Universal Church

Year 4 have been working really hard on this week on their new Universal Church topic.

We have been learning all about the extraordinary people who live on earth and in heaven and lead incredible lives through God.

We began the week by discussing role models. We presented our role models to the rest of the class and explained why they inspire us.

Some of these people are our parents, teachers, athletes and sports people and religious figures because they have resilience, show us care and kindness.

We then learnt all about Eric, a boy from Rwanda. Eric does not have much, but with help from CAFOD Eric and his family grow fruit and vegetables to eat and sell.

Eric does not have any parents so he spends his time helping his siblings and praying for peace in his country.

We found out that we are quite similar to Eric, he loves Music, Maths and singing in his Choir.

Eric is a special person and does extraordinary things to live in God’s way. We discussed how he is a role model to us and how we can follow his example of patience and care to help others.

Year 4 then wrote some detailed pieces of work all about their role models and described how they have lived their lives and how they have followed God’s way to care for others.

Later in the week we learnt that we are all called to be Saints.

There are some people who are given a special title of Saint because of the life they have led.

We looked at some examples of Saints and discussed Saints we already knew such as St. Vincent, St. George and St. Francis of Assisi.

Another special person we learnt about was Carlo Acuits-‘Saint of the Internet’-a 15-year old Italian boy who was beatified for living in God’s way during his whole life.

The class then enjoyed finding out about different celebrations around the world of All Saints Day, including: Poland, Mexico and the Phillipines, and how this is a time for us to celebrate how we all live in the Communion of Saints.

Finally, we researched and wrote about the Saints we admire, how these Saints lived their lives and how their actions showed us what God is like.

On Friday we learnt about Saints from around the world including St. Rose de Lima (Peru), St. Kim Dae Geon (Korea), St. Bakhita (Sudan) and St. Vardan (Armenia).

We painted their portraits to use on our new display to show where these extraordinary people come from around the world.

To end the week the class held a collective worship. We wrote prayer cards thanking God for the Universal Church he was created to help us live in the Communion of Saints, and the Saints for guiding us to live in God’s way. We focused on how we can follow the Saint’s example to become better people by always being kind and caring to others.