Religious Education: Symbols of Baptism

In Year 2, we have been learning about the signs and symbols of Baptism. We started this topic by learning about what a symbol is and thought carefully about important symbols in our everyday lives. We spoke about our school logo which is a symbol of family, community and our faith. We also spoke about the crucifix as a symbol of Jesus and the sacrifice that he made for us. To link this to our understanding of Baptism, we revisited our prior learning from Nursery, Reception and Year 1. We really impressed our teacher with how much we knew about the Sacrament of Baptism!

We spoke about the fact that the open doors of the church are a symbol of being welcomed into God’s family. To understand more about the ceremony of Baptism, we watched a short video and took notes about the order in which things happened. We saw the priest welcome the family, make the Sign of the Cross on the baby’s head and invited the parents and Godparents to do the same. A Gospel story was also read, and the congregation prayed to the Saints to ask them to protect the baby. The priest also asked the mother if she agreed to help to train the child in their faith. The Godparents also promise to support the parents with their mission to train the child in their faith. To understand what happens during a Baptism, we took part in some freeze-frame activities. We worked well together to show the rest of the class the different part of the Baptism ceremony.

Later in the week, we learned a little bit more about what happens at the font. We learned about the importance of water and what it symbolises. We know that the priest pours holy water over the baby’s head three times, but we now know that water symbolises new life. This new life refers to the fact that this holy water removes our original sin, and the baby is about to embark on its new life within the family of God. On an outline of a font, we had a think about the symbols involved within Baptism. We then drew four of our own symbols that we felt were significant and then wrote about what these mean.

We have worked really hard this week and feel that we now understand the ceremony of Baptism far better!

What have you learned about Baptism this week?