Good Friday and Easter eggs

Watch the clip and answer the questions. You do not need to write your answers down. You can discuss them with someone at home.

Q1. What do the chocolate eggs we eat at Easter represent?

Q2. I wonder what new life you notice around Easter time?

The Crucifixion and Peter's denial

Watch the clip and answer the questions. You do not need to write your answers down. You can discuss them with someone at home.

Q1. Which of Jesus's friends said that they did not know him?

Q2. How would you feel if your friend said they did not know you? 

The Last Supper (animation)

Once you have watched the clip, answer the questions below. You do not have to write your answers down. You can discuss them with someone at home.

Q1. Which friend did Jesus claim would betray him?

Q2. I wonder how Jesus felt knowing that he was sharing his last meal with his friends?

The Riddle of Palm Sunday

Watch the clip, then answer these questions. You do not have to write your answers down. You can discuss them with someone at home.

Q1. What is the name of the city that Jesus rode into on the donkey?

Q2. What branches did the people wave and lay down in front of Jesus?

Q3. Can you name two uses for palm trees?

Exploring Jewish artefacts

We were finding out more about Jewish people today. We explored a synagogue, which is where many Jewish people go to worship God. Mrs. Taylor brought lots of  different Jewish artefacts that we might find in a synagogue and we enjoyed looking at them and asking lots of questions about them.

Making challah bread at home

This week I received some exciting news! One of the Buzzards had been making challah bread at home. Here are some photos of his adventure. If you want to have a go yourself, there are lots of recipes online, but I usually use the one below. 

https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-challah-bread-181004

What do Jewish people believe about Torah?

We began this term by exploring the Jewish day of rest, Shabbat. In the very first story in the Torah, God made Creation in six days, on the seventh day, God rested. Because of this, most Jewish people take a day of rest every week. Shabbat begins on Friday evening with a special meal. We explored some of the important things Jewish people do and some of the special items used during Friday night dinner.

Two candles, a kippah and a challah cover.

We tried to see if we could remember the sequence of events on Friday night.

Then we wrote about Shabbat.

The Star of David

You might recognise the Jewish symbol on the front of this synagogue...can you spot it?

Do you know the story of David, the shepherd boy who became a famous Jewish king?

The Star of David is named after him, in Hebrew (the language many Jewish people use when they read The Torah) it's called Magen David which means Shield of David!

Here are two cartoons which will tell you a little about David and the start of his amazing life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSJXo_Vlsbw     Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsup35Xixtk    Part 2

You can talk about what you've seen with someone you live with. 

I wonder why David felt brave enough to fight Goliath?

I wonder when you have felt brave? What did you do?

Exploring Judaism with BBC Bitesize

Go to this BBC Bitesize page where you'll find two video clips to watch and a couple of activities you can try. Have fun and don't forget to talk to someone you live with about your discoveries!  https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zf4grj6

Continuing to think about the story of Abraham and Sarah.

Watch this clip and afterwards take a few minutes to talk about it with someone in your house. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxWel46AKTI

You might like to think about these questions:

I wonder if my name has a meaning, or if I was given my name for a reason?

I wonder if Abraham and Sarah found it hard to look after Isaac as they were so old?

I wonder if it was difficult for Abraham and Sarah to believe God's promise to give them a child?

I wonder if I can think of a time when I've found it hard to wait for something?

What do Jewish people believe about God and Covenant?

You are going to watch a story, like the ones Mrs.Taylor tells in class. This one is a video as we can't be together to listen to it as usual. So get ready; be comfortable and quiet and still. It is a long story, so perhaps you might watch it in two halves? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P7MdmrDHnM  7:22 is a good place to pause your watching.

At the end of each watching time, have some talking time, just like we do in class. Think about these questions:

I wonder which part of this story you liked the best?

I wonder if Abraham always felt close to God?

I wonder if Sarah ever felt afraid on the journey?

I wonder why God chose Abraham and Sarah for this story? Were they special?

Why is The Bible so important to Christians?

Many Christians read The Bible regularly, it has lots of different kinds of writing inside, it's not just one long storybook! Today we took a look at The Bible writings and tried to find examples of every kind: rules and laws, poems and songs, visions, stories from history, made up stories and finally, letters.

Exploring Christian holy text...The Bible

This week we began to explore The Bible. What is it? Who is it precious to? What's inside it?

The Bible is like a library shelf, it is actually 66 books all squeezed together into one! The books are all different, some stories, some law, poetry, songs and letters too.

We thought about our favourite books and why we liked them:

"The Stick Man is my favourite, it's got Father Christmas in it"

"I like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,  it has lots of different characters, I like Aslan the lion best"

"My favourite book is a shark book. I love sharks"

"I like the red and silver book in our class, it has funny pictures" (Guinness Book of World Records)

The we watched a video where some Christians talked about The Bible and why it is a special book for them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvGTbVP_jlA

Afterwards we played a matching metaphors game. For Christians, The Bible can be like many things; a map, breakfast cereal, a fortune teller and a policeman! We found out why as we matched the metaphors, then we thought up some of our own:

"The Bible is like an umbrella, it can shelter you when there are storms in your life"

"The Bible is like a SatNav, it can show you the way to go"

"The Bible could be like Google, you could search for answers in it"

Concluding our work on The Creation and Adam and Eve

This week we were very fortunate to have two visitors in our classroom; Mrs.Hines and Mrs.Payne-Ahmadi, a Christian and a Humanist. It was really interesting to hear them answer the questions we thought of last week. After some discussion we split into two groups and our visitors worked with one group each to create a diamond nine of statements relating to The Bible story of Creation and Adam and Eve, the environment and caring for the planet and how important it is for us to work together to look after the world we live in. We compared Mrs. Hines' and Mrs. Payne-Ahmadi's results, it was very interesting to see which choices were similar and which were different. We talked about possible reasons for this.

Preparing for visitors

Next week we'll be welcoming two visitor to our classroom; a Christian and a Humanist. We thought of questions we would like them to answer for us.

What do Christians believe about God and Creation? 

This term we are thinking about what Christians believe about God and how the Creation story and the story of Adam and Eve affect the ways in which they might choose to live their lives. This week we discussed what we already knew about the Christian creation story and then we watched this clip about the next part of the story with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgXrhQA4pdY

We thought about times when we had done the wrong thing and someone had been angry with us because of our actions. Some of us shared our experiences.

Then we listened to this song which is written as if God was speaking about being a creator. While we listened to it we thought about what the Garden of Eden would have been like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9sKjKJAA7I   from the beginning until 4:20

Sequencing the Christmas story

We used large pictures of the story...could we work together to sort them into the right order? This activity created lots of discussion.

"Why did Herod want to kill Jesus?"

"Did the Magi begin their journey before the shepherds saw the angels?"

"How did Joseph know his dream (about the angel) was true?"

National Interfaith Week

Seema is a Punjabi and a Hindu, she visited us today as it is National Interfaith Week. We asked her some questions:

"What kind of dress are you wearing?"

"Why do you have a spot in the middle of your forehead?"

"What's it like where you live?"

"Is your home a long way from here?"

Then Seema sat with us while we heard a Hindu story. The story tells about when Brahma put God into every human heart. Many Hindus believe God is all around us in everything. That's why some Hindus are vegetarian, they don't eat animals.

After we had heard the story we talked about which powers we'd like to have if we were a Hindu God.

" to be able to heal animals"

" being strong"

"freezing robbers"

"seeing around corners"

"having long arms like Mr.Tickle"

"being really kind"

"being able to fly"

"making poorly people better"

Most Hindus have many ways of seeing God and they pray to the one that can help them most. 

Finding out about the Christmas Story

Today we began investigating the Christian story of Christmas. Our work today was to think about when the Angel Gabriel visited Mary to tell her she was going to have a very special baby, the Son of God.

To help us think about this part of the story, we watch these clips:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHuokdjT4UY 

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2gBtPU0zVM   from 2:52 to the end 

After that, we did a "Hot Seat" activity. One of us became Mary and the others interviewed her about what had happened and how she was feeling. Lots of us had a chance to be Mary. We thought of some really wonderful questions.

"what did it feel like to touch the angel?"

"How did you feel when you first saw the angel?"

"Where were his wings?"

"Were you frightened?"

"Why did he say Do not be afraid?"

"What happened when he went away?"

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

This week we heard the story Jesus told about what the Kingdom of God is like. Many Christians believe this story helps them to understand what God is like and how there is a place for everyone with God, in heaven.

After Mrs. Taylor had finished telling the story we worked with the story and also created our own trees full of birds and their nests. Then we wrote about our favourite part of the story.

After we had acted out the story we imagined what Jesus' disciples must have thought of him after he did such an amazing thing:

"He's not a normal person"

"He did something magic"

"He rules the wind and waves"

"He's powerful"

"He's a king"

"He must be God"

Finally we discussed whether, if we were on that boat, we would call Him "Jesus-He Saves" or "Immanuel-God with us". We had different opinions about this.

A continuation of last week's work...

We explored these objects and thought about how Christians might use them when they think about Jesus.

"We love God and God loves us." - heart

"He died on the cross." -carved cross

"He is the Light of the World." - tealight

"There is a heart in my body." - heart

"Jesus is always with us." - heart

"The cross is special because it reminds us of God." - palm cross

Then we completed our artworks. Mrs.Taylor is going to hang them in our classroom very soon.

What do some names for Jesus mean?

We talked about our own names, not just the one people use most, but other names people give us; names like "pumpkin", "pickle", "sweetie", "my darling", "Cee", "So" and many others.  Many of us have more than one name we answer to.

Jesus has many names in The Bible, and Christians call Him many things, but we focused on two:

Jesus means "He saves"

Immanuel means "God with Us"

We are creating some artwork to hang in our classroom to remind us of these names for Jesus.

What do Christians believe about Jesus?

This term we will be finding out why Christians believe Jesus is so important, finding out about some of the key moments in his life story, hearing some of his parable stories and finding out about the miracles he performed.

This week we thought about the important adults in our lives and why they are important to us.

"Mummy is special"

"My grandad is cheeky!"

"When we are born we would have a mum and

if we were not born, we would not have a mum."

"My mummy and daddy is important to me  because

they look after me and they fix things when I 

accidentally break."

How do Humanists show love?

We had a visit from Liz who is a Humanist and lives in Taunton. She showed us photos of some of the most important people in her life and brought along some special things which reminded her of them. She told us the story of Beyruz who was only 4 years old when he came to live with Liz's family. Liz showed us the shoes he was wearing when he arrived, she has kept them safely for more than 25 years.

Atheist, Agnostic or Theist?

We learned what these three words mean, then we played a game outside where we had to run between the three words choosing which one was the right choice based on a statement like:

"I pray to God every day and believe God has a plan for my life"- Theist (a believer in God)

"I don't believe God exists, I have no evidence to prove God's existence yet"- Agnostic (someone who is unsure about the existence of God)

"I believe this life is all there is"- Atheist (a non-believer)

At the end of the game we chose one of the titles for ourselves and created a statement to support our thinking. We also discussed the three positions and how, throughout a person's life, it is possible to move between all three.

The Golden Rule

Today we took part in some outdoor challenges. We needed to make sure everyone in our group was included in everything we did. The Golden Rule is all about treating other people in the same way that we would like to be treated. It's important that we don't leave people out, if they want to be included. We had to think of ways to make sure no-one was left out.

NATRE Spirited Poetry Competition.

We started to plan our class poem for this national competition. The title of our poem is "Where is God?" and this is all of our ideas...

The Good Samaritan

This week we took a look at the story of Zacchaeus, the tax collector. We watched this clip:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHXqI1-RA1c   Little Clay Bible, Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus had no friends, but Jesus chose to spend time with him, even though he was a thief. Jesus showed Zacchaeus love anyway. We thought about how it feels to be chosen as a friend and how we can show this kind of love. In small groups we acted out situations where we had shown a friend that we loved them, even though perhaps they had done something mean.

This term we are asking the question "What do Christians believe about love (Agape)?"

We began by hearing the parable of The Good Samaritan.

Our class patchwork of special places

Earlier in the term we each made an individual patchwork piece to reflect our special place and what makes it so special. This week Mrs.Taylor joined them all together and displayed the class patchwork in the school foyer. Come in and take a look!

Reflecting on our church visit

This week we thought back to our church visit. We looked at photographs of our visit and we talked about which parts of it we felt were the most important, special and interesting to  each of us. Then we wrote and drew to express our thoughts and sent copies of some of these to the people we had met at the church to thank them for helping make our visit so enjoyable. 

Visiting Kingston St Mary church

We visited our village church to investigate the question "Why are some places special?" We used our senses to help us explore the church building and the churchyard. We also interviewed some of the church members and asked them to explain why the church is such a special place for them.

Designing a reflective space.

We spent our lesson thinking about the sort of things we would need to create a reflective space in our school. We thought about last week's study of the church building and discussed which parts were the best for reflection. In pairs we worked on our own lists of requirements and then we created this diagram as a whole class.

Exploring a church

This week we investigated what a church might look like. We labelled the pictures and then we looked for the area in the church we thought was the noisiest, the most peaceful, the happiest and so on. We had to have a good explanation for each of our choices.

We also discussed how Christians join together, meeting in the church building and places we might meet with other people to all take part in something together. Some of our ideas were: school, the cinema, a family day at grandma's, Brownies and after-school clubs. 

This term we will be asking the question: Why are some places special? This week we will be thinking about what makes a place special and which places are special to us.

Later in the term we will be exploring special places for Christians including Christian places of worship.

A church in a cave                                     An outdoor church

Meeting Mr. Daniels

"He was interesting" 

"He showed us his kippah"

"He brought a prayer scarf"

"He didn't have a Torah or yad with him"

"He had his own menorah"...just a few of the comments from the Yr.2 class after their meeting with Mr. Daniels. 

The children asked him lots of questions about Jewish life, faith and culture and shared their knowledge of Jewish food in particular, which surprised and impressed Mr. Daniels! Yr.2 have learned a lot about Judaism through food.

A really useful and enjoyable meeting which brings to a close the learning for Yr.2 about all things Jewish. It has been lots of fun!

We're very excited to welcome Mr. Daniels, we have lots of questions to ask him about his life and his faith. He is going to bring some of his favourite artefacts with him for us to look at too. We can't wait!

Making a Hanukkiah

We made a giant Hanukkiah, a special candlestick which is used by Jewish people during the festival of Hanukkah. It has 9 candles, one for each of the 8 days of the festival and a 9th "helper" candle which is used to light all of the others. Our work is displayed inside the foyer, just beside the front door if you'd like to see it.

This half term we will be learning about Festivals of Light, how people celebrate together and how this makes them feel. We've begun by looking at the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. We are making a giant hanukkiah (candlestick) and ,once it is finished, we'll add some photos.

This term we've been exploring the question: "Where do we belong?". We've been learning about Judaism and what it means to belong to the Jewish faith.