Our first worship of 2022: Epiphany
Today, we learnt about the Epiphany. An epiphany is like a lightbulb moment. The 3 wise men or 3 magi had an epiphany about Jesus being born. Mrs Ham read a story called ‘One hump, 2 humps’ which the children really enjoyed acting out. The wise men followed a star to find Jesus. When they arrived in Jerusalem, they asked King Herod where Jesus resides. King Herod was very worried and decided he wanted to meet Jesus. He asked the wise men to tell him where Jesus was. King Herod plotted to kill Jesus. When the wise men arrived at the stable, the wise men gave Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. In the night, the wise men dreamt about King Herod’s evil plan. They decided to not tell King Herod where Jesus was to protect him. The gifts that the kings gave Jesus were symbolic. Gold is a gift fit for a king; frankincense is a fragrance used by a priest and myrrh is a sweet liquid that is rubbed gently into someone who has died. This symbolises that the kings knew God’s plan. Mrs Ham asked the children to discuss what their special gifts are. These could be kindness, showing love and making people smile. The meaning of the epiphany is how everyone is important and God loves everyone.
Carol singing in the sunshine!
We have been getting into the Christmas spirit during our final whole school worship before Christmas!
The magical Christmas Jigsaw
We are so proud of Year 1 and 2 for their amazing performance of ‘The Magical Christmas Jigsaw’. They were all super stars! ⭐️
Year 1 Nativity
Our Year 1 children made us all so proud with their wonderful Nativity. They sang beautifully and said their lines clearly and with confidence. The parents and grandparents loved it. You are all superstars!
Celebration Worship
This morning in our Celebration Worship we heard how each class has been living life in all its fullness this week. We also presented several awards that children have achieved out of school. Mrs Govan presented awards to the winners of our Advent Art competition and will be displaying all of the Advent Artwork in the Rose Garden in Whitehall Park today. Each class will be going to see the artwork next week and will be singing Christmas songs based on the artwork. We finished off our Worship with some beautiful and thoughtful prayers from several children and sang Christmas carols. Well done everyone, what another super week!
Year 3’s Advent Worship
In our class Worship we lit our second Advent candle and thought about those who might be feeling lonely this Christmas. We then prayed for them and thought about how we can show kindness to those who are feeling lonely.
Peace at Christmas worship
The second Sunday in Advent focuses on Peace. Today we have lit our second Advent candle. It is important to take a bit of time to have some peace during such a busy time of year. It is important to remember the meaning of Christmas and why we celebrate it. We looked at a picture today and discussed what we can see. The children discussed how the animal looked “heartbroken…sad…lonely.” The artist painted this to reflect loneliness at Christmas. We discussed why people may feel lonely at this time of the year. The little girl on the picture is trying to encourage the animal to come down. The girl is showing the animal love and kindness. This week we will be focussing on how we can bring peace and how we can reach out to those who are lonely. Our Rota kids in Year 5 are going to be making cards for people in care homes and our choir will be singing at Whitehall park to bring some Christmas cheer.
Friday Celebration Worship
In today’s celebration worship, our youngest member of the school Iris helped us to finish off our Christmas tree by putting the star on the top! We celebrated lots of sporting and personal achievements from our children and talked about our Christian value of Respect and especially how important it is to show this value to others over the Christmas period.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Every child in school helped to decorate the Christmas tree yesterday. This morning in Worship, Iris, our youngest child in school got to put the star on top of the Christmas tree. It certainly is starting to look, feel and sound like Christmas at St Barnabas.
Advent worship with Rev Nick
Today we celebrated the start of advent with a visit from Rev Nick. He read us a Bible story about Zechariah and Elizabeth who had to wait a very long time to have a baby. We talked about patiently waiting and being hopeful as we lit the first candle of Advent. We reflected on how we can bring hope to others this Advent and sang 'Shine from the inside out'.
Knife Angel Message
Two of our WOW (Worship our way) group members told our whole school, in Worship on Friday, about the Knife Angel. They attended a conference at Blackburn Cathedral a couple of weeks ago and learnt about angels being special messengers and they particularly focused on the special Knife Angel. It is made up of over 100,000 knives that have been used in knife crimes around the country. Many of the knives have writing calved into them which are messages asking for forgiveness to the victims and their families from the person who used the knife. The message is to try to eliminate knife crime in our local area and a knife amnesty box is next to it to encourage youngsters to surrender any weapons they may have. Most knife crimes occur by accident and it’s usually the person carrying a knife that becomes injured. Thank you to our WOW group members for delivering the important message of the Knife Angel to our school family. We hope this will discourage any of our children from carrying weapons when they are older. The Knife Angel will be at Blackburn Cathedral till 30th November if you are in the area and would like to admire it.
Celebration Worship
Today in celebration worship, we revisited our focus from Monday’s whole school worship which was tolerance. We reflected on how we had lived this out by showing respect to each other and celebrating each other’s differences. We heard from some members of WOW group who told us about the knife angel and it’s very important message. The knife angel is currently outside Blackburn Cathedral until 30th November. We also heard from Mrs Govan who told us about a wonderful advent art competition that the children can take part in. We are asking the children to create a piece of artwork to show a part of the Christmas story e.g. The 3 wise men, the star of Bethlehem or baby Jesus. This can be done in any media such as painting, drawing, photograph, collage and 24 pieces will be selected to go on display at Whitehall park. The deadline is Monday 6th December. Finally, we celebrated some out of school achievements and Mrs Ham read some of the beautiful prayers that our children have added to our prayer tree.