.  We noticed that although they are slightly different they all have the same people in them.

We really enjoyed pretending to be the people and animals from the nativity again and wrote down what we think they would have said.  Some of the children thought that baby Jesus would have said "Why is everyone crowding me?"

There are lots of different carols that are sung at Christmas and these tell parts of the story of Jesus being born.  In groups the children read some carols and highlighted the parts that tell us about the nativity.

One carol is called "In the Bleak Mid-winter".  This carol tells us that even though people are poor they can still give Jesus something special and that is love.  The children illustrated the carol to show the different parts that it is saying.

We realised that we all have special gifts to give others and everybody had 5 things written in a hand to show what other people think some of  their special gifts are.

To finish our enquiry we thought about what we can do to be kind to others not just at Christmas.  We made a list of places or people that we can help and chose one of these for our fundraising during Lent.

Year 3/4: What do Christians mean when they say in the Lord's Prayer "Your Kingdom come" and how do Christians work to bring God's Kingdom on Earth? Autumn term

What do Christians mean when they say in the Lord’s Prayer ‘Your Kingdom come’ and how do Christians work to bring God’s Kingdom on Earth?

Our big question in Cheetahs lasted us a whole term to enquire in to.

We began by thinking about people who are important to us, who we would speak to if we were lonely, sad, happy, excited, angry or nervous etc, we also thought about why we would speak to them.

Christians believe that God is like a good, loving, caring, kind parent and that Jesus is like a good, loving, caring, kind friend.

We watched the following video about prayer and how the letters P.R.A.Y can help us to pray: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=ZrdlXOk_QdQ

The Lord's prayer is a special prayer that Jesus taught His disciples to help them pray.  In groups we looked at different sections of the prayer and talked about what it shows and means.  We also talked about what we think the most important part of the prayer is.

There are different types of prayer in the Lord's Prayer and these are:

• Thanksgiving (thanks)
• Adoration
• Asking (asking God to help us or someone else)
• Confession (asking for forgiveness)

We thought about ourselves and the things that we are grateful for, find wonderful or amazing, someone that needs help and something that we feel bad about/wished we had done better.  We then used these to help us write 4 different prayers.

Using an information booklet, we found out lots of different things about prayer somethings we found out are what artefacts are used during prayer and where people pray.  We designed our own places of worship and considered the scriptures:

Matthew 6 v6,  “When you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen” and Luke 5 v16,  “Would go away to lonely places, where He prayed”.

Other religions pray, we used the internet to find out which ones do and who they pray to.  We made notes in our jotters about what we found out.

Christians bring God's kingdom to earth, we discussed how we thought they did this and why they did it.  Somebody said that Christians want to bring the love God gives us and share it with others.

The Good Samaritan story shows God's kingdom on earth, the children worked in small groups to show how this story is relevant now.  The children thought of and acted out some good scenarios.

To finish our enquiry we looked at what we had learnt and found out about our big question.  We considered the scripture from Matthew 7 v1-2 and discussed what judging others mean and whether it is a good think to do or not.

"Do not judge others, so that God will not judge you, for God will judge you in the same way you judge others, and he will apply to you the same rules you apply to others.”

KS1 What do people learn from stories about how the world began? Autumn 2

What do people learn from stories about how the world began?

For the first few weeks of this half term we continued with the question from the first half term.

In the first week we thought carefully about Muslims and how they thank God.  We watched the following video and talked about why Muslims do not waste water.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV2_stKDRaU

We found out that Muslims call their God Allah and he has made them 'guardians' of creation.  We also found out that the prophet Muhammad is very important and one of his sayings was:

"Live in this world as if you were going to live for ever"

In groups we thought carefully about what this might mean and how it shows thanks to God.

Humanists live by a Golden Rule and this means that they have to live with kindness and care for the less fortunate.

In small groups we thought about the following 4 questions and wrote our thoughts on to post-it notes.

• If people followed the Golden Rule, would they always do the right thing?

• If they disobeyed the Golden Rule, would they tend to do bad things?

• What are good manners for? Are they anything to do with the Golden Rule?

• If you ruled the world for a day, what rule or rules would you establish to make the world a better place?

To finish our enquiry we discussed and explored what we had learnt.

KS1: What do people learn from stories about how the world began? Autumn 1

What do people learn from stories about how the world began?

During this first half term key stage 1 have begun to consider this question.

We began looking at the world and spent sometime outside looking at the awesome things that we have.  We used the iPads to take pictures of things that we found beautiful or amazing.  The song by Louis Armstrong "What a wonderful world" made us think of lots of different things, we then added our own ideas in to the song.

Christians and Jewish people believe that God made the world in 6 days, we learnt a song about what He made on each day.  He definitely deserved a rest on day 7!  You can listen to the songs by following the links below:

Year 1 learnt this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoehyq6X650

Year 2 learnt this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV9ZP8ZTPnM

There was a man called Charles Darwin who believed that everything evolves and people have evolved from apes!  We found his life very interesting.  His dad wanted him to be a doctor like he was, Charles became a doctor and a vicar before he went on to the HMS Beagle to become a naturalist.  After we talked about Charles Darwin's life we compared his views to the Christian and Jewish story of creation.

We found out lots of things during this half term, we talked about how Christians thank God and what harvest festivals are for.  Christians like to give to God as He gives to them, they do this by helping others.  Our federation likes helping others, just as Jesus taught us to, we have helped lots of different charities and enjoy doing this each year.

Jewish people thank God too, we found out about Sukkot  by watching this https://www.chabad.org/kids/article_cdo/aid/2385615/jewish/Tap-into-Sukkot.htm  

During Sukkot Jewish people make a Sukkah and live in it for 7 days!  It reminds them that God protected them for the 40 years that they lived in the desert.  They have a lulav which is maede up of different plants and wave this around the Sukkah when they are saying a blessing.

Phew this has been a busy half term in R.E.