On Wednesday 25^th and Thursday 26^th January, Year 3 and 4 travelled to Leicester to a Mandir, a Mosque and a church as part of our Living Faith topic.

First, we went to the Mandir which is a Hindu temple. We arrived during prayer time and saw people playing music whilst others were praying and giving offerings to the God.
Afterwards, the preacher spoke to us about the Hindu religion and told us about the different celebrations that they have and about the different gods and what they stood for. We then got to walk around and look at the different gods and looked at how they say their prayers. We learnt that we take our shoes off in the temple as a sign of respect and that those who enter the temple ring a bell so that the God knows they are there.

Next we travelled to a Mosque. When we got there, we took off our shoes and the girls wore headscarves as a sign of respect. The preacher told us that the mosque could fit up to 5000 people in it at a time! We were also told lots of different information about the Muslim religion. When Muslims pray, they only pray on patterned carpet and they pray in the direction of Saudi Arabia. Before prayer, they wash themselves so they are clean. We found out that this routine is called Wudu and Muslims pray up to 5 times a day. We also found out that the Quran is read backwards and that although most women wear headscarves, it is their choice. There were lots of different rooms in the Mosque, including rooms for prayer, teaching and even a gym!

After this we travelled to a church and got involved in lots of different activities to compare the religions we had learned about. We did some colouring and we drew around our hands and stuck the 5 pillars of Islam on each finger.

We all had a great day on the trip and learnt lots about different religions.

By Ruby, Year 4