Whole School Celebration Worship
Today, we started our celebration worship by thanking everyone for their very generous Macmillan Coffee Morning donations last Friday. The heads and deputies will be announcing the final amount later today. We also lit a candle for gratefulness to say thank you for all of the wonderful things that we have in our lives including our loved ones and the beautiful nature around us. We then presented Ava, Isabella, Callie and Mila in EYFS and KS1 and Martha, Carmen, Edward and Will in KS2 as our individual value award winners. Well done to these children for working extremely hard across the curriculum and always demonstrating our Barny’s 4Bs (being ready, being safe, being kind and being respectful) and our school Christian values. We also congratulated Walter and Alice in Year 4 for gaining their pen licenses, all of the children who have achieved their ‘WOW’ badges this month for walking to or from school at least once a week, Year 1 and Year 5 on being our amazing attendance winners this week and River Darwen as the value award winners this week with 549 points. We gave our girls football team a huge round of applause for their three amazing wins last night and particularly congratulated our Year 4 members of the team who stepped up into the Year 5/6 team. Finally, we congratulated our out of school achievers. Well done to Beau, Jack and Lyla for completing the Summer Reading challenge, Darcy for being awarded Star of the Week at gymnastics, James and Grace for gaining their Stage 5 swimming certificates, Leonora and Desmond for their fantastic swimming whilst competing for Blackburn Centurions, Isaac for being awarded Soccer HQ Player of the Day for demonstrating fantastic football skills, Daisy for being awarded 3 medals in the Paris Olympic Competition at gymnastics, Harriet for swimming 100m in her swimming, Fletcher for celebrating his uncle, Charlie for being a super football star, Laila for being the Player’s Player of the Match at football and Brooke for being awarded the Opposition Player’s Player of the Match. Finally, we had some beautiful prayers from, Renee, Callie and Mason and sang ‘If I was a Butterfly’ in celebration of ‘World Animal Day.’ We thank all those who could attend celebration worship and we said an extended thank you to the rest of our school family for all of your continued support. We wish you all a lovely and restful weekend.
DPSSA Girls Football League
The girls got off to an absolute flying start in the league tonight. 3 games and 3 wins. It was great to see them all play with a smile on their face and watch the more experienced players guiding those who are new to the game through it. Well done girls!
Creating Optical Illusions - Year 4 Art
This week we have started to create optical illusions using a tropical rainforest theme. First the children selected two images such as toucans, macaws, tropical fish and tribes people. Working within a small group they then cut each of the pictures into 2cm strips. Following this they placed the strips down one side of a vertical fan and the same with the other picture. It is extremely difficult to place the strips in the correct place so that the image isn’t distorted, so we numbered the strips to help us. We are using a carousel of art activities so that each group can focus on their own optical illusion and ask for support where needed. We can’t wait to see everyone’s final piece which will go on to be displayed in the school hall.
Rev Ben’s Collective Worship
In today’s collective worship, Rev. Ben began by engaging the children in an interactive challenge, where three children had to use two pieces of paper as stepping stones to cross the hall. This activity set the stage for the theme of the session: perseverance and trust in challenging times. Rev. Ben then shared the Bible story of Moses and the Israelites' long journey through the desert, highlighting the struggles and faith they experienced along the way. After listening to the story, the children were encouraged to reflect and discuss key questions: 'What did God's people do during their journey through the desert?' and 'What are some positive alternatives to complaining when things get tough?' These discussions helped the children connect the story to their own lives, exploring how patience, gratitude, and faith can guide them through difficult situations.
National Poetry Day in Year 4
As part of National Poetry Day, Year 4 have written their very own poems based on The Amazon Rainforest. They developed their use of both similes and metaphors to up level their examples. We recited the poems and gave peer evaluations. Once we had finished, we wrote the poems again for a poetry competition called Wonder Verse in which the best poems are selected and published in an actual poetry book. We can’t wait to hear if any of our poems make it to publication so we've got everything crossed. Happy National Poetry Day.!
Whole School Worship: What is Spirituality?
In our Tuesday worship, the theme was spirituality and what it means to us. Mrs Ham talked about things that we can see (physical/ material things) and things that we just feel (spiritual things). We played a fun game where we had to put on a pretend pair of binoculars if it was something physical/ material that we can see or cover our eyes if it was something spiritual that we can't see. We had things like connecting with nature, a big house', money, connecting with friends, inner peace and believing in a God. She introduced the ‘windows’ looking out on the world and how we should take time to learn, to gaze, to wonder and admire and ask ‘why?’ We looked at some of the ways we can live life in all its fullness and today we particularly focused on being 'grateful' for all of God's creations. We also explored how taking notice is one of our five ways to wellbeing too. We looked at some of God’s creations in a video and discussed our favourite ones with our partner. There were lots of 'WOWs' and 'aahhs' at some of God's amazing creations. We finished with a prayer thanking God for all of his creations and sang 'If I were a butterfly' to sing thank you to God. Across this academic year, we will continue to further explore what spirituality means to us at St Barnabas.
Year 4 - English : Information Texts
We have started our first non-fiction unit in English this week. We will be making good use of the rich geography knowledge we have gained about the Amazon Rainforest in order to create information texts over the next couple of weeks. We began by researching the Amazon using a range of secondary sources such as fact files and websites. We then looked at a number of examples of information texts and spent time identifying key features, such as subheadings and text boxes.
Year 4 - PE: Batting Skills
Our specialist cricket coach sessions continued this week with a focus on developing batting skills. The Year 4s learned some golden rules for batting: use the flat side of the bat, hold the handle with your dominant hand at the bottom, stand sideways on and take a big swing. Needless to say, there was a marked improvement in the batting in this week’s game compared to last week’s.
Year 4 - RE: Jesus’s Authority
In RE this week, we began with a matching game in which children had to match the gospel story with the painting. We spent time discussing the paintings and how the artists portrayed that Jesus was acting in God’s name. The children provided some thoughtful answers about the miracles Jesus performed, particularly his ability to heal those who had lost hope.
Singing Worship- Harvest
What a joyous way to start a new week at St Barnabas! We first discussed why we sing and we had some wonderful answers such as : to communicate with God, to learn new words and vocabulary, to learn new sign language so we can communicate with those who can't speak or hear, to have fun and to say thank you to God. Today some of our fabulous volunteers taught Reception class some of the signs and actions for some of our Harvest songs that we will be singing in our Harvest Festival on Thursday 17th October. We sang 'If I were a butterfly' and 'Sing a song of Harvest' to thank God for all of the wonderful living things he created such as animals, plants and trees.
After-School Club- Foodie Friends- Making Rice Krispies cupcakes
Year 3 and 4 had fun making rice Krispies cupcakes today. Although they might have gone a little overboard with the rice Krispies, it was clear that everyone had a lot of fun. They worked together to chop butter into small pieces, add syrup, and melt chocolate on a small pan using an electric hob. To finish off , they sprinkled some sweet decorations on top to make them look pretty.
Macmillan Coffee Morning
A huge thank you to everyone who has supported our Macmillan Coffee Morning this morning with donations of cakes and/ or money. Every child in school was able to have a cake at break time thanks to your generous donations. Donations can still be made on parent pay or after school. We have some cakes left over so we will have a stall after school on the infant yard.