Image of Year 4 - RE: Visit to Spring Vale
24 Jun

Year 4 - RE: Visit to Spring Vale

The Year 4 class went on a walk to Spring Vale Methodist Church to explore symbols of Christianity. After an informative introduction to Methodism from David, the children were given the opportunity to explore the church. They then shared the similarities and differences they’d spotted in comparison with St Barnabas Church. The children were also treated to a drink and a cake before they headed back to school.

Image of Year 5 - Ancient Greece in VR
23 Jun

Year 5 - Ancient Greece in VR

Today PrimeVR visited St Barnabas, allowing classes to experience immersive, computer generated simulations through virtual reality. Year 5 had the opportunity to travel back in time to Ancient Greece and witness the Parthenon in its original splendour and offer tribute at the statue of Athena. We also got a taste of everyday life in Ancient Greece, seeing close up how people travelled and fished.

Image of Reception - Father's Day Stay & Play
18 Jun

Reception - Father's Day Stay & Play

What a fantastic afternoon we had in Reception! To celebrate Father's Day this coming Sunday, we welcomed some very special grown-ups into school for a brilliantly active 'Stay and Play' session. Our classroom and outdoor areas were buzzing with excitement as the children proudly showed their special visitors around. The children loved exploring our outdoor areas alongside their grown-ups, building, creating, and sharing their favorite daily school activities and it was clear that many of the boys had an absolute ball playing football on the MUGA together! The teamwork, laughter, and skills on display were wonderful to see. We would like to say a huge thank you to all the Dads, Grandads, and special grown-ups who took the time to join us. You made the afternoon incredibly memorable for the children. We hope all of our school families have a wonderful, relaxing Father's Day this Sunday!

Image of Year 5 - Children’s Literature Festival
17 Jun

Year 5 - Children’s Literature Festival

On Tuesday, we had the opportunity to walk down to Darwen Library to participate in Blackburn with Darwen’s Children’s Literature Festival. We had the privilege of talking to Sarah Surgey, author of books such as Subject Society, Jumping Hurdles and The Heavy Bag. She gave us a great insight into the process of writing and the business of publishing, before reading some of her latest book. The children asked some really interesting questions and we all enjoyed this rare opportunity to gain advice and understanding from an accomplished professional.

Image of Year 4 - Visit to St Matthew’s
17 Jun

Year 4 - Visit to St Matthew’s

This week was the Year 4 class’s long anticipated trip to meet their link class. After a short minibus ride into Blackburn, we arrived at St Matthew’s CE Primary School to the most wonderful welcome from Doves class. We had a short getting-to-know-you session and then split up into our mixed groups. We had great fun creating handshakes, decorating friendship poems and having a picnic lunch together. We can’t wait to welcome St Matthew’s to our school next week.

Image of Year 4 - Mosque Visit
17 Jun

Year 4 - Mosque Visit

Whilst we were visiting St Matthew’s, we had the opportunity to enhance our RE unit on places of worship by visiting the mosque next door. We had a tour of the main hall and the washroom and learned about some religious artefacts and practices that are customary to Islam. It was great for the children to see these features in real life so that they could make comparisons with the other places of worship we’ve studied this term. The imam arranged a special surprise as well, allowing all the children to choose a drink, some crisps and a chocolate bar, followed by treating them all to an ice cream from the ice cream van. All in all, I think they had a fantastic day.

Image of Year 4 - The GULP Project - Effects of Sugar
17 Jun

Year 4 - The GULP Project - Effects of Sugar

In this week’s GULP session, the Year 4 children were learning about the effect that sugary drinks can have on our teeth. They learned how to make healthy choices when deciding how to hydrate themselves and they started an experiment to see which drinks have the worst effect on our teeth. We will find out the results next week. The second part of the session involved physical activity. The children played invasion team games and discussed tactics, giving them the opportunity to adjust their strategies in order to score the maximum points.

Image of Year 3 Trip to the Darwen Children’s Literature Festival
16 Jun

Year 3 Trip to the Darwen Children’s Literature Festival

Today, Year 3 walked to Darwen Library to celebrate the Children's Literature Festival with author and poet Dommy B! The children were completely wowed by his high-energy poetry performance of The Dinosaurs Are Back. He had the entire class up on their feet, joining in and dancing along with him. We were also given a copy of his book to keep in our classroom. It was a brilliant day.

Image of Year 5 RotaKids Conference
15 Jun

Year 5 RotaKids Conference

On Friday, six pupils from Year 5 attended the annual RotaKids Conference at the University of Cumbria. They had the opportunity to take part in a variety of different fascinating activities, such as: learning how to keep our bodies healthy, extracting DNA from a strawberry and making poo; learning all about the life cycle of hornets and tasting local honey straight from the hive; learning about water safety from the Fire and Rescue Service; getting the chance to look inside a fire engine and even having a go with the powerful water hose! The children had a fantastic day and demonstrated excellent behaviour, with the staff commenting on how polite our pupils were.

Image of Year 5 - Chicks
12 Jun

Year 5 - Chicks

We were lucky today to have some special visitors in class today when chicks Dixie, Coco, Chanel and friends came in to say hello. Lilly’s mother Laura was kind enough to bring in the family’s newest additions and the children loved getting the chance to pet them.

Image of Year 4 - PSHE: Kindness Workshop
11 Jun

Year 4 - PSHE: Kindness Workshop

On Tuesday, Years 1-6 took part in a kindness workshop delivered by 52 Lives. Following the workshop we were tasked with creating something for somebody else in an act of kindness. The Year 4 class had a plethora of fantastic ideas to make some very thoughtful and imaginative gifts for friends and family. These included chatterboxes containing positive affirmations, cards with moving parts revealing messages of love, paper aeroplanes delivering kind notes, friendship bracelets and much more. Krish from 52 Lives was amazed with the children’s creativity when he came to our classroom to see what we were making. The children were very proud of the items they had made and couldn’t wait to give them to their friends and family members.

Image of Year 4 - PE: Introduction to The GULP Project
11 Jun

Year 4 - PE: Introduction to The GULP Project

One of the weekly PE sessions in Year 4 this half term will be delivered by Blackburn Rovers FC in conjunction with Blackburn with Darwen Council. The GULP Project aims to get children active and also think about the drinks they consume, encouraging them to make healthy choices. This week was our first session in which we completed a sugary drinks quiz and an A to Z of drinks. We also received our free reusable GULP water bottles and were given a brief idea of the exciting activities that we will take part in over the next 4 weeks.