Religion in Senior Infants

Due to the fact that I had my Diocesan Adviser/religious inspector last week, I was inspired to post a few religion resources that I have built up and a few ideas for what to revise with the children prior to a visit. Hopefully, this will  be useful to those of you in your first year of teaching who don't know what to expect from the visit!

Resources

1. I often create PowerPoints of the various Alive-O stories in an effort to make them more interesting and more memorable to the children. Along with doing this, it is a good idea to use some of the children's names as characters in the story or even set it in their environment/town etc. 

Here are some of the PowerPoints I have created. Keep in mind that you can write the text of the story if you like in each slide but my aim was to keep it simple and just choose a few key pictures to flick through as I read the story.

Lesson 10 dunbeg story from SeniorInfants

Lesson 13 two cousins from SeniorInfants

Term 3 lesson 2 the pond from SeniorInfants

Term 3 lesson 1 granny’s garden from SeniorInfants

Lesson 12 david cares from SeniorInfants

Lesson 1 term 2 the old snowoman from SeniorInfants

Lesson 5 term 2 special things from SeniorInfants

2. I have downloaded some very good PowerPoints to tell the children about the story of St. Patrick and St. Brigid. 

From Seomra Ranga:

St brigid powerpoint seomra ranga from SeniorInfants

From Pauline O'Shea:

Story of st_patrick_01 (1) from SeniorInfants

3. I used these actions when I taught the children the Our Father. I got them off www.worship.ca but I can't seem to find them now so I will just repost them below. Click on the link beneath the picture to see and download the document in full. 

Download Our Father Actions

How should I prepare for the Diocesan adviser? 
1. Make sure you have taught all prayers for the class level. Along with the prayers taught in Junior Infants, they should know the Our Father and Hail Mary.

2. Make sure you have read them all the bible stories in Alive-O. They might be asked to tell these stories in their own words. You can find a brilliant list of Senior Infant stories, songs and prayers here: http://education.dublindiocese.ie/2012/02/21/senior-infants-alive-o-programme/ 

3. Make sure they know about Jesus' Resurrection and birth. 

4. Make sure copies/workbooks are corrected and they can pick a favourite page and talk about it.   

5. Practice a song from the programme by heart (preferably one that also taught them something!).

6. Make sure you have a Sacred Space in your classroom. On mine I have: a candle, pictures of Jesus, Mary, etc., prayers, rosary beads, flowers (May), a cross/St. Brigid's Day cross, a children's picture bible, holy water (there is a lessons about this in senior infants) and some children's work (the new religion curriculum will apparently involve the children decorating/creating the sacred space themselves).

7. I picked out some questions I think they should be able to answer below also:

• Why is Christmas a really important time of the year for us/ Why do we celebrate Christmas?
• Where was Jesus born?
• Who came to visit Jesus when he was born?
• How did the three kings find Jesus?
• What gifts did they bring? etc.
• How did Mary find out that she was going to have baby Jesus?
• Before Jesus was born, Mary went on a journey to visit her friend. Do you remember her name?
• Who was St. Patrick?
• What did he use the shamrock for?
• Why did he become a priest?
• Who was St. Brigid? What did she use to teach people about God?
• What did she do with her cloak?
• Why do we have Lent?
• What happened to Jesus at Easter? etc.
• What is peace?
• Where do you find peace?
• Who were Samuel and David? 
• Why was Samuel not happy? 
• Who did God want to be the leader of his people? Was it the strong older son?
• What job did David do? Why would a shepherd be a good leader? What makes a good leader?     
• Tell me about Moses.                                                

I hope you find this useful!