Religion is lumped in with history, literature, languages and art as one of the humanities but we tend not to feel as comfortable teaching about religion as the other subjects. Teaching about religion does not promote any one particular faith. It introduces the fact that there are differences between people and their ideas and practices about God. Primary students can easily be introduced to the idea that there are different religions during social studies units about the community and its people. Different religions use different types of buildings. Different religions can be identified by the way some adherents dress. When you are teaching about communities, say that people worship in different types of buildings. People who are Christians worship in churches or cathedrals. People who are Jewish worship in synagogues. People who are Muslim worship in mosques, and people who are Hindu or Buddhist worship in temples. Take pictures of any of these buildings in your school community and
Living History is the primary strategy your students will experience when your class takes a field trip to a camp meeting
Living History is a term for an interpretive strategy used at museums like Colonial Williamsburg or Conner Prairie . It is when visitors are ushered back to a specific place in the past that is peopled by costumed interpreters doing everyday tasks using authentic tools and materials or else very accurate reproduction artifacts. Often the visitors are encouraged to assist with the activities. Sometimes the interpreters have adopted a persona based on a real person. This approach uses theater methods and requires each character to have a very detailed understanding of the time and circumstances their person would have lived in. It takes research to locate the documents, oral history resources, and evidence from material culture from which each character is created. Then it takes a certain discipline to maintain the character's first-person perspective when visitors interact from their modern point of view. This introduces a fun tension that emphasizes the shifts in how we live