Mrs Ham's Highlights
Dear parents and carers, wow, another super busy week of living life in all its fullness at St Barnabas! The highlights of the week have been: *Our Barney’s Got Talent show this morning. We are so proud of our super talented and courageous children who took part in it. Thank you so much for all of the parents and grandparents who came along to support. Thanks so much for your kind donations to East Lancs Hospice. You can still make a donation on parent pay if you would like to. Photos can be found here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/photo-galleries/barney-s-got-talent-june-2024 *Learning about refugees in class worship as part of refugee week and Years 3 and 5 have special visits from two refugees from DARE (Darwen Asylum and Refugee Enterprise. * Our high fives netball team winning the league and will now go on to represent BWD in the Lancs school games. *Our boys cricket team crowned champions of the DPSSA cricket competition. * Our tennis team did brilliantly at the tennis tournament. *Our new after school clubs started with Little craft club and Little Voices. *We had a carbon monoxide safety assembly for the whole school and workshops in Years 5 and 6. * Our WOW group have started to create our Spirituality garden with the help of Mr Fairbanks, Mr Ham and Mrs Ham’s son. We still welcome donations of pots and plants if you have any spare ones lying around at home. Next week we are looking forward to our Sports Day on Friday. Fingers crossed this lovely weather stays. The Infants ( Reception, Year 1 and Year 2) will go first at 9.15am- 10.30am and then the Juniors (Years 3,4,5 and 6) at 10.45am- 12.15pm. Parents are very welcome to attend and we are hopeful that we will be able to have our Mums, Dads and toddler races too. Work will begin next week on a new canopy on our Reception class yard. Therefore the Reception class yard will be closed and children will need to walk around the outside path to get to and from their class, rather than through the Reception yard. Further information will be sent out on Monday about where to drop off and collect Reception children from. Yesterday I sent out information about our children being invited to sing at a ‘Cidari 10 Year Celebration’ on Wednesday evening. I’m aware this clashes with out of school activities for some of our older children. Therefore, I have opened this up to children in any year group and they do not need to be choir members, just anyone who enjoys singing. We will be singing songs that we already know and sing in worship. We would really appreciate your support. If you would like your child to take part, please fill out the following google form and further information can be found on my previous post. https://forms.gle/sahNa3JH1UFz88Vu6 A polite reminder to please park considerately to our neighbours. This morning a white car parked on one of our resident’s drives to drop off, which meant the resident’s visiting family couldn’t park on their drive. Wishing you all a fantastic weekend and thank you for your continued support, Mrs Ham
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Year 1- Euros Football Session
This afternoon, Year 1 enjoyed their first football session of 4 with Steve and Lily. What a fabulous way to celebrate and join in with the Euros 2024! They practised lots of skills such as passing, dribbling and shooting. Thank you to coaches Steve and Lily- The children absolutely loved the session!
Barney's Got Talent
To celebrate World Music Day, Mrs Ham supported by our Heads and Deputies (Lucy, Skye, Isaac and Wilson) presented a very special Barney's Got Talent this morning. We are collecting donations that will be going to East Lancs Hospice to support the wonderful work they do. All of the talents that we witnessed from our school family were absolutely incredible and we commend all of the children for being so courageous and sharing these talents with such a large audience. A huge well done to Callie the Tangled Twin , Super Summer the Gummy Bear, Haydn and Percy as the Football Friends, Olivia and Lydia as the Barbie Girls, Ballerina Annabel dancing to the instrumental version of ‘Dance Monkey,’ Super Ted and Electric Elijah with their amazing street dancing, The Friendship Band of Iris and Naomi singing ‘This Girl is on Fire,’ Jack, Ella-Grace and Chay as The Conga Monkeys, Miles, Daisy and James as The Brilliant Believers singing Believer by the Imagine Dragons, Toffee Tristen singing Pure Imagination dressed as Willy Wonka, Sparkly Sofia singing ‘Beautiful Things’ by Benson Boone, Dramatic Darcy singing ‘A Thousand Years’ by Christina Perri, Mason and James as the MJ Boys singing ‘Shotgun’ by George Ezra, Amazing Annabelle as a magician , Graceful Grace dancing to ‘ABC’ by the Jackson 5, Beau, Jess, Laila, Brooke, Charlie-Rose and Betsy dancing to ‘Who Runs the World? (Girls)’ as the 6 Golden Stars, Eliza as The Joyful Joker, Outstanding Oscar playing and singing ‘Believer’ on the Piano, R’Kid Seb singing ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ by Oasis, Archie the Arrow thrashing Mr Bloomfield at darts and The WWE Wrestlemania team of Charlie, Carlton and Alfie. Wow! What a lot of talent. Thank you to the parents who could attend our Barney's Got Talent, we hope you enjoyed the performances. For those who couldn’t, Mr Bloomfield kindly recorded it and this will be shared with you all. We wish you a lovely restful weekend. Thank you for your continued support.
Whole School CO Safety Worship
Steph visited us to talk about how we can stay safe at home. We watched a video of Safety Seymour and the CO crew and learned about the dangers of CO - Carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas that can’t be detected by our senses alone. We have to be careful if we have gas fires or log burners and check them yearly to make sure they are clean. If we suspect there is a CO leak, then we must contact the gas emergency services to come and check. We must also check our boilers and gas cookers for any changes - if the flame turns floppy and orange it means CO is being produced and a gas safe engineer needs to look at it. Always get an adult to turn it off straight away. If we breathe in CO we might feel unwell and it can be very dangerous so we must remember the 3 safety steps: have our appliances tested regularly, look for signs and symptoms of feeling unwell and install a CO alarm at home.
The Little Craft Club
After school today, Becky, the owner of Fred and Pearl, ran ‘The Little Craft Club!’ at our school for the first time. It was a huge success and the children created some amazing crafts. The theme for this week was vehicles and the children made a boat, hot air balloon and car. They used a range of colours and materials and they all looked incredible. Well done to the EYFS and KS1 children that attended this week for being so creative in their designs.
Rev Matt’s Worship: God’s Great Creations
Rev Matt began his worship this week with a challenge for us all to vote for “the best one for the job”. He showed two people or animals and asked which would be the best runner, the best fire fighter, the best world leader etc. He then read a poem from the Bible about nature and how precious God’s creations are. We spent some time discussing our favourite creations and how we could take care of them.
Friday Celebration Worship
This morning in celebration worship, we started by signing the trinity and discussing a very busy first week back after the half-term holidays. This week, we have had a worship about St Barnabas, the encourager and how St Paul was originally called Saul and how he changed his behaviour, a worship from Rev Ben about Jesus being a compass and helping us to find the way when things become difficult and a wonderful Father’s Day Stay and Play in Reception Class. This week also saw a group of our Year 6 children taking part in The Darwen Primary Schools Netball Finals event at Darwen Vale and coming away with joint first but second on goal difference, a group of our Year 6 children for taking part in a BwD cricket competition at Darwen Cricket Club and coming an overall 8th and Year 5 class for being the class who walked to school the most in May. This week, we also said a huge well done to Haydn, Carter, Bluebelle, Miles, Elsie, Ruby and Isaac who were awarded as our value award winners this week for always striving to do their best and showing respect and kindness and we also congratulated Year 1 and Year 4 on being our attendance winners and Darwen Tower as our overall value award winners this week with 275 points. We then moved on to hearing about what great things our children at St Barnabas have been achieving outside of school. Well done to Charlie for achieving his brown belt in martial arts, Ella-Grace for being awarded with a trophy for demonstrating fantastic football skills, Callie for working extremely hard and showing amazing skill in her gymnastics, Carter for achieving his silver award at swimming, Amelia for running 5k in the Race For Life and raising £600 for Cancer Research, Olivia for being an amazing Brownie, Daisy for achieving 2nd place at a recent gymnastics competition, Finn for achieving ‘Player of the Week’ at football, Lyla for achieving 10m in her backstroke, Isabella for achieving her brown belt in martial arts and 20m in her swimming, Eliza for achieving ‘Player of the Season’ in her football and being invited back to Blackburn Rovers after trialling out for their girls team, Leonora for swimming amazingly for the centurions and achieving both ‘The Funkiest Hairstyle’ and ‘Heart of Gold Award’ from the club she went to while on holiday, James for achieving a silver medal at Jiu Jitsu for demonstrating very powerful kicks and punches, Maggie for achieving a fantastic 50m in her swimming, Edward for being a super reader and achieving 100% in his reading eggs quiz, Tristen for achieving yet another impressive kick-boxing belt, Miles for achieving 3rd place in a recent football tournament, Annabel for being an incredible tap dancer and achieving her first steps certificate and Summer for achieving a first class medal for demonstrating incredible skill in her gymnastics. Finally, we ended our worship with two beautiful prayers from Jack and Leonora thanking all of our amazing staff for all that they do and praying for those who are in the midst of war and conflict. We also sang, ‘Build Up' as this week we have been thinking about how we can be like St Barnabas and encourage each other and build each other up. Thank you as always for those who could attend celebration worship today and we send an extended thank you to the rest of our school family for their continued support. We wish you all a lovely weekend when it arrives and we hope all of the Dads and Grandads have a wonderful Father's Day on Sunday.
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Year 1 Geography- A Local Area Messy Map
To finish their most recent geography unit on their immediate local area, Year 1 worked together to create a messy map. Over the last half-term Year 1 have explored the features of our local area through both mapwork and fieldwork and this led them onto being able to create the wonderful messy map that they did. On their messy map, the roads were represented as were many other features such as our local park, chemist, shops, church, post-office, laundrette, detached houses, semi-detached houses, terraced houses and cemeteries.
Year 1 D&T- Creating a Stable Structure
Yesterday in their D&T lesson, Year 1 learnt about three different types of windmills (Windmill, Wind Turbine and Pin Wheel) and their features. They then discussed the meaning of a structure and created their own stable structure which was the base of the windmill using paper cups and moulding clay. At the end of the lesson, they tested their structures for strength and stability and concluded that the structure was more stable when it was heavier (contained clay).
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Year 1 Science- Identifying a Variety of Common Wild and Garden Flowers
This afternoon, Year 1 went on a walk to identify a variety of common garden and wild plants. For the garden flowers, Year 1 found lavender, roses, pansies, marigolds and petunias. Roses were certainly the most popular garden flower that they found. They also spotted lots of wild flowers including buttercups, daisies, poppies, foxglove, dandelions, ivy, cow parsley, stinging nettles and forget me not. Well done Year 1 for super listening and identifying!
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Year 1 English- Creating a Non-Fiction Book About BeWILDerwood
This week in their English lessons, Year 1 have been working on their own Non-Fiction book about BeWILDerwood. Year 1 visited BeWILDerwood before the holidays and we thought that the trip and our experiences of it would be a good stimulus for writing. The children have created their own book with a front cover, contents page and three further pages about the activities that BeWILDerwood offer. On these pages, the children made sure that they included a heading, picture and a very informative caption. They have really enjoyed this-well done Year 1.
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Rev Ben’s Worship: Jesus is Our Compass
This week, Rev Ben joined us for worship to talk about seeking the truth. He began with a true or false quiz in which the options become progressively more difficult. We discussed why sometimes it’s hard to know what’s true and how it feels to feel lost. We learned that Christians believe that Jesus will always guide them to the truth if they put their trust in him.