Spirituality Day at Loddington Friday 13th October 2023

R/1 explored their relationship with something greater than them as part of our spirituality day. To begin the day, the children enjoyed their forest school session where they thought about their relationship with the world. They worked in teams to collect lots of different natural items around the Wetland area and then used the natural items to create nature faces. They then enjoyed forest bathing and lay quietly on the tarpaulin to look at the sky and have a moment to think about what they could see and hear.  

In the afternoon, R/1 carried on the discussion about our relationship with something greater than us and the children came up with lots of wonderful ideas. They discussed their relationships with their family, friends, God, the world, church, religions and lots more. They then created their own unique heart which a drawing on which represented their own idea of a relationship which is bigger than them. To end our spirituality day, the children enjoyed a calming yoga session together. 

To begin Spirituality Day, Year 2 went to Forest School with Reception and Year 1. They were exploring their relationship with nature by using natural materials such as sticks, stones and leaves to make faces with different emotions;
“I enjoyed using natural materials to make the faces because it was good to be close to nature” -Jamie.
“I liked it because we can use the materials that God gave us” - Henry.

We then did some forest bathing and enjoyed a “Now” moment;
“I liked forest bathing because we were looking at the sky and seeing beautiful birds, clouds and could see trees swishing left and right” - Poppy.
“I liked looking at the clouds and seeing what shape they made, I enjoyed relaxing and slowing down in nature.” - Matilda.

To finish our day, we explored the spiritual concept of windows and discussed “WOW” and “OW” moments. We watched a video all about our wonderful world and discussed wow moments such as the Northen Lights, waterfalls and beautiful scenery and ow moments such as war and deforestation. We then created our own window displays.

Year 3 and 4 explored the meaning of Spirituality by considering the important relationship we have with ourselves, and what makes us all unique.

We began the day with a discussion about how we are all different, and why that is important. We studied ourselves using mirrors and described ourselves to our friends spotting similarities and differences between us all. We then considered how we could represent our uniqueness and each created a split self portrait with one half showing us on the outside and the other representing our personalities, values and what is important to us.

We had a visit from Reverend Andrew, who encouraged us to take regular time to reflect on the small things in our world and appreciate the beauty of the things around us that we may not always notice. We followed this with a “wow” walk of our own around Loddington, where we took photographs of the beauty of our local environment.

“It really is the small things that are the most beautiful” – Maisy F

During this walk we stopped for some reflection time up at the recreation ground and joined in some prayers together.

We completed our day with a guided meditation, where we appreciated stillness and quietness. Following this, we created a “gratitude tree” as a class, where we all wrote something we were grateful for on leaves.

For their Spirituality Day, Year 5&6 explored the meaning of spirituality through looking at connections towards others. The children had a special visitor to begin the work, Reverend Andrew, who spoke to the children about spirituality and discussed the importance of slowing down and paying attention to all the sounds & sights around them. The children then went to the spiritual garden and reflected on its importance and ways it could possibly be improved. 

Back in the classroom, the children then focused on empathy and looked at scenario cards. In groups they discussed how the person may be feeling in the situation and ways to possibly help.   

The children then worked as a class on two collaborative pieces of art. The first, they all thought of a positive affirmation or ways of being kind and this was displayed on a poster. The second, a huge picture that has been split into 32 parts and they each had a square to colour how they wished.  

Throughout the day the children reflected on what empathy is, why our connection to others is important and how we can always treat each other with kindness.