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
Christmas and Craft in Year 4
What a crafty Christmas we have been having in Year 4. Not only have we finished our stockings but we have even managed to squeeze in some Christmas cards. The children created their Christmas trees from the left over felt from their stockings, adding sequins and glitter to make them sparkle. All finished with some beautiful words inside.
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Year 4 - Class Worship: John the Baptist
In this week's class worship, we heard the story of John the Baptist’s and how he was given the special job of preparing for the arrival of Jesus. The speakers talked about how John had to turn away from what he wanted and focus on what he needed in order to be ready for the arrival of the king. Following this, we spent some time thinking about our Christmas lists. The children wrote down one thing they’ve asked for on their Christmas lists. We then made a class list of human needs. We checked our lists to see if anyone had asked for any of these things for Christmas. The children noted that they didn’t ask for water or shelter (etc.) because those things are already provided for them by their parents or the world around them. We finished by talking about how the children can prepare for when they are adults, for example, by doing chores, working hard or saving money.
Year 4 - Science: Effects of Liquids on Teeth
We’ve been looking at teeth in-depth in Year 4 recently, particularly the role of our enamel in protecting our teeth. Last week, the class designed an experiment to test how different liquids would affect our enamel. This week, we carried out our investigation. We used eggshells to replicate teeth, and we tested 6 different liquids: water, milk, blackcurrant, coffee, Diet Coke and vinegar. To run the experiment, we soaked an egg in each liquid for 2 days. We then removed the eggs and wrote our observations. We then spent two minutes brushing and described the shells again. Vinegar was found to have the worst effect as it dissolved the shell just leaving the membrane to protect the egg inside. The darker liquids stained the eggs, and the water and milk didn’t change the eggshells much.
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Design Technology Products
Good afternoon parents and carers, our children have been working really hard on their design and technology skills over the last few weeks to create products that can bought at our Christmas Fair. They are available to purchase on parent pay for £2.00 each, which will help to cover some of the cost of the materials used. Reception: Wooden christmas decorations Year 1: Christmas moving books Year 2 : Christmas puppets Year 3: Christmas pouches Year 4: Christmas stockings Year 5: Christmas cushions Year 6: Christmas loop games