Today our children looked closely and thought deeply about the following question: What makes our world so wonderful? 

Love of Days are a special part of our whole school curriculum here at GBP. Each one has special foci. This time we were focusing on the social, spiritual and cultural aspects. 

The day started with a launch assembly where the children were encouraged to use and think about their senses to explore the beauty of our world. We also explained that our children will feel surprise, curiosity, amazement, excitement and will experience beauty as well as awe and wonder throughout the day. We shared photos of some of the most beautiful places on Earth and we agreed that all of these wonderful places, scenes and experiences can take our breath away and are awaiting for us to explore them!

The children then went back to their classrooms to discover The 7 Wonders of the World. Check out this video clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_00CC7BIHhg. Whilst watching this clip, our children secretly wrote down their favourite 3 ‘New Wonders of the World’ and discussed why this was the case.

The children dived deep to answer many of the following questions throughout the day.

• Why are these places so special?

• How do they make you feel? Why?

• Why do they need to be protected?

• Why do they need to be explored?

• How can we share them?

• How are they protected?

• Why do they make us feel happy?

• Why do we feel peaceful at some of these places?

• How do they make us whisper when when we are there?

• Why do our eyes widen in surprise and make us say wow??

• Why do they make us emotional and make you tingle down your spine?

We didn't want to focus on what is bad about our world... there is too much bad press about it currently. We wanted our children to only hear positive things about it. So our whole school made a pact to only be positive….Yes, some people believe that the world isn’t a nice place…but we we were going to prove to everyone that our world is wonderful!!

In addition to the 7 Wonders of the world, we discovered that there are actually many different types of wonders of the World…

• Natural,

• Religious,

• Ancient Wonders,

• Wonders of Medieval and Early Modern Architecture,

• Modern Architecture,

• Wonders of Engineering

• …..and Human Wonders too.

Each year group in our school looked deeply into one of these sections and took part in various activities linked to this.  With their partner class, our children shared their learning with each other at the end of the afternoon. Our children successfully taught each other something new. All of our children tried to think of something positive to say about what was being shared. All children were asked to think of an open ended question to ask like: Why do you think that? How did you end up thinking that? How did you find that out? The children talked about how they felt about today’s 'Love of Day' focus.

They also answered some of the following questions at the end of the day: 

• If you had the chance to travel anywhere in the world tomorrow – where would you want to go?

• Discuss why it is important to love our world and explore it.

Our Teachers and LSAs helped the children sum up the special day by sharing and reading some of the quotes found about our wonders of world made by famous people, etc. The children explained their thoughts. Back in the children's own classes – they listened to 'What a wonderful world' by Louis Armstrong. Here is the link if you want to listen to this famous song too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21LGv8Cf0us. Our children reflected on the lyrics outlined below:

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
I see skies of blue and clouds of white…

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world

The colours of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They're really saying I love you

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world

A final reflection was had at the end of the day and our children found out what a soul space was:

Your own wonderful and special space or place

Somewhere you feel so, so, so happy

Somewhere magical

Somewhere that makes you feel safe

Somewhere that makes you go ‘wow’

Somewhere that makes you peaceful!

We asked: Could one of the places you have seen today be a future soul space for you or do you have one place that is already incredibly special to you? Our teachers chose some lovely relaxation music… and the children were asked to take themselves to one of the wonders of the world they had seen .. or take themselves to a special place that they love to go to regularly… This is their own special soul space.

This day was remarkably special for us all and will link to our forthcoming Art Festival Week as the theme is going to be ‘Soul Spaces’. Watch this space and I hope your children came home and told you all about this Love of Day.