Worship with Rev. Matt
Today’s worship with Rev. Matt began with a test of strength. Mr. Bloomfield was challenged to rip three different objects: a piece of paper, a piece of cardboard and a curtain. While the paper and cardboard tore easily, the curtain was more challenging, highlighting its strength and resilience. This demonstration led seamlessly into the powerful moment in the Bible when the great curtain in the temple—the barrier that symbolised separation from God—was torn in two at the moment of Jesus’ crucifixion. Rev. Matt then read the Bible passage describing Jesus’ sacrifice, explaining that when the curtain was torn, it was a sign of God’s deep sorrow but also a powerful symbol that, through Jesus, we are no longer separated from Him. The children reflected on the significance of this moment and how Jesus’ sacrifice allows us to live in a close relationship with God. Following this, the children considered how they could respond by living life in all its fullness. They shared ideas on how to show kindness, forgiveness and love in their daily lives, just as Jesus taught. They discussed ways to help others, make positive choices and appreciate the blessings around them. The worship ended with a moment of reflection, encouraging the children to think about how they can bring goodness into the world, strengthening their connection with God and those around them.
Whole School Worship - The Widow’s Offering
Today in our Collective Worship we acted out the Bible story of the Widow’s Offering. Mr Norris kindly acted in the role of Jesus, and we had 4 children from across Years 4 and 5 acting as the money givers. Each person acted out sharing a small portion of their wealth to charity, and then a poor widow came along and donated two coins. Jesus explained that the widow gave the most because she gave all she had. We all spent time reflecting on how we could give to others during Lent. Some ideas were we could take part in the Big Lent Walk and help to raise money for those who don't have as much food as us and we could show kindness to each other through our 40 acts of generosity such as donating our clothes and toys to charity. We said a special prayer for all of the things we are thankful for and each time Mrs Ham dropped a coin, we said Amen. We are thankful for our family, friends, pets, teachers, food, warm beds and God's creations. We finished our Worship by singing Rich in Kindness and Year 6 modelled the actions at the front.
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Year 2 - The Easter Story
During RE this week, Year 2 continued to learn about the story of Easter. The children are becoming more familiar with each step of the story from work in class and Rev Matt’s worships focusing on different parts of the story. We played pass the parcel and underneath each layer was part of the Easter story. We then ordered each part into chronological order from the beginning to end of the Easter story. The prize in the middle of the parcel was mini eggs! Previously we have looked at the different symbols of Easter and eggs represent new life being born just like Jesus was reborn on Easter Sunday.
Singing Worship and Year of Prayer
This morning in Worship we started by introducing the Year of Prayer to our classes this week which is about using rubbish to create sorry prayers and then throwing them away. We then learnt a special action prayer to help our love to grow as part of the Year of the Prayer. After that we had a joyous time singing some of our favourite Easter songs and hymns in preparation for Easter. We sang Lord of the Dance, We have a King who rides a donkey, Rich in Kindness and Give me oil in my lamp. We also started to learn a new upbeat song called 'He's Alive!'. What a joyous way to start a Monday morning together as a school family!
Mad Science After School Club- Super Sticky Stuff
This afternoon in the club, our future scientists got hands-on with exciting experiments, testing different types of tape, lemon, orange, and other sticky substances to explore their properties and strength.
British Science Week- Year 2- Sniffly Sneezes-Thinking about the strength and absorbency of materials.
Today, we explored the strength and absorbency of different materials to determine which would be best for wiping your nose. Using trays and food-coloured water, the children discussed a variety of materials before testing their absorbency. They used pipettes to carefully drop water onto each material, observing how much liquid it could soak up and how strong it remained when wet. The children recorded their findings and compared results, thinking scientifically about what makes a material both absorbent and durable. As an extra challenge, the children planted mung seeds in a sealed bag with moist cotton wool and used talk tactics to predict what might happen next. Some had imaginative ideas, suggesting their seeds might grow as big as Jack’s beanstalk! Others were curious to see if theirs would grow faster than Reception’s. They'll observe any changes over the next few days and see if their predictions come true.
A Disco For the Value Award Winners
Today, Whitehall Park and India Mill celebrated their success of achieving the most value points last half-term with a non-uniform day and a disco. A huge thank you to Miss Flynn, Mrs Irshad and Miss Woods for the leading the disco and games! The children had a fantastic time!
Biggest Ever Girls Football Event
Today, we proudly took part in the FA’s Biggest Ever Girls’ Football Event, celebrating the joy of football and encouraging more girls to get involved in the sport. Reception, Year 1, and Year 2 participated in a fun, game-based session where they had to dribble the ball and score in any of the four goals while defenders tried to stop them with tackles. The session helped develop their dribbling, spatial awareness and teamwork skills in an exciting and engaging way. Years 3, 4, 5, and 6 took part in a series of competitive matches, showcasing their skills and teamwork. They then tested their nerves in thrilling penalty shootouts, demonstrating confidence and precision under pressure. It was fantastic to see so much enthusiasm, determination and teamwork throughout the morning. The event truly highlighted the growing passion for girls’ football in our school!
Friday Celebration Worship
Today, we started our celebration worship by signing the trinity and reflecting on our very busy yet enjoyable week in school. This week, we launched our challenge called ‘THE BIG LENT WALK’ which involves our whole school community working together to raise money to make a difference to the lives of those who don't have enough food. Please continue to let either Mrs Wilkinson or Mrs Ham know if you have walked anywhere and send photos if you can. We have also been thinking about how Lent is a good time to give things back so we have launched our 40 Day Kindness Challenge. This week, we have also celebrated Shrove Tuesday, World Book Day and enjoyed a great variety of after school clubs such as Craft Club led by Fred and Pearl, Cross Country, Mad Science, Choir , Dodgeball and Gymnastics clubs led by Edstart. We then congratulated this week’s individual value award winners. Well done to Evie, Alessia and Heidi in EYFS and KS1 and Lottie, Penelope, Nevaeh, Seb and Laila in KS2 for their fantastic work ethic, their commitment to demonstrating the Barney’s 4Bs (being ready, respectful, kind and safe) and showing full participation and engagement in lessons. Furthermore, we congratulated our Year 2 and Year 3 classes for being our attendance winners this week with 99.2% and 99.3% attendance, River Darwen as our value award winners this week with 509 points and our Year 4 Football team who kicked off their journey in the BRFC league with three exciting matches on Tuesday evening and represented school amazingly well. We also congratulated Year 3 and Year 6 as being the WOW (Walk to School) winners for the month of February. Well done to these classes for earning the most badges. We then moved on to congratulating our out of school sports award winners. This week, it was a week full of congratulating super swimmers. Well done to Zac for being a super swimmer and achieving his Puffin award, Phoebe for achieving her Stage 1 swimming certificate, Annabel for achieving her 15m swimming certificate, Ava for achieving her Stage 2 swimming certificate, Desmond for achieving his silver and gold swimming certificates, Iris for achieving her Stage 6 swimming certificate and Bluebelle for swimming an amazing 50m. We also said a huge well done to Carter for being a fantastic footballer and Lana for being the Star of the Week at Performing Arts. To end our worship, we read a beautiful Lent prayer together as a school and sang ‘We Have a King Who Rides a Donkey’. We wish you all a lovely and restful weekend.
World Book Day- Storytime Across School
To celebrate World Book Day, our children voted for the story that they wanted to listen to and moved around school to listen to their chosen one. Miss Flynn read ‘The Monkey With a Bright Blue Bottom,’ Mrs Wilkinson read ‘The Wonky Donky,’ Mrs Govan read ‘Taylor Swift (Little People, Big Dreams), Mr Norris read ‘Sammy Striker and the Football Cup,’ Mrs Hegarty read ‘The Great Dog Bottom Swap,’ Miss Woods read ‘I’ve Broken My Bottom,’ Miss Kachwalla read ‘There’s a Snake in My School,’ Mrs Gardner read ‘Revolting Rhymes,’ Mr Bloomfield read, ‘The Legend of Rock, Paper, Scissors,’ Mr Prescott read ‘The World’s Worst Children’ and Miss Lyons read ‘Absolutely Awful Adults.’ Most of these stories were new to our children and they thoroughly enjoyed listening to and engaging with them. There were lots of giggles!
Year 2 - Character descriptions
Today in Year two we continued to explore our new book ‘The king of space’. In our previous learning, we had created expanded noun phrases and similes to describe the main character Rex. We also read other character descriptions of other characters such as The Highway Rat. From these other descriptions, we created a tool kit that included all of the features we needed to include in order to write a successful character description. The children wrote some excellent descriptions and managed to include expanded noun phrases, similes and contractions. We have been working on contractions in our grammar lessons and it was great to see the children being able to incorporate these new words into their writing.
Year 2 - World Book Day
This afternoon for World Book Day, the children had an activity where they had to decide which book was the favourite of which teacher. The children loved being nosy and deciding which teacher might like each book. The winning team that managed to get the most correct answers, won a prize from Miss Flynn. The children thought it would be easy but it turns out, our teachers like lots of different types of books.