What is the series about?
Aled and Siân love doing exciting things and exploring the world around them. In the Exploring Our World series, Aled and Siân share some of their experiences with their Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim friends. Aled and Siân also enjoy listening to their friends’ stories, and learn about how these relate to their own. This helps the friends get to know one another better.
The series takes seriously the social significance of religion and is based on extensive research into how children learn about themselves, others and the world in which they live.
This curriculum development project for 3-7 year olds is a Welsh Government commissioned resource, which is created and managed by the St Mary’s Centre, working with the St Giles’ Centre, Wrexham. All the resources are available online in both Welsh and English, and were published in October 2016. These books are influenced by the Young People’s Attitudes to Religious Diversity Project.
Titles in the series
There are six storybooks in the series, which are devised for different age groups including:
- Journeys (5-7 year olds)
- Special People (5-7 year olds)
- Signs and Symbols (5-7 year olds)
- Celebrations (3-5 year olds)
- Myself and Others (3-5 year olds)
- Times and Seasons (3-5 year olds)
Each storybook begins by exploring the popular theme from the perspective of two ordinary children (Aled and Sian), who then engage with the experiences of their Jewish, Muslim and Hindu friends.
Each storybook is available in four different formats, which can be used flexibly, according to individual contexts. The four storybook formats comprise:
- short text version
- long text version
- key question version
- pictures only version
The short text version is the only one available as a hard copy, while the others are available electronically alongside the teachers’ and pupils’ information / activities.
The teachers’ and pupils’ information and activities follow the same pattern for each storybook title. This material is deliberately non-prescriptive and inherently flexible, recognising the nature of classrooms today and also the importance of stimulating and supporting teacher creativity and individuality. For each double page of the storybook, there is:
- a page of ideas for activities;
- a pupil activity sheet/s to support one of these activity ideas;
- a symbol link which takes you to further ideas for developing specific RE connections.
In total, for each storybook title there are at least 140 ideas for activities and 11 pupil activity sheets.