Pilgrimages

Spring Pilgrimage

This year’s Spring Pilgrimage was a truly special event, thoughtfully designed by our School Council to deepen our school’s focus on spirituality, prayer, and reflection. 

Outdoor Reflection Areas

Each class took ownership of showcasing their unique outdoor reflection areas, carefully planning activities that would engage not only their peers but also families and members of the wider community. They used their favourite activities from the year so far that they had learnt the most from. 

Big Questions in RE

We displayed our RE Big Questions. Families and visitors were invited to share their own thoughts and reflections on these questions, helping us gather valuable insights into how our community understands and connects with these deep ideas.

This interaction allowed us to compare the wider community’s perspectives with the understanding we’ve developed in school, enriching our dialogue and strengthening our shared journey of faith and learning.

For our winter pilgrimage, we invited families to join us to explore our learning from the term. The children designed a range of activities for their families to learn about our RE, Collective Worship, and prayer spaces from the term. 

We invited families to answer the Big Questions we have been exploring, which gave them different perspectives to explore within their RE lessons.

Parent Voice:

Alda - It’s nice to be all together! We pause and think about things we don’t normally think about. 

Lucy and George - It feels nice to be apart of the schools community and to share my faith with our children in a creative way. 

Helen - It’s nice to come and have the children share what they’ve been doing in school and the questions they’re thinking about.

For our summer pilgrimmage, the children were so proud of the development of their outdoor reflection areas they wanted to share these with their families and the whole community. 

All 3 classes chose their favourite activities to engage with in outdoor reflection areas, such as sending love using bubbles, cleaning up the environment, investigating nature, and thanking God for the wonderful creations! 

Our pilgrimage gave the children the opportunity to develop their leadership skills in designing an event that was completely child led. 

They were proud of what they have designed and the impact it has had on our school. It was a wonderful afternoon as the children were able to engage in the reflection areas of the other classes, and share these with the Finstock community.

For our Spring Pilgrimage we focused on the celebration of Easter. 

‘For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life’.

John 3:16

Families and members of the Finstock community were invited to join us to share and celebrate of our work this term in RE, Collective Worship, and Prayer Spaces. 

Those who attended were invited to explore our Big Questions:

• Why does Easter matter to Christians? 
• What did Jesus do to save human beings? 
• What does Salvation mean to you? 

The children designed a range of activities to help develop their understanding, reflect on what they had learnt, and share this with the community. 

Parent Voice

'I think this is inspirational to come and see the children's work. I love it'

Sarah F

'I like to see us keeping Easter alive with the children, and involving the families with the festival in so many ways. I love the festival atmosphere the school has created'

Kate N

Our Autumn 2023 Pilgrimage focused on the Christian concept of 'Incarnation'. We created a 'Nativity Story Trail'. The children split the nativity story into 10 stations and each group led an activity to help deepen understanding.

At the end we posed our Big Questions:

1. 'Why does Christmas matter to Christians?'
2. 'Was Jesus the Messiah?'

Parent Voice

I really valued this pilgrimage. I've learnt things I genuinely did not know. It was a very comprehensive overview of the Christmas story and the children were really engaged in sharing their learning.

 

      

We held our Summer pilgrimage outdoors and invited our school community to join us in our outdoor reflection areas. The children set out examples of their work and created activities for our school community to engage with in order to deepen their understanding of our 'Big Questions', our value of Truthfulness, and to develop spirituality through Prayer Space activities. 

Parent Voice

"It was lovely to see the very enthusiastic retelling of the story of Pentescost! I really enjoyed seeing the 'feeling sorry' ribbons from Prayer Space in the reflection area"

"It was great to see the older children interacting with the younger children and supporting them through the activities"

"I loved that the whole community and Finstock family were together affirming their Christian beliefs"

Pupil Voice

"I love the fact that it brought our Finstock family and our whole community together and it brought everyone closer"

               

               

               

Retelling of the story of Pentecost

               

Spring Pilgrimage

For our Spring pilgrimage, we turned our school hall into our sacred space. The children set out examples of their work and created activities for themselves and the rest of the school to engage with in order to deepen their understanding of our 'Big Questions'. 

Calm music was playing and the lights were dimmed to encourage reflection. 

Pupil voice

"I've enjoyed looking at how amazing Cedar and Oak's work is, and seeing the things people have learnt."

"I enjoyed thinking about Jesus and reflecting on how respected he was."

"We could reflect on much more than just in Prayer Space."

"This has made me feel relaxed and calm, it is so much fun."

"I feel calm after doing this lovely thing, meeting up to collectively worship."

"This Pilgrimage makes me feel happy and I liked all the activities. This was a fun way of looking back and forward and reflecting." 

Here are some photo's of our Spring Pilgrimage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Autumn Pilgrimage

For our Autumn pilgrimage Cedar, Oak and Cherry exhibited their learning from the previous two terms. We displayed our Big Questions and set up activities for our friends to take part in. We had several Prayer Space activities on offer for children and adults to engage with spiritually.  

Pupil Voice

"I enjoyed supporting the younger children to build their gifts to the earth."

"I created my response to the Incarnation part of the BIG FRIEZE. I like showing my thoughts and feelings through art."

"During our Pilgrimage we supported the younger children to post their letters to Santa and make Christmas cards for their friends."

"My Mum came to the Pilgrimage. She could see my RE book and I could show her my reflections in the whole class book. We did some of the BIG questions together."