The Creation (Year1 work, 2005-06)

The Creation is obviously work we did as part of an RE topic on Christianity.

We covered it briefly early in September when the children were learning about Christian beliefs and the Old testament. We returned to the subject again later in the year, comparing the Christian’s version of the Creation story, to versions from other cultures.

We began by linking RE to drama. The children worked collaboratively in six groups, each group representing one day of the Creation: day and night/creatures of the sky/creatures of the oceans/creatures on the land/ trees and flowers and Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.

Each group of mixed ability children made up and practised their own dance, which we then put together and performed as a class. The children enjoyed performing but also found it useful to watch eachother and evaluate their performance, stating what was good, but also how it could be improved.

The children wanted to make head bands to wear during the dance, and they found and used their own clip-art pictures to decorate them.

I mentioned to Katy Haley from Heads Together that I wanted to do some larger scale artwork with the children, and when I also mentioned RE and the Creation, Katy suggested that we could tell the Creation Story using large paintings displayed around the classroom.

The art work would be collaborative, and working in their six groups the children drew, painted and used collage to produce a representation of the six days of Creation.

Both the drama work and art work helped in re-inforcing the Christian version of the Creation, and it also encouraged the children to share ideas and to co-operate with each other.

The Creation pictures are displayed in the classroom and the children (and parents) were very impressed with the finished results.