Image of FOSB Mother’s Day Coffee Morning
26 Mar

FOSB Mother’s Day Coffee Morning

A huge thank you for your generous cake donations yesterday and to all of the wonderful ladies in our school family that came to our FOSB Mother’s Day Coffee Morning. We were overwhelmed with the turn out and thank you for your patience. We hope you all enjoyed having a few minutes to relax and have a brew and a cake with your loved ones. Thank you so much for your generous donations and for purchasing raffle tickets. We have raised an amazing £375 to go towards upgrading our trim trail surfaces and purchasing new chrome books. Thank you for bringing to our attention the issue with some of the wrong tickets being sold by our Year 6 helpers in the raffle. We worked out the missing ticket numbers and made tickets with those numbers and added them to our tombola drum to make it fair. The winning tickets drawn out were( also see photos) : *Peach number 30- £40 ocean palace voucher * Pink ticket 982- Dolly’s Tea Room afternoon tea for 2 voucher *Blue ticket 954- £20 Mangiamo Voucher * Blue ticket 669- £20 Freya’s Grill Voucher *Peach ticket 271- Bottle of Asti & Lemon Drizzle Cake * Pink ticket 979- Bottle of Pinot Grigio & Red Velvet Cake * Peach ticket 302 - Red wine & Red velvet * Peach ticket 6- Rose wine, photo frame & blueberry cake If you have won a prize, please bring your ticket to the office to claim your prize by the end of the week. A huge thank you to our FOSB members and staff involved in planning and supporting the event as we couldn’t have done it without you. A special mention to our Year 6 helpers too who did a brilliant job. Thank you so much to Katie and Steph from FOSB who also stayed after the event to clear out the FOSB cupboards. You have done a fantastic job! There are still plenty of cakes left so children can buy one after school today to give to the special lady in their life. They will be priced at 50p a cake or 3 for £1.00. All of the photos can be found here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/photo-galleries/fosb-mother-s-day-coffee-morning Thank you to everyone who made this morning a success and on behalf of our whole school family I wish all of our Mums, Grandmas and Aunties a wonderful and relaxing Mother’s Day and thank you for everything you do. You are all amazing!

Image of Collective Worship - The Garden of Gethsemane
26 Mar

Collective Worship - The Garden of Gethsemane

Our collective worship began with the Year 6 class presenting their learning about Shakespeare. Thank you for sharing, Year 6! Mrs Ham then led our worship about the Garden of Gethsemane and how Jesus spent time praying for strength from God to help Him through the events that were to follow. We spent time reflecting on all of our Lenten events so far: Lent walks, Lenten promises and our 40 acts of kindness. Finally, we took part in this week’s special Year of Prayer by all sharing what was on our minds with Jesus, considering what we are thankful for, by writing these on a leaf. Mrs Ham created a prayer tree in our entrance area with over 200 lovely prayers on leaves from all of our children and staff.

Image of Year 2 - Class Worship
26 Mar

Year 2 - Class Worship

This week in our Class Worship, we heard some news about the government. They're going to open 750 new breakfast clubs all over the country. This made us think about something really important, the United Nations Rights of a Child. One of these rights says that all children should have healthy food to eat. We talked about how the government is trying to help all children have a healthy breakfast, and these new breakfast clubs are one way they can do that. Then, we thought about how lucky we are to have healthy food to eat. We talked about how we don't always have to worry about having breakfast. Finally, we said a prayer to say thank you for all the healthy food we have. It was a time to be grateful for what we have!

Image of Reception, Year 1 and 2-Story Club
26 Mar

Reception, Year 1 and 2-Story Club

Today, Miss Flynn and the librarians held a story and craft club at lunchtime. The children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 listened to the story of ‘The Highway Rat’ and decorated their own mask. Many children took on the role of the highway rat and told us what they would steal. We had ice-cream, cookies, pizza, sweets, cake and chocolate being stolen.

Image of Year 2 - Sentence structure
25 Mar

Year 2 - Sentence structure

On Tuesday, we focused on the structure of our sentences and showing that they have a clear start and end. To do this we need to be absolutely secure with capital letters and full stops. The children worked in pairs to write sentences describing their morning routine. It was good to see the children seeing that their writing is made up of individual sentences rather than a large chunk of words. We will have another go at rainbow writing next half-term and see if they children become more fluent with beginning and ending their sentences.

Image of Mad Science Club- Lab Works
24 Mar

Mad Science Club- Lab Works

Today in Mad Science Club, we became real scientists. The children got to use real lab equipment to stir, swish, and swirl different mixtures. It was a hands-on introduction to laboratory techniques, and everyone participated in the experiments and had great fun.

Image of Friday Celebration Worship
21 Mar

Friday Celebration Worship

Today, we started our celebration worship by signing the trinity and reflecting on another extremely busy yet fantastic week in school. First of all, we thanked everyone for rocking their socks for World Down Syndrome Day and continuing to support ‘THE BIG LENT WALK.’ The kilometres walked across school are ever increasing as is the money that we have raised and we are extremely grateful- thank you! Please continue to let either Mrs Wilkinson or Mrs Ham know if you have walked anywhere and please send photos if you can. This week, we have had a wonderful week learning about Lent in collective worship, Reception, Year 1 and 2 had a special visit from Local Author Janek Puzon, Reception had an exciting firefighter visit, we’ve enjoyed a variety of after-school and lunch-time clubs and Year 6 spent two days exploring London. We then moved onto congratulating this week’s individual value award winners. Well done to Freddie, Cici and Charlie G in EYFS and KS1 and Bobby-Ray, Tristen and Neve in Years 3, 4 and 5. Well done to these children for consistently showing our Barny’s 4Bs and working hard across the curriculum. We also awarded all of Year 6 as the value award winners this week for representing school amazingly well in London and making the most of the experience. Furthermore, we congratulated our Year 1 and Year 4 class for being our attendance winners this week with 96.7% and 99.6% attendance, India Mill as our value award winners this week with 442 points and our Year 4 football team for three fantastic performances in the BRFC league on Tuesday evening- well done! We then moved on to congratulating our out of school sports award winners. Well done to Hollie for being the Star of the Week at gymnastics, Charlie for achieving his blue belt in martial arts and being the Beaver of the Week, Isabella for also being awarded her blue belt at martial arts, Callie for her amazing performance at Stage Coach, Elijah for being Player of the Week at football, Haydn for achieving his white belt at kickboxing, Lyla for achieving gold in a recent Jazz competition and silver for a lyrical dance, Sofia for coming 3rd place in a recent singing competition and Olivia for being Star of the Week at gymnastics. To end our worship, Mrs Ham reminded us that next Tuesday 25th March is ‘Friends of St Barnabas Non-Uniform Day’ in exchange for a cake or sweet treat to sell at the Mother’s Day Coffee Morning on Wednesday 26th March which you are all welcome to. Then, we all had a singalong to ‘Lord of the Dance.’ We wish you all a lovely and restful weekend.

Image of Year 2 - Year of Prayer
20 Mar

Year 2 - Year of Prayer

Here are the last two weeks of Year 2's Year of Prayer. Both weeks, the children have written prayers for different reasons. Last week, we wrote prayers to say sorry to God. We said sorry for either something we have done or for something happening in the world we are sorry for. After we had written them, we tore them into pieces and threw them into the air. We discussed how doing this was like we were moving on and being forgiven. This week, it was time for a game of the floor is lava! Each child had to jump into a love heart with a partner. Every time this happened, we said prayers to say thank you to God. We had very thoughtful prayers including saying thank you for: fruit and vegetables, our homes, being healthy, our friends, living in a safe country and our families. It was a lovely opportunity to go into their spirituality garden and give thanks for all the amazing things on our lives.

Image of A Special Visit From Local Author, Janek Puzon
20 Mar

A Special Visit From Local Author, Janek Puzon

This morning, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 enjoyed a visit from local author, Janek Puzon. Janek engaged the children in a storytelling session by reading them his latest book, Agent Glen. The book was all about Agent Glen who was hired to detect a mysterious burglar who kept stealing riches from an art gallery. However, Agent Glen was a little hard of hearing and he ended up in some rather hilarious situations whilst completing his mission. The children particularly enjoyed the part where his hand got stuck to the toilet. Thank you to Janek Puzon for visiting our school and sharing his wonderful book with our infant children. We can’t wait to add Janek’s books to our school library collection.

Image of Reception, Year 1 and Year 2- Story Club
19 Mar

Reception, Year 1 and Year 2- Story Club

Today, Miss Flynn and the librarians led a lunchtime story and craft club for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. They read ‘The Baddies’ by Julia Donaldson and got the children to discuss their favourite part of the story. Percy said that his favourite part was when the ghost didn’t manage to scare the girl, Summer said that she thought it was funny when the witch got tangled up in the ropes and the sweet got stuck to her nose, Hollie said that she liked the spell that the witch chanted, Marnie-May said that she enjoyed the troll falling into the river and Heidi said that she thought that the mouse getting the hanky was a nice ending to the story. We then finished with some colourings of a couple of the main characters (the witch and the troll).

Image of Year 2 - Striking a ball
19 Mar

Year 2 - Striking a ball

This week in PE, Year 2 continued to practise striking a ball. In this session, we moved onto bowling the ball to our partner. We practiced bowling to each other and focused on making sure the ball bounced in the correct spot with the ideal amount of force. After that, we introduced racquets where our partners had to strike the ball in a controlled way to return it. The children have improved and developed their skills enormously and they will be able to use them more and more as they play games in PE throughout school.

Image of Year of Prayer and Singing Worship
17 Mar

Year of Prayer and Singing Worship

This morning in our Collective Worship we took part in the year of prayer for this week, which was a prayer about emotions. We discussed with our partner all the different emoji emotions we could see and then named them. We then prayed together for people that we might know in our school or family that might be feeling some of those different emotions at the minute or those who might not be feeling very well. We then had different classes leading the singing and actions for our favourite Easter hymns and songs. What a joyous and uplifting start to the week!