What is the series about?
Aled and Siân love exploring the places where they live and the places they go to visit. They enjoy playing ‘I Spy’ to help them get to know these places better. In the Exploring Why series, Aled and Siân are curious to find out why some of the things around them are important to their Christian, Jewish and Muslim friends.
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 is a Welsh Government commissioned resource for 5-7 year olds, which is created and managed by the St Mary’s Centre in collaboration with the St Giles’ Centre, Wrexham. All the resources are available 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.
There are seven storybook titles in the series:
- Cross (Christianity)
- Bread (Christianity)
- Veil (Islam)
- Water (Islam)
- Menorah (Judaism)
- Light (Judaism)
- Symbols of Faith (brings the three religions together in a celebration of faiths)
Each storybook is available in four different formats. The formats 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 all 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 140 ideas for activities and 10 pupil activity sheets.