Discovering Sacred with year one

Posted by Aviva Dautch, BL Creative Learning Team:

My colleague Sophie & I took a year one group around the exhibition today. Some people may think that its difficult for kids of this age to connect with an exhibition like this but their face as they walk in and see the dark room and the three texts surrounded by a veil of light is amazing.

One little girl told us today that it was ‘magical’ and there were lots of indrawn breaths. Inside the exhibition they really enjoyed exploring unusual objects: Sophie showed them the smallest things – little Qur’ans and discussed the idea of protection, one of the children liked how you could carry them with you all the time and show other people, a bit like a special toy. My group looked at the Alam of Fatma, an enormous metal hand with names and descriptions of Allah written all over it, and then small Jewish hand amulets. What parts of the body do we use to pray? Hands, knees, lips, heads, seemed the obvious answers, but one boy was convinced it was elbows and toes.

Looking for examples of lights and cloth had some of the kids making very vague connections to the buildings of worship, but all of them found the answers in the wedding dresses and christmas tree. The buildings themselves were more of a challenge, especially the names. After prompting from their teacher, one little girl offered the suggestion that Jewish people worship in a cinema. How you value and date the manuscripts was an interesting challenge for some. Trying to get the children to understand the concept of age, I asked them who was the oldest person they knew, humiliating their teacher in the process when they named her, but it’s good to know that age can be measured in arm-span. The manuscripts covered in gold writing were the ones the children picked out as the most expensive, and were surprised to find out that blue was a much more valuable colour – made from crushed lapis lazuli. It’s funny to think that in fact the least glamorous piece of Dead Sea Scroll is probably the most historically precious thing on display.

Who knows what the next groups will bring?