Happy half term
Good afternoon parents and carers, I can't believe that we only have a half term left in school and it feels like this year has flown by. We have had a brilliant last week of the half term and the highlights have been: *Year 1 and 2's visit to BeWILDerwood in Cheshire. All the photos can be found here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/photo-galleries/year-1-2-bewilderwood-trip-may-2024 *Year 2 and 4's visit to our church For all of the news from each class, please click here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/news Our Heads and Deputies told our whole school about the Barney's Got Talent show that they will be hosting on Friday 21st June. If children would like to enter, they have the next two weeks to practise their talents and auditions will be held the first week back. A reminder that our FOSB are selling Father's Day breakfast in bed boxes that can be collected on Friday 14th June. These can be purchased through parent pay until Monday 10th June. They will not be able to accept orders after this date as the boxes will need to be prepared. As Thursday 4th July is now a General Election, we will be closed on this day for all staff and children as our school is used as a polling station. Sorry for any inconvenience caused. I would like to say a huge thank you to our staff team for their support and dedication to our school family. I hope they all have a well deserved rest and chance to recharge. Thank you so much for all of your continued support and I hope that you all have a wonderful half term break. We look forward to seeing you all on Monday 10th June and I hope the weather is kind to us all, Mrs Ham
Friday Celebration Worship
Today, we started our celebration worship by signing the trinity and talking about our extremely busy week in school. This week, we saw The Little Voices after school club showcase their amazing learning over the last six weeks, Year 1&2 visit BeWILDerwood in Cheshire, Year 2&4 visit St Barnabas Church to learn about the symbols of the church with Rev Ben, amazing learning in computing, music and French through our Junior Jam sessions, and two wonderful worships with Mrs Wilkinson about mental health awareness and Rev Matt about Pentecost. We then presented Percy, Isabella, Euan, Hamza and Archie as our individual value award winners. Well done to these children for demonstrating an amazing attitude to their learning. Miss Flynn then presented all of Year 1 as value award winners this week for challenging themselves to try new activities at BeWILDerwood and representing school amazingly well by showing an amazing amount of courage, friendship and teamwork and Mr Norris presented all of Year 2 as value award winners for approaching their recent tests with amazing smiles on their faces and a huge amount of perseverance as well as being amazing on our trip to BeWILDerwood yesterday. We also congratulated Year 1 and Year 4 on being our amazing attendance winners this week, Whitehall Park as the overall value award winners this week with 329 points, Annabelle, Mason, Jenson and Elsie for achieving ‘Rock Legend’ status for being able to rapidly recall their timetables and to Lily-May for achieving her pen licence for amazing handwriting across all of her subjects. We then congratulated our out of school achievers. Well done to Callie for being awarded a certificate and trophy for demonstrating high standards of courtesy, respect and a black belt attitude at martial arts, Leonora for her certificate of recognition for her effort in working towards an award in her gymnastics, Iris for achieving her stage 1 grading at gymnastics and all of her hard work that has gone into achieving this, Ella-Grace for being a super football star and being selected as the manager’s player in her football team, showing amazing commitment to her training at Manchester United and achieving 20m in her swimming, Ed for achieving 25m in his swimming, Isaac for playing for being voted as the players’ player in his football team, Archie for running 2km in the Winter Warmer at Witton, Maggie for being awarded Olivia at Rainbows for being a superstar and always being kind, caring and showing wonderful behaviour, Lyla for her commitment to Rainbows and achieving lots of badges, James for achieving his Stage 2 swimming certificate, Annabelle for achieving an incredible gold award in swimming, Sofia for achieving her Stage 1 gymnastics award and Lucy for being awarded the manager’s player of the year. Her manager said although she’s younger than the other players, she certainly makes up for it on the football pitch. To end our worship, we had a message about Barney’s Got Talent from our heads and deputies. They told us that auditions for this will be W/C 10th June and the showcase of these amazing talents will be on Friday 21st June. Finally, we had some lovely prayers from Sofia and Olivia in Year 3 and we sang ‘Our God is a Great Big God.’ 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 half-term holiday.
Year 1 and 2 visit BeWILDerwood
Our Year 1 and 2 classes had a fantastic time at BeWILDerwood in Cheshire. They showed lots of courage when taking part in a variety of challenging activities such as den building, wobbly wires, slippery slopes, the mish mash maze, the broken bridge, storytelling and crafts. For all of the photos, please click here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/photo-galleries/year-1-2-bewilderwood-trip-may-2024
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Year 2 & Year 4 - RE: The Church
Our pupils in Years 2 & 4 had a walk down to St Barnabas Church this week. Both classes are currently studying the church in RE and Rev Ben was kind enough to invite us into church to explore symbols within the church. For Year 2, this built on the children’s learning about important features found in a church, and for Year 4, this gave a starting point for comparisons with churches from other denominations of Christianity. The children were very knowledgeable and loved exploring the inside of St Barnabas Church.
Rev Matt’s Worship - Pentecost
Today Rev Matt came in to lead a worship all about Pentecost and being filled with the Holy Spirit. As a challenge, a group of children were chosen to blow up a balloon as large as possible in 30 seconds. He told us about the events of Pentecost and how the disciples received the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is considered the birthday of the church.
Mad Science After School club- Making slime
During our final after-school Science Club session, the children had a blast making slime with the Mad Scientist. They creatively mixed colours to make their slime unique. This half term, they have thoroughly enjoyed exploring various aspects of science. We definitely have future scientists among us!
Monday Worship: Mental Health
Last week was mental health awareness week and the theme was find your moments for movement. We began our worship by thinking about what mental health is. Isaac said it is about how you feel, Lucy said it was all about your emotions and Seb said it was about how you feel inside, not outside. We watched a video all about how people can look ok but actually may feel scared, worried or anxious and it is important to talk to someone, to exercise or to take time out for yourself. David told everybody how he felt worried about his SATs but he came into school smiling so people may not have known. Mrs Wilkinson led a mindfulness activity for everybody to really focus on their body. We then discussed how we can move more. The children suggested that we could play outside, go swimming, play football and dance. We then took part in a moodbuster get active workout where we all jumped, did star jumps, squatted and ran on the spot repeating affirmations. We then reflected on how we can move more and how we can promote mental health to ourselves and others. We ended our worship by singing Lighthouse to remind us that Jesus is always there to listen to us.
Friday Celebration Worship
Today, we started our celebration worship by signing the trinity and talking about our extremely busy week in school. This week, we saw Year 6 showing an amazing amount of courage as they faced their SATs, Year 5 having a wonderful 3 day PGL residential at Winmarleigh Hall and lots of amazing lunch time and after school clubs such as Cricket, Little Voices, Mad Science, Choir, Netball and Story and Craft. We also congratulated our wonderful Year 4 tennis team (Jenson, Summer, Annabelle and Quinn) for performing amazingly on Wednesday afternoon and coming in 2nd place out of 8 schools in BwD. What an achievement! Thank you to Mr Foy for training up the tennis team in his lunch times and Miss Baxendale for taking them to the competition. We also congratulated our Year 5/6 Netball team who competed in the DPSSA Netball League on Thursday night. We are hopeful that they will qualify for the final in a few weeks. We then presented Lenny, Archie, Rosie, Layla, Neve and Millie as our individual value award winners. Well done to these children for impeccable manners, an amazing attitude to learning and working extremely hard across the curriculum. Mr Bloomfield then presented all of Year 5 as value award winners this week for challenging themselves at PGL and showing an amazing amount of courage, friendship and teamwork and Mr Prescott presented Year 6 for approaching SATs with amazing smiles on their faces and a huge amount of perseverance. We also congratulated Year 1 and Year 6 on being our amazing attendance winners this week and Darwen Tower as the overall value award winners this week with 208 points. We then congratulated our out of school achievers. Well done to Summer for being an incredible gymnast, Grace for achieving Star of the Week at Little Voices after school club, Annabel for achieving a Certificate of Excellence from Butterflies After School Club for pushing herself out of her comfort zone by trying new things, Isaac for achieving an amazing 25m in his swimming, Teddy for achieving his red stripe belt at kickboxing, Sofia for achieving an honours in her musical theatre and being highly commended, Lottie for showing incredible swimming talent and achieving her level 4, Archie for achieving his black shirt in darts, James for starting Beavers this week and being awarded Beaver of the Week, Archie for demonstrating a wonderful attitude at football, Oscar for being a super scientist and taking part in various science (biology, chemistry and physics) investigations, Elliott for demonstrating an amazing attitude and wonderful behaviour during his football training and Darcy for being an incredible gymnast. To end our worship, we heard from Rev Ben who congratulated our wonderful Year 6 team for completing their SATs, Year 5 for an incredible few days at PGL and a lovely prayer thanking God for being with us and giving us the love, strength and power we all need. We then sang, ‘My Lighthouse’ with lots of enthusiasm and thanked 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 weekend.
Forest school club
This week the children had a great time building dens which opened so much up for their imaginative play. The children created leaf tickets to enter the den. They gave each other different roles within the game. It was great to see the children all playing cooperatively together and using brilliant team work.
Year 2 - Maths
Today we carried on looking at different units of measure. We have moved on to measuring volume. Today we were using millilitres to measure volume. We explored how different containers can hold more water so they have a larger capacity. After solving problems in our book we got hands on and began measuring out different amounts of water in our measuring jugs. This helped us to visualise how much water 100ml actually was. We took some water away and created a calculation on our whiteboards to show what we had done with the water.
Reception, Year 1 and Year 2- Story and Craft Club
Today in Story and Craft Club, our school librarian Matthew chose the story, ‘A SUPERPOWER LIKE MINE’ by Dr Ranj and Miss Flynn read it to some of the Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 children. The story was all about a little girl called Femi who discovers all the special powers that her, her friends, and the incredible people around her, bring out in one another every day. We had a great discussion about the superpowers that we all have such as being creative, imaginative, kind, caring, amazing at solving problems, loving, helpful and an extremely good friend and then the librarians helped the children to make their own superhero mask.
Year 2 - Fire Service Visit
On Monday, the fire service visited year 2. However after 10 minutes they received a radio call saying there was an emergency so they were needed somewhere else in Darwen. Thankfully Firefighter Clough was keen to come back so on Tuesday morning we got to do it all again. We spoke about how we should react should we ever be in a fire. We also discussed ways to help reduce danger in scary situations. We also spoke about the importance of smoke alarms in our homes. All the children were asked to check their smoke alarms were working at home. We had water guns, wigs, hats and plenty of jokes to make this a memorable visit!