Reception: Aliens Love Underpants
We have had out-of-this-world fun in Reception this week exploring our story of the week, Aliens Love Underpants! The children have been thoroughly engaged in reading and retelling the hilarious tale, bringing the story to life across all areas of our provision. Taking inspiration from our handwriting sessions, the children have been busy making marks and practising their letter formation directly onto cut-out underpants. Over in the malleable area, little hands were hard at work shaping, squeezing, and decorating their very own playdough aliens, while our creative station saw vibrant alien portraits painted with endless imagination. In maths, the children put their counting skills to the test by matching and placing the correct number of stars onto different spaceships.
Reception: Handwriting
Our Reception children have been working so hard in their handwriting sessions! To get ready for writing, we start each session with a fun hand workout—doing thumb pushes, palm crouches, finger taps, and finger lifts to build up those vital fine motor muscles. The children have been putting a huge effort into using a comfortable tripod grip as they explore basic pre-writing shapes, laying fantastic foundations for forming their letters. We are so proud of their focus and determination!
Reception: Mark Making
This week, our Reception children have been hard at work strengthening their fine motor control and perfecting their mark-making skills through a creative activity inspired by Elmer the Elephant! To build early writing skills, the children were challenged to decorate Elmer with various patterns using felt-tip pens, allowing them to practise key pre-writing strokes: drawing straight lines for grids, fluid wavy lines for movement, and anti-clockwise circles and dots, which are essential building blocks for forming letters like a, c, d, and o. The children showed great concentration and pencil control as they explored different shapes and colours to complete their vibrant patchwork designs.
Open Days for our September 2027 intake
💙Is your child starting Reception this September? 💙 We warmly welcome parents, carers, and children to come and see our school in action. This is a wonderful opportunity to meet our school family and enjoy a guided tour with our Headteacher, Mrs Ham. 📅 Open Day Dates & Times: Tuesday 22nd September: 9.00 - 10.30am Wednesday 7th October: 2.00 - 3.30pm Thursday 15th October: 2.00 - 3.30pm Monday 9th November: 9.00 - 10.30am Thursday 19th November: 9.00 - 10.30am Friday 27th November: 2.00 - 3.30pm 📝 How to Book Your Tour: To secure your place on one of our open days, please complete our booking form: 👉 https://forms.gle/DxqPdvyXDx1Xmd918 To get a feel for our school and what we can offer your child, please see our news page on our website: https://stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/news and our photo galleries: https://stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/photo-gallery-category/our-gallery Please also keep your eye on our website for the dates of our stay and play sessions that will soon be coming up for our current Reception parents and carers and pre-school children, parents and carers. We look forward to meeting you and your child! 💙😀
Reception: Elmer
The Reception classroom has transformed into a vibrant hub of creativity and self-expression this week, with pupils diving headfirst into the wonderful world of David McKee’s iconic storybook character, Elmer the Patchwork Elephant. The children have engaged in open, thoughtful discussions exploring their personal likes and dislikes, using Elmer’s journey of self-acceptance as a springboard for understanding empathy, inclusion, and identity. Creatively, the setting was a hive of activity as children constructed their own patchwork collages and explored multi-coloured patterns. The hands-on learning extended into physical exploration as well, with pupils measuring and experimenting with elephant footprints to build spatial awareness, comparative vocabulary, and early mathematical understanding. We are looking forward to the grand finale later this week, as pupils assemble and decorate their own custom Elmer crowns in preparation for a class parade. The upcoming parade will give the children an opportunity to showcase their artistic achievements, march to rhythmic music, and proudly celebrate their individuality together as a class.
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Friday Celebration Worship
This morning, we began our Celebration Worship by reflecting on another amazing week at school. This week, we have thoroughly enjoyed our whole-school performance of Pinocchio, and across the school, our children have been working extremely hard to demonstrate Barney’s 4Bs and our Christian Values as they strive to earn ClassDojo points. We have been incredibly impressed by the children’s positive attitudes to learning and the high standards of behaviour we have seen throughout the school. Well done, everyone! We then celebrated our Barney’s Brilliant Beacons. A huge well done to Hunter, Lily, Albie and Hadi in KS1, and Elsie, Phoebe, Annabel, Alice, Harry, Emily, Alfie and Eliza in KS2. Well done to these amazing children, who have made such a fantastic start to the academic year! You have all been wonderful role models and truly shining examples of Barney’s Beacons. We are incredibly proud of you! Mrs Ham then shared a few important reminders with us. The Big Summer Weekend at our church this weekend, School Photograph Day will take place on Wednesday 16th September, followed by our Macmillan Coffee Morning on Friday 25th September. Our lunchtime and after-school clubs have also now gone live on Arbor and are available to book. To bring our worship to a close, we were treated to some beautiful prayers from Annabel and Seb. Thank you to everyone who joined us for Celebration Worship this morning, and an extended thank you to all of our families for your continued support, both this week and every week. We wish you all a wonderful and restful weekend! 🌟
Reception Self Portraits
Our Reception children have been busy showcasing their artistic talents and fine motor skills through self-portraits this week. We spent time looking closely into mirrors, looking at our unique facial features—from the shape of our eyes and eyebrows to our hair and smiles. Working with fine liners requires precision and steady hands and the children rose to the challenge brilliantly, capturing detail and personality in every drawing. We are extremely proud of their hard work. Their fantastic self-portraits will soon be displayed in our infant corridor for everyone to see!
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Reception: The Colour Monster
The children have been completely captivated by The Colour Monster story this week, diving headfirst into the rich world of feelings. Through the story, they have learned all the different names for our emotions and spent time discussing when and why someone might feel them—from feeling bright yellow happiness when playing with friends to quiet blue sadness when missing someone. Channeling this understanding into their creative work, the children have begun to design their own unique monsters, carefully colouring and describing them with fantastic vocabulary to match their personalities. To top it all off, some of the children have developed their fine motor and observational skills by drawing their very own versions of the Colour Monster, demonstrating both impressive artistic talent and a wonderful growing emotional toolkit.
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Reception's First Week!
What a fantastic first week it has been! We could not be prouder of how our new Reception children have settled into school life. They have already proven to be a wonderful addition to our school family. Over the past few days, the children have been achieving great things—building new friendships, exploring their classroom, and showing incredible courage as they adapt to new routines and big changes. Seeing their confidence grow each day has been an absolute joy. We are so excited for a full week next week packed with fun, discovery, and learning!
Behaviour Update
Dear Parents and Carers, welcome back everyone! It has been wonderful to see the children looking so smart in their uniforms and being ready to learn. They have all come into school beautifully and behaved so well in worship this morning. A special welcome to our new Reception children who settled so well this morning and we are looking forward to our second group of children this afternoon. It was fantastic to see so many of our previous Year 6 children as they came to say hello and have a hug before starting at high school tomorrow. We wish all of our previous Year 6 children all the luck in the world as they start their high school journey this week. Remember, keep achieving great things and living life in all its fullness! Please find attached to class dojo a behaviour update document, which details some exciting updates to our school behaviour policy. We officially launched this new system during worship this morning! Because of this, you may have already noticed instant notifications popping up on your Class Dojo app today when your child was awarded a point. As outlined in the letter, we are moving away from our traditional "values points" and will now be using Class Dojo points to track and reward positive behaviour across the school. This means you will no longer have to wait for physical values awards to come home; instead, you will be able to see daily updates of your child's wonderful behaviour at the click of a button. Please take a few minutes to read the letter in full to learn more about: *How children earn points (such as following the "Four Be's" and demonstrating our Christian Values). *The exciting new individual, class, and house rewards. * Important adjustments to our Friday Celebration Worship and how we celebrate out-of-school achievements. Thank you for your continued support and we welcome your feedback!
Welcome Back Worship
It was wonderful having all of the children back today in worship. Mrs Ham welcomed everybody back to school and reminded us of our Christian values. We linked them to our school rules and recapped how to show our best behaviour around school. We also learnt about our new class dojo behaviour system. Some of the children were invited to the front to demonstrate their favourite morning greetings, and we ended the worship with our much-loved school rules song.
Welcome Back: Supporting Children's Return to Routine
School reopens for our children on Wednesday 2nd September. Returning to school after a break can be a significant adjustment for children and young people, particularly when routines, concentration and social confidence need time to rebuild. Our latest #WakeUpWednesday guide supports families, carers and education professionals with practical ways to make the transition smoother. The guide explores: • Restoring sleep and morning routines gradually • Creating predictability through clear expectations • Preparing school essentials in advance • Encouraging responsibility in age-appropriate ways • Supporting healthy nutrition, wellbeing and self-regulation • Reconnecting with learning, friendships and familiar routines With expert insight from Adam Gillett, Associate Vice Principal for Personal Development at Penistone Grammar School, this resource offers supportive ideas to help children return to school feeling more confident and prepared. Access the guide: https://vist.ly/5g6hq #Education #StudentWellbeing #BackToSchool #Safeguarding
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