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• What did you experience when interacting with the home shrine? • How did it make you feel? • How can our senses help us to explore and understand something new? footage, and reinforce that every shrine is different and special to the people who use it. Next, bring back your exemplar Hindu character to help explain interactions with the shrine: ‘Jasmine says, “Using all five of my senses in worship helps me to focus using my whole body.”’ Ask pupils to look carefully at the shrine and think about how the different special items appeal to their senses. Discuss the items’ purpose together and demonstrate how each of the senses is involved. Give pupils the opportunity to explore this through their own senses. Hindu worship at home often includes a daily puja ceremony. The important items are often kept on a puja tray on the home shrine. Each of the items has symbolic • Invite Hindu visitors into school to share their personal experiences and how their senses are important in their worship. You can look for speakers through RE Hubs at tinyurl.com/tp- REHubsSpeakers • Ask pupils to plan and write instructions for a teacher on how to set up a home shrine in the classroom. This should include objects they think might be important to a Hindu and how they appeal to all the senses. • Find out about different examples of worship in the mandir (temple). How are the senses important here? Include local, national and global examples. This short video might be a good starting point: tinyurl.com/tp- CharlieBlueHinduMandir • If sharing with KS2, encourage pupils to begin to think critically, like a philosopher, about whether our senses are always reliable. What is the difference in Christian belief between a magic trick and a miracle, for example? EXTENDING THE LESSON represents life and a spoon means it can be given to worshippers · Incense, to purify and appeal to the sense of smell ( smell ) · Aum symbol, to represent the ultimate reality (and many other meanings) · Tilak (or Kumkum) powder, traditionally put on the forehead to open up the mind for worship ( touch ) Pupils could draw and label items from the home shrine according to which of the senses they appeal. More active ways to embed this knowledge include: memory games in which an item is removed from the classroom shrine and pupils recall what is missing; ‘accidentally’ tidying the shrine away and asking pupils to set it up again; sorting the physical objects by the sense they appeal to; recreating items on the shrine using pupils’ hands, bodies or voices. 3 | EXPLORE DIVERSITY A great way of reviewing new knowledge in religion and worldview lessons is to explore it from a different perspective; this also challenges misconceptions that all Hindus are the same. Teachers could share images of different home shrines, or watch this video clip ( tinyurl. com/tp-HomeShrine ) of Hindu children explaining their particular home shrine. What do pupils notice is different? What is similar? Why? How do these children use their senses in worship? Katie Gooch taught as a primary RE subject specialist for 12 years and is now the primary curriculum lead for religion and worldviews at United Learning. “Hinduworship at home often includes a daily puja ceremony” USEFUL QUESTIONS meanings to help the worshipper express their beliefs. Be aware that the symbolism may be different for different people. The symbolism suggested below is one interpretation, simplified for KS1 pupils. The puja ceremony might include: · A murti – one (or several) images representing the deity ( sight ) · Fruit or food - these are offerings for the deity, showing respect and gratitude ( taste ) Puja tray including : · Bell, to wake up the deity ( hearing ) · Arti or Diya lamp - the light of a candle is offered to the deities to remove darkness through worship · Water and spoon - water www.teachwire.net | 77