Summer Reading Challenge 2024
This morning, Angela came in to invite us all to join in with ‘The Summer Reading Challenge 2024- Marvellous Makers’. This is a national reading activity, which aims to encourage a love of reading in children and develop their literacy skills throughout the summer. To get started, drop in to either Darwen or Blackburn Library. Angela told us that once you’re enrolled, each member needs to read 6 library books (or eBooks/eAudio), with stickers or a prize being awarded for each book that is read and returned. Prizes will include origami paper and pencil crayons. Those who complete the scheme (all 6 books), will receive a medal and a certificate that they can bring into school in September and have presented in Friday celebration worship. Angela asked us why it would be amazing if we all completed the Summer Reading Challenge. Our children said that reading can help us to learn new words, increase our imagination, get us excited so our hearts will beat fast and help us to challenge our brains. We look forward to hopefully presenting lots of ‘Summer Reading Challenge’ certificates and medals in September. Extra Information To enrol, simply go to your nearest Blackburn with Darwen library and complete an application form between 1st July & 30th September. Enrolment in the scheme is free of charge, and involves children borrowing books on a library card. If your child does not yet have a library card, we would encourage you to take this opportunity to enrol them as a library member. This is a quick process, and you will simply be asked to complete and sign another form. However, those children without library cards may still join the Summer Reading Challenge, and temporary arrangements will be put in place to allow them to borrow books.
Rev Matt’s Worship - Seeking Truth
Rev Matt shared with us the fantastic news of his recent ordination. Some of the children even helped with a little re-enactment. He explained that his duty as a Christian is to live a life of truth. We listened to the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego; three men of faith who were punished for refusing to turn their backs on God in order to worship an image of the king. Rev Matt spoke about how it isn’t always easy for us to stand by our beliefs and we discussed times when this might be particularly difficult.
Growth Mindset Assembly
Today, our school had a very special assembly by Liz from Growth Mindset. The children explored the differences between fixed and a growth mindset. The children understood the advantages of growth mindset and how we can channel our growth mindset to overcome challenges and hurdles that we face daily. Liz shared a story about her uncle David who overcame many challenges to compete in the Para Olympic Games which demonstrated the powers of growth mindset. The children were faced with a variety of scenarios and shown how a growth mindset can help achieve and succeed. Just remember: “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step” A huge thank you to Liz from Grow Your Mindset!
Fundraising - East Lancs Hospice
A huge well done to the whole of St Barnabas, we have raised a massive £277.30 for the East Lancs Hospice through our Hop, Skip and Jump event and our Barney's Got Talent Show. The money will be used to help care for those in need and will support the wonderful staff that do an amazing job within the health care system.
Friday Celebration Worship- Whole School
Today, in celebration worship, we began by signing the Trinity and discussing the busy week. Mrs Ham thanked the children who sang at Blackburn Cathedral for the celebration of Cidari's 10-year anniversary. These children were recognised for demonstrating our Christian value of courage. All classes were praised for their transition day to new classes. They showed bravery and respect throughout. The class teachers presented value awards to the following students for always doing the right thing and trying their best in everything: Joey from reception, Harry from Year 1, Harry from Year 2, Darcy and Ivy from Year 3, Eden from Year 4 and Brooke from Year 5. Well done!. Year 1 and Year 4 won the attendance award this week. Well done for ensuring you are always in school, ready to learn. We also celebrated children for their extracurricular activities outside of school. Many showcased their trophies, medals and certificates in swimming, football, ballet, brownies, dancer for the year, gymnastics, performing arts, horse riding, Iron Kids Run, and lifeguarding skills. The Wellbeing warriors presented the children with walk to school badges and we sang' School Rules' which the children enjoyed. To conclude our worship, prayers were led by Lilly, Olivia and Mrs Ham.
Year 2 - 3 Transition Day-
Year 2 - Year 3 transition day was incredible! The children were amazing. They kicked off the morning with Junior Jam, where they played music, learned French, and explored computing. In the afternoon, they created a fantastic piece of artwork to showcase in September—a personalised pencil crayon highlighting what makes each of them unique and designed their bookmark. They also demonstrated their best handwriting and shared their favourite books and authors. We also visited the Junior yard where they will be playing in September, and they felt so grown up. They can’t wait to play in the yard with the other children and make new friends. They are eagerly anticipating their move to Year 3, and I am super excited for the new school year!
Rev Ben’s Worship - Living a Life of Truth
This week, in Rev Ben’s worship, we learned the importance of telling the truth and we discussed the consequences of lying. We found out that part of being a Christian is aiming to live a life of truthfulness. We also reflected on ways we could stay truthful in our daily lives.
Year 2 - Football Session
This afternoon, Year 2 were very lucky to have Stephen and Lily come in and take us for a football session. The children got stuck in and really enjoyed playing. It was lovely to see some children playing football for the first time!
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
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.