Dear Parents and Carers,
What another truly fantastic week we've had, packed with children living life in all its fullness and achieving great things! The enthusiasm and effort from our children continue to make us incredibly proud.

*This Week's Highlights*
It's hard to pick just a few, but here are some of the wonderful things that have happened:

*Our Year 5 Peer Mediators have been outstanding! On Monday morning, they led a Worship all about justice and forgiveness, and then bravely started their new role at break and lunch times, helping to resolve conflicts among children. They're doing an amazing job and have put all their training to good use!

*On Monday we also had great fun singing our favourite Worship songs at a live Fischy Music Concert.

*Year 3 has been deeply engaged in learning about refugees through the book 'I am Refugee'. As part of Refugee Week, some of them were invited to a special Refugee Week Tea Party by Darwen Asylum and Refugee Enterprise (DARE), and the whole class confidently presented their learning to the Year 2 class.

*A massive congratulations to our Year 5 and 6 netball squad who won the Darwen Netball League for the second year in a row! They were undefeated in all their games over the last five weeks – what an incredible achievement!They also won the Bee Stinger Netball a few weeks ago so will be representing BWD on the 8th July.

*Reception class enjoyed a spiritual walk as part of their Muddy Monday and appreciated all of God's creation and gave thanks to Him all the way along. 


*We've seen the exciting start of some of our new out-of-school enrichment clubs, including Forest Schools, Cre8ability, Racquet Skills, Jag Tag, Craft Club, and Multi-skills. It's wonderful to see the children engaging in such a variety of activities.

*In our Year of Prayer focus, we explored fruit tea smells in class, taking time to thank God for the amazing variety of fruits and vegetables He created.

*During Worship with Rev Matt, we continued our focus on different ways to pray, reminding ourselves that we can pray anytime, anyway, and anywhere. We also dedicated worship time to Refugee Week, with some classes joining the Big Live Assembly for Refugee Week.

The absolute biggest highlight of the week was our Sports Day this morning! We were completely overwhelmed by the fabulous turnout of parents, carers, and family members who came along to support and encourage in true St Barnabas style. A huge thank you to everyone who came – your presence truly made it special for the children. We are so incredibly proud of each and every child for their determination, courage, and effort, as well as for the fantastic encouragement they showed each other.

Photos are here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/photo-galleries/sports-day-2025

For all of the news in detail from each class, please click here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/news

Next week promises to be another busy and exciting one:

Monday: Our Year 6 children will be showcasing their writing to the writing moderators from the local authority. We are super proud of all their hard work!

Tuesday: Our SIAMS Church School Inspection will be taking place. We are so excited to show the Inspector our amazing school family and how we live out our vision of 'Achieving great things through learning and growing together in a love-filled Christian family' and how we all live life in all its fullness. Thank you to the parents who have volunteered to speak to the Inspector and to everyone who has filled in the survey. If you haven't done so already, there is still time to fill this in. https://forms.gle/KUNHYgF69mgkLtM49

Also on Tuesday, Years 1 and 4 will have workshops from the Environment Agency about how they can reduce, reuse, and recycle waste, a great way to protect our planet.

Thursday: Darwen Rotary will be visiting our RotaKids to thank them for their fantastic fundraising and projects this year and to start planning for next year.

Please note, we've had to postpone our Barney's Got Talent Auditions by a week as our Sports Day ran over today.

Thank you for your continued support – it means the world to us and we couldn’t do what we do without your support.
Wishing you all wonderful weekend and I hope the sun continues to shine, Mrs Ham