Information: Year 7 Theme: Community. Focus: Christians believe in a Creator God who is active in the world redeeming and sustaining it Throughout this unit pupils will examine how the Christian community comes together in its belief that God has made them responsible for the world and that within this various groups act to follow the command given by God to Adam

Lesson One: AWE & WONDER In the natural world

Objectives: I will: Experience awe and wonder in the natural world. Be aware that there are positive and negative aspects to creation. Ask key questions about the nature of Creation

Creation & The Enviroment

If the Earth...

If the Earth were only a few feet in diameter!! If the earth… Were only a few feet in diameter, floating a few feet above a field somewhere, People would come from everywhere to marvel at it. People would walk around it, marvelling at it’s big pools of water, it’s little pools of water and the water flowing between the pools. People would marvel at the bumps on it, and the holes in it. They would marvel at the very thin layer of gas around it and the water suspended in the gas. The people would marvel at all the creatures walking around on the ball, and all the creatures in the water. The people would declare it precious because it was the only one, and they would protect it so that it would not be hurt.The ball would be the greatest wonder known, and people would come to see it, to be healed, to gain knowledge, to know beauty and to wonder how it could be. People would love it and defend it with their lives, because they would somehow know that without it their lives and their happiness could be nothing without it. If the Earth were only a few feet in diameter!!

TASK: Copy the poem into your books and draw the earth behind the words as a background!! What does this poem tell you about the earth? How does it make you feel? How do you think we should treat the earth?

Creation: What happened? Nobody knows for sure how exactly the earth came to be. Different religions have different beliefs about creation, and the scientist tells us that there is a lot of evidence for the theory of evolution. Some people believe a combination of these accounts believing each has something important to offer to the issue of the creation of our world. Next we are going to look at the creation story found in the Old Testament that describes God creating the earth.

In the beginning… The earth was formless, dark and empty.

Then God commanded… “Let there be light”-and light appeared. God was pleased with what he saw. Then he separated the light from the darkness, and he named the light “Day” and the darkness “Night”. Evening passed and the morning came.

Then God commanded… “Let there be a dome to divide the water and keep it in two separate places”-and it was done. So God made a dome, and it separated the water under it from the water above it. He named the dome “Sky”. Evening passed and morning came.

Then God commanded… “Let the water come together in one place so that land will appear”-and it was done. He named the land “Earth” and the water “Sea”. Then God commanded “Let the earth produce all kinds of plants, those that bear grain and those that bear fruit”-and it was done. God was pleased with what he saw! Evening passed and morning came.

Then God commanded… “Let lights appear in the sky to separate day from night and to show the time when days, nights and religious festivals begin; they will shine in the sky to give light to the earth”-and it was done. So God made the two larger lights, the sun to rule over the day and the moon to rule over the night. He also created the stars. Evening passed and morning came.

Then God commanded… “Let the water be filled with many kinds of living beings, and let the air be filled with birds”. Evening passed and morning came.

Then God commanded… “Let the earth produce all kinds of animal life: domestic, large and wild”-and it was done. And then God said “And now we will make human beings: they will be like me and resemble me. They will have power over the world”. Evening passed and morning came.

And this is how the Universe was created! God finished what he had been doing and stopped working. He blessed the seventh day and set it apart as a special day because by now he had completed his creation and stopped working. And this is how the Universe was created!

Task: Create a creation storyboard describing the stages of the creation story with pictures! Day & Night SKY

Extension Task I want you to use your imagination to create your own creation story. It should be as imaginative as possible.