Friday Celebration Worship
What a brilliant first week back! We are so proud of all the children for settling back into school so sensibly, even with the excitement of the snow. We started by celebrating our values awards winners: Elara in Reception, Max in Year 1, Vienna in Year 2, Mila in Year 3, Lottie in Year 4, Carmen in Year 5 and Luca in Year 6. These children are always doing the right thing and working hard, well done! We also celebrated Olivia and Jacob in Year 4 who were awarded their pen licenses this week. A huge well done to all of our house teams this week for earning lots of value points. Darwen Tower came in 4th place, Whitehall Park came in 3rd place, River Darwen came in 2nd place and India Mill in 1st place. We had lots of Sports Awards this week. Well done to Callie for 25m in backstroke, Ralphi was awarded a swimming medal for 5m and a football certificate for courage against older players, Elijah was awarded a 200m swimming certificate, James was awarded a 100m swimming certificate, Renee was awarded a 5m swimming certificate and Carmen won a student of the year trophy in kickboxing and a swimming certificate for 100m and 50m. Additionally, Phoebe was awarded the Olivia doll from Rainbows for excellent colouring, Thea was awarded a gymnastics certificate for backwards and forwards on the bars, Reggie won player of the week in football for scoring 10 goals and finally Scarlett won player of the match in netball. Well done everyone! Our Year 5 and 6 football team also shared that they lost to St Paul’s 2-1 in their most recent football game, but still placed 5th out of 13 schools. This is a brilliant placement! Also, well done to Year 1 and 2 who the best attendance in Key Stage 1 and Year 4 in Key Stage 2. Mrs Ham also reminded us of our upcoming events: Let’s Go Sing, Stay and Play, NSPCC Speak Out and our visit from Harold the Giraffe. Finally, Charlie, Lilly and James said some beautiful prayers to end our worship. Have a restful weekend and please stay safe in the turbulent weather conditions.
Gifted and Talented Gymnastics Club
Our Gifted and Talented Key Steps Gymnastics club started last night and the children loved their first session. Our specialist coaches went through parts of the routine covering both body management and floor exercise. We can’t wait to see how the children progress over the next few weeks and establish their routines.
Year 4 PSHE -Speak out.Stay safe
Today we learned all about the NSPCC Speak out. Stay safe campaign which aims to help children to understand abuse in all its forms. During the assembly we focused on worries. These worries may include neglect, moving schools, sexual abuse, bullying, someone being poorly or dying. Some of these worries are classed as different types of abuse. This includes neglect, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse and bullying. We can put our worries into a worry bag and share our problems to lighten the load. Who can we share our worries with.? A trusted adult, a family member, a sports coach or Childline. These are all safe trusted adults. There are so many ways children can speak out but contacting Childline may be one of them. Childline is a free support service especially for children either online or over the phone. The children listened really well throughout the whole session, showing respect and valuing differences in opinions.
Year 4 - English: Performing Haikus
It’s been a super busy start to the Spring term in Year 4! In English, we have been analysing the structure of haiku poetry and modifying poems to fit this structure. We finished off this short unit performing our modified poems to the rest of the class, with a focus on the use of intonation and expression to convey the theme of the poem.
Year 4 - RE: Beliefs About Jesus
Our Year 4 Bible explorers also became defence lawyers today in our mock courtroom trial. The question was “Is Jesus the Son of God?”, their task was to defend Christians and provide evidence from the Bible, from the miracles Jesus performed. After taking time preparing their arguments, the children presented their evidence and put up some strong counter arguments each time the prosecution attempted to refute their evidence.
Christmas Video 2025
Dear Parents and Carers, What a truly magical and festive end to an incredible first term at St Barnabas! As we reach the final day of this seven-week half term, I am filled with such pride reflecting on everything our school family has achieved. First and foremost, I want to say a heartfelt thank you to all of you. Your partnership and engagement are vital to our children’s success, and your generosity this term—from the Macmillan Coffee Morning to our wonderful Christmas Fair—has been overwhelming. We are so lucky to have such a supportive community. To our children: you are quite simply wonderful. Whether you were settling into Reception for the first time, representing our school in sports, or shining on stage in our Nativity and "Christmas Cracker" performances, you have lived life in all its fullness. You have worked your socks off, and you truly deserve this rest. For photos of our Christmas fun, please click here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/photo.../christmas-2025 and also see our weekly news: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/news I also want to extend a huge thank you to our fantastic staff team. Their hard work and dedication ensure our school is a love-filled Christian family where every child can thrive. I am particularly grateful for them being such brilliant sports this week; they completely threw themselves into the filming of our annual Christmas video! The children had a wonderful time spotting themselves in the video during our church service this morning. I think the definite highlight for them was seeing exactly what the teachers get up to in school between the hours of 6- 7! We truly hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONfmvpqhqag A reminder that we break up early today at 2:00 pm. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas. I hope your holiday is filled with love, laughter, and joy. We look forward to seeing everyone back, refreshed and ready for a new chapter, on Monday 5th January. Take care and God bless, Mrs. Ham
Whole School Christmas Church Service
This morning, our whole school enjoyed a joyful and reflective visit to church to celebrate the Christmas season together. During the service, children from Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 confidently shared the work they have been doing in class, exploring the true meaning of Christmas and the special joy, hope and kindness that Jesus brought to others. Their contributions helped everyone to pause and reflect on the importance of love, generosity and togetherness at this special time of year. We also enjoyed singing a selection of our much-loved Christmas carols, filling the church with festive cheer. A highlight was watching our whole-school Christmas video, which captured many of the wonderful activities and celebrations from the past couple of weeks. The children thoroughly enjoyed seeing themselves on screen taking part in the festivities and were especially delighted to see members of the school staff joining in and having fun. It was a warm and uplifting celebration that truly reflected the spirit of Christmas and brought our school community together. A huge thank you to Parents and to all who attended to celebrate with us. We wish you a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Year 4 - Christmas Party
We’ve been having a great time singing, dancing and playing games at our Christmas party this morning. The children showed us their best moves and we even finished with a group dance-off.
Year 4 - RE: Hanukkah
In the Year 4 RE session this week we had a special visitor. A member of our school family came into class to share her Jewish faith and the story and customs of Hanukkah celebrations. We also had the opportunity to ask some curiosity questions.
Whole Class Worship - Joy
This week of advent, our focus is Joy. We began by recounting the advent themes we have explored so far: Hope and Peace. Mrs Ham chose Lyla from Year 4 to come to the front to light the three advent candles and she highlighted some of the ways our school family have brought joy to others over the past few weeks. It was heartwarming to hear about some of these, including the Reception class nativity, Year 1 and Year 2’s Christmas Cracker, the choir singing at Acer Lodge care home, and Year 4 writing letters to the residents, plus all of those who have been supporting our latest charity campaigns. We reflected on what true joy looks like and how we can sometimes forget about the simple things when our minds are preoccupied with expensive gifts and the hustle and bustle of the season. Our focus was brought back to the gift God sent - his only son - and how Jesus’ incarnation was the joyous gift that changed our world forever.
Year 4 History - what can artefacts tell us about the Romans?
In our history lesson today we looked at what artefacts can tell us about Roman times? The children covered deceiving an artefact, making observations and deductions. We finished by creating mini Roman soldiers and labelling the armour and weapons that they used.
Christmas Stockings in Year 4
We have finally finished our ‘Seasonal Stockings’ as part of our DT project and we are so very proud of them! They look wonderful and the children have thought very carefully about aesthetics and durability. We can’t wait for everyone to see them at the Christmas Fair this afternoon