Open Days for our September 2027 intake
💙Is your child starting Reception this September? 💙 We warmly welcome parents, carers, and children to come and see our school in action. This is a wonderful opportunity to meet our school family and enjoy a guided tour with our Headteacher, Mrs Ham. 📅 Open Day Dates & Times: Tuesday 22nd September: 9.00 - 10.30am Wednesday 7th October: 2.00 - 3.30pm Thursday 15th October: 2.00 - 3.30pm Monday 9th November: 9.00 - 10.30am Thursday 19th November: 9.00 - 10.30am Friday 27th November: 2.00 - 3.30pm 📝 How to Book Your Tour: To secure your place on one of our open days, please complete our booking form: 👉 https://forms.gle/DxqPdvyXDx1Xmd918 To get a feel for our school and what we can offer your child, please see our news page on our website: https://stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/news and our photo galleries: https://stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/photo-gallery-category/our-gallery Please also keep your eye on our website for the dates of our stay and play sessions that will soon be coming up for our current Reception parents and carers and pre-school children, parents and carers. We look forward to meeting you and your child! 💙😀
Year 1 Geography: Differences Between Seasons
In today’s Geography lesson, we started by singing our months of the year song. Then we looked at different pictures of the seasons and matched them correctly to their name. We then compared summer and winter. The children shared that summer is hot and bright, whilst winter is cold, dark and snowy. Then we compared autumn and spring. The children spotted that autumn has red, brown and yellow leaves that fall on the ground whilst spring is full of flowers and it rains often. Independently, the children drew a picture of each season which had to include a seasonal tree, weather and outfit.
Little Gardeners Club: Nature hunt and planting seeds
Our first session of Little Gardeners Club was so fun. We started by going on a nature hunt to find common sightings like red, brown and yellow leaves, a spider web, a pinecone, something prickly, a log and so many more. The children ticked off their items and all helped one another to find things. Then we had a quick play on the trim trail before we were back inside ready to plant seeds. The children each had a plant pot to decorate with letter stickers, gems and paint pens. Then each child put compost into their plant pot and planted a bean seed. We discussed what a plant needs to grow and survive. They are so excited to see them grow!
Lunchtime Games Club with Year 1&2
Today at lunchtime, we had great fun at Games Club! We enjoyed playing Pizza Pizza, Shopping List and Dinosaur Number Eggs. A huge well done to the amazing children who came along. You were fantastic sports and did a brilliant job of encouraging and supporting one another. 🌟👏 If any other Year 1 or Year 2 children would like to join us on a Monday lunchtime this half-term, please sign them up on Arbor.
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Friday Celebration Worship
This morning, we began our Celebration Worship by reflecting on another amazing week at school. This week, we have thoroughly enjoyed our whole-school performance of Pinocchio, and across the school, our children have been working extremely hard to demonstrate Barney’s 4Bs and our Christian Values as they strive to earn ClassDojo points. We have been incredibly impressed by the children’s positive attitudes to learning and the high standards of behaviour we have seen throughout the school. Well done, everyone! We then celebrated our Barney’s Brilliant Beacons. A huge well done to Hunter, Lily, Albie and Hadi in KS1, and Elsie, Phoebe, Annabel, Alice, Harry, Emily, Alfie and Eliza in KS2. Well done to these amazing children, who have made such a fantastic start to the academic year! You have all been wonderful role models and truly shining examples of Barney’s Beacons. We are incredibly proud of you! Mrs Ham then shared a few important reminders with us. The Big Summer Weekend at our church this weekend, School Photograph Day will take place on Wednesday 16th September, followed by our Macmillan Coffee Morning on Friday 25th September. Our lunchtime and after-school clubs have also now gone live on Arbor and are available to book. To bring our worship to a close, we were treated to some beautiful prayers from Annabel and Seb. Thank you to everyone who joined us for Celebration Worship this morning, and an extended thank you to all of our families for your continued support, both this week and every week. We wish you all a wonderful and restful weekend! 🌟
Year 1 Forest School: Fun On The Outdoor Gym
Year 1 had a blast playing on the outdoor gym for their forest school session today. They were shown how to use all the equipment properly and safely and it was great to see them taking turns.
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Friday Celebration Worship
This morning, we began our celebration worship by reflecting on what has been a fantastic start to the year. Well done to all of our children across school for returning with such a wonderful attitude to learning, demonstrating the Barney’s 4Bs and showing great courage. Today was our first Celebration Worship of the half-term, which will always be reserved exclusively for our children to share and celebrate the awards and achievements they have gained outside of school. We started with our infant children. A huge congratulations to Indie who achieved Star of the Week at gymnastics and has also been demonstrating great skill at Tae Kwon Do, Bo for gaining Star of the Week at football and achieving 6th place in a biking race, Olivia, Eleanor, Phoebe, Callie, James, Isabella and Harry for completing the BwD Summer Reading Challenge, Isabella for achieving her Stage 6 in swimming, Callie for achieving her Stage 7, completing 100 metres and achieving 25 metres in breaststroke and front crawl at swimming, Phoebe and Max for completing the Explorer Challenge at Whitehall Park, Fiia for achieving her cartwheel in gymnastics and swimming 5 metres, Tommy-Joe, for being awarded his Stage 3 swimming certificate, Vienna and Ohana for both gaining their Water Safety Award with Ohana also achieving her 100 metres swimming certificate. We then moved on to celebrate our Juniors. Well done to Renee for achieving an award in bravery for flying and gaining her orange and white striped belt at kickboxing, Ella, for being awarded her Stage 4 swimming certificate, Elijah, Seb and Harry for competing in the All Stars Cricket Club Camp, Fletcher for getting through to the Blackburn Youth Darts Academy Final, being recognised as an All Stars Cricket Club superstar and achieving his Bronze Award at Beavers, Lyla for achieving an array of dancing medals in recognition of her great skill in improv, lyrical, jazz, ballet and commercial dance, Annabel for being welcomed into the Blackburn Centurions Swimming Club after successfully attending a trial and James for beating his rival team in a recent football match and being awarded Man of the Match. We then ended our worship with some lovely prayers from James and Olivia, before Mrs Ham announced that our clubs will soon be going live. Keep an eye on Arbor for further information and opportunities to get involved. Finally, a huge thank you to all of our parents and families for your continued support and encouragement. Thank you to those who were able to join us for our Celebration Worship this morning.
Year 1 Maths: Sorting Objects
Year 1 tried really hard with sorting objects into groups of either colour, shape or size. We were really impressed with how fast they could figure out the groups. Some children even found that some objects can be sorted into multiple groups.
Behaviour Update
Dear Parents and Carers, welcome back everyone! It has been wonderful to see the children looking so smart in their uniforms and being ready to learn. They have all come into school beautifully and behaved so well in worship this morning. A special welcome to our new Reception children who settled so well this morning and we are looking forward to our second group of children this afternoon. It was fantastic to see so many of our previous Year 6 children as they came to say hello and have a hug before starting at high school tomorrow. We wish all of our previous Year 6 children all the luck in the world as they start their high school journey this week. Remember, keep achieving great things and living life in all its fullness! Please find attached to class dojo a behaviour update document, which details some exciting updates to our school behaviour policy. We officially launched this new system during worship this morning! Because of this, you may have already noticed instant notifications popping up on your Class Dojo app today when your child was awarded a point. As outlined in the letter, we are moving away from our traditional "values points" and will now be using Class Dojo points to track and reward positive behaviour across the school. This means you will no longer have to wait for physical values awards to come home; instead, you will be able to see daily updates of your child's wonderful behaviour at the click of a button. Please take a few minutes to read the letter in full to learn more about: *How children earn points (such as following the "Four Be's" and demonstrating our Christian Values). *The exciting new individual, class, and house rewards. * Important adjustments to our Friday Celebration Worship and how we celebrate out-of-school achievements. Thank you for your continued support and we welcome your feedback!
Happy first day of school! 🌟
We’ve had a brilliant day together and the children have been absolute stars. We hope you have a great time tonight hearing all about what they got up to, and especially why they earned their Dojo points today! 🏆 Thank you for such a great start to the term. See you all tomorrow! 💙
Our First Day in Year 1
What a fantastic first day we have had in Year 1 today. Miss Woods and Mr Gudgeon have been so impressed with the children’s behaviour. They have settled in so well and are becoming more confident navigating the classroom. They accessed the continuous provision areas and completed some amazing challenges. We are looking forward to all the great things that they will achieve in this academic year!
Welcome Back Worship
It was wonderful having all of the children back today in worship. Mrs Ham welcomed everybody back to school and reminded us of our Christian values. We linked them to our school rules and recapped how to show our best behaviour around school. We also learnt about our new class dojo behaviour system. Some of the children were invited to the front to demonstrate their favourite morning greetings, and we ended the worship with our much-loved school rules song.
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