It was with some trepidation that we went into school this term to do Experience Easter with Year 5s. It has been two years since we were set up and ready to go in a church when lockdown hit and we had to pack up and go home; now here we were with a different team and a completely new format wondering how it would be received.
Experience Easter has been incredibly popular with schools and churches and had grown into a major event in Epsom, but it also took enormous time, effort and resources and with some of the team moving away and new members having joined, we felt a new approach was needed. The Easter Story, with the stations of the cross, still remains the same of course, but the team decided to lead from the front with a table taking centre stage that was completely transformed for each part of the story - the children particularly liked creating a donkey and it effectively portrayed the last supper, communion and remembrance.
It is such an amazing opportunity to have the whole day to take Year 5s through such an important aspect of our faith and with role-play, storytelling, videos and crafts enable children to think how to respond to things in their own lives.
We will have been to four schools during the last couple of weeks and it has been fun and engaging, with an excellent response from schools. The team have been amazing as usual and thrown themselves into doing lots of different things. We will be asking schools for feedback so that we can develop what we offer, but we all had an amazing time, are so grateful to be back doing RE days, and are looking forward to building on what we can offer schools.
- Lisa Bell, Epsom & Ewell Hub Leader