Expressing faith through the Arts - The Complete Series (6 lessons)

With lesson plans, slides, activity ideas, worksheets, picture cards and much more, these KS2 RE lessons give you everything you need to find out the answer to the question: 'How do people express their faith through the arts?

This first lesson encourages children to think of faith as involving feelings and emotions. They will think about ways in which emotions can be portrayed using facial expressions, tone of voice and body language, as well as identifying why people like to express their emotions in a variety of different ways. Using a range of practical activities, your class will have the chance to explore some of these emotions and how they are expressed.

This musical lesson looks at how music and songs are used to evoke emotions as well as convey religious messages. Children will listen to two pieces of classical music, considering how the music makes them feel, before considering how religions, specifically Christianity, use scripture to convey beliefs. Children can then have a go at putting some verses to scripture to music for themselves or creating their own song to express their ideas about their own religious beliefs.

This lesson takes a look at why members of the clergy wear different coloured vestments at different times during the Christian calendar. Your class will also think about other symbols associated with Christian festivals and consider how symbols and colours can often be linked.

This lesson delves into the art world as your class discover why religious artists paint pictures and what emotions and messages their works of art are portraying. Children will look at paintings from different world religions before focusing on Christian artwork and the symbols included. Children will also have the chance to express their own religious ideas through art.

Children will find out about Islamic beliefs in portraying Muhammad and Allah, and consider the idea of idolatry. They will then go on to look at examples of Islamic art, finding out about the use of flowers, leaves, pattern and colour as your class study the differences between the way Christians and Muslims view religious art.

The final lesson in this series looks at how and why religious groups use drama to re-tell religious stories and contains plenty of opportunities for your class to embrace their own dramatic skills. They can choose their own religious stories to re-enact from any religion, or undertake a variety of other activities that involve preparing an aspect of a dramatic portrayal of a religious story, such as designing a set or writing a playscript.