St Vincent's Catholic Primary School

“Caritas Christi Urget Nos –

The love of Christ urges us to care for each other and strive for excellence in everything we do.”

Learning About Creation Stories in KS1

Key Stage One has been learning about different creation stories from around the world as part of our Religious Education lessons. We explored three different stories and created some wonderful art projects to help us understand them better.

Bunjil and the Rainbow Serpent from Australia

First, we learned about Bunjil and the Rainbow Serpent from Australia. Bunjil is a powerful eagle who created the land, rivers, and mountains, and the Rainbow Serpent is a symbol of life and creation. The children were fascinated by how these stories explain the world and how important it is to care for the land and animals.

Earth Mother and Sky Father from New Zealand

Next, we looked at the story of the Earth Mother (Papatūānuku) and the Sky Father (Ranginui) from New Zealand. This story tells how the earth and sky were created by separating the parents of the world. The children loved hearing about how their children, who became the gods of forests, winds, and seas, brought life to the world.

To celebrate the story’s theme of new beginnings, the children created beautiful korus, a spiral shape representing new life, growth, and peace. It was a great way to connect art and culture with what they learned about creation.

The Creation Story from the Bible

Finally, we studied the creation story from the Book of Genesis in the Bible. As a Catholic school, this story holds special importance to us. We believe that God created the world out of love, giving us everything we need to live and thrive. We talked about how God made everything in six days—from light and darkness to the plants, animals, and, finally, humans—and then rested on the seventh day.

To help the children understand each stage of creation, they made ‘creation globes’. Where each globe showed all the different days of creation, from light and darkness to plants, animals, and people.

A Meaningful Learning Experience

By learning about different creation stories, our students gained an appreciation for how various cultures understand the beginning of the world. However, the story from Genesis is the foundation of our faith, teaching us that God is the loving Creator of all things. We are proud of our class for showing such enthusiasm and creativity in their learning!

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Curriculum Intent

At St Vincent’s it is our INTENT is to enable ALL children to thrive through the opportunities we provide them with, in order to:

  • Live their lives by the Gospel and Vincentian values instilled in them at school.
  • Understand that everyone has the right and responsibility to live in our world constructively and ensure that we leave it in a better state than when we entered it by living and working through the principles of Catholic Social Teaching in line with the UNCRC (United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child)
  • Experience creativity across the curriculum through specialist art and dance lessons and opportunities to take part in art, music, dance and creative writing competitions.
  • Know the joy of outdoor learning, the rich biodiversity within our school grounds and locality and develop a responsibility for the environment we share as stewards.
  • Understand their place in the world, globally and locally, knowing the history of our school, Mill Hill and the Daughters of Charity and knowing where our diverse community members have their roots across the world.
  • Be ready and well-prepared for their next steps in life, having high aspirations for themselves and for others because they have experienced success and a belief in learning from mistakes.
  • Have a life-long curiosity, stimulated by the driving questions of Project Based Learning approach to the curriculum fostering inquiry and independent learning skills, which give confidence to ask big questions about the world.
  • Be literate and numerate having experienced a rich variety of texts to stimulate and excite the mind while developing skills in investigating and problem solving to enable them to excel in their future passions.
  • Be confident and happy young people that have a broad understanding and tolerance of the world and others around them with excellent communication skills honed by their experience of Restorative Justice and respect of the dignity and wishes of the individual.

Curriculum Context

St Vincent’s is a 1.5 form entry school with 285 children ranging from 4 -11. Children come predominantly from the parishes of Sacred Heart in Mill Hill and St Anthony’s in Edgware.

Children come from a diverse range of socio-economic backgrounds, speak 17 different languages and hail from 26 different ethnic groups. The curriculum we present, and promote, to the children is an endeavour to reflect these differences by providing opportunities to explore the different countries, languages and customs our children are part of through the projects they investigate. We have looked closely at the context of our school, the backgrounds of the children and how life is for a child growing up in North London today. We have used the underlying principles of our Catholic Faith and the example of our namesake St Vincent to create a set of values which lie at the heart of our curriculum.

We are aware of the changing nature of society and the pressures faced by young children as they enter the next stage of their education. The rise in Mental Health related issues has been widely documented across the media. Therefore, issues such as internet safety and the enormous impact across society of social media are at the forefront of our minds when planning our curriculum. With the current worldwide concerns relating to Covid 19, racial justice, equality and diversity, as well as gender and economic background, we feel it is our duty to prepare the children through a concerted focus on building independence, resilience and communication skills linked to our Vincentian Values.