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Design Technology Products
Good afternoon parents and carers, our children have been working really hard on their design and technology skills over the last few weeks to create products that can bought at our Christmas Fair. They are available to purchase on parent pay for £2.00 each, which will help to cover some of the cost of the materials used. Reception: Wooden christmas decorations Year 1: Christmas moving books Year 2 : Christmas puppets Year 3: Christmas pouches Year 4: Christmas stockings Year 5: Christmas cushions Year 6: Christmas loop games
Whole School Celebration Worship
This week has been full of joy, community and Christmas spirit across our school! We started our celebration worship by lighting our first Advent candle together. Mrs Ham also thanked all the children and staff for decorating Christmas trees across school and highlighted a special moment when Phoebe, our youngest child in school, put the star on top of the tree in the school hall. We also said a huge well done to Reception who did an incredible Nativity performance. We also celebrated a couple of children who proudly represented our school at a local care home, singing for the residents and spreading Christmas cheer. We also had a fantastic time at the pantomime this week so a big thanks to Mrs Wilkinson for organising it. This week, our Values Awards were presented to the following children: all of Reception for their fantastic performance, Eleanor in Year 1, Teddy in Year 2, James in Year 3, Arabelle in Year 4, Sophia in Year 5 and Isabelle in Year 6. These children have been working so hard, following our 4’Bs and demonstrating Christian values. Mr Mealor also awarded Alexis, Miles, James, Harriet and Charlie with pen licenses for excellent progress in their handwriting. We also celebrated our Team Values Points with India Mill finishing in fourth place, River Darwen in third place, Whitehall Park in second place and Darwen Tower in first place! Mr Bloomfield also announced our first Times Table Rock Stars Winners: Charlie in Year 3, James in Year 4, Ivy in Year 5 and Charlie in Year 6. Our overall winners were Year 6! Well done. We are very proud of all the children who received special sports awards this week. Ava received Squirrel of the Week for her kindness. Zachary achieved his Stage 2 swimming certificate. Charlie was named Player of the Week for his excellent goal scoring. Desmond and Iris both competed in swimming events and placed in the top three, earning several medals. Thea was recognised for her fantastic balancing skills in gymnastics. Olivia was awarded the Olivia doll at Rainbows for her hard work. Vienna achieved her Stage 5 swimming certificate for completing 400m. Finn was named Player of the Week for his good passing skills. Willow achieved an impressive 19 skills in gymnastics. Luna earned the red belt in kickboxing. James received the Wilson Cup Trophy after finishing second with fewer players and also swam an impressive 50 metres. Grace was celebrated for helping others and persevering. Mollie was awarded the Claire doll for being helpful. Jack earned Captain of the Month for his encouragement, discipline and leadership. Tristan earned both his blue and purple belts in kickboxing and completed three minutes of continuous punching. Harriet was praised for her amazing progress in MMA. Lilly achieved a distinction in her Grade 1 acting school exam. Lila reached the finals of a dance competition, placing first in improv, first in commercial and second in lyrical. Our KS2 football team also showed great resilience this week. After losing their first match 7-0, they came back stronger to draw 2-2 in their next game. The winners of the Walk to School Challenge was also won by Reception, well done! We also celebrated our attendance winners this week which are Year 2 and Year 3. We have several exciting events coming up. The Lantern Parade will take place this Saturday in Whitehall Park. Our Christmas Fayre will be held next Wednesday in the school hall. The Christmas Carol Service will take place next Sunday. We also have an Advent Art competition with submissions open until Wednesday. Year 1 and Year 2 are performing their Christmas Cracker Show on Thursday and Friday. Year 1 are continuing to collect Christmas Hamper donations for the Darwen Asylum Refugee Enterprise. We are so proud of our wonderful children and look forward to another week of joy and celebration through our Advent journey.
Year 5 - French
The children continued to develop their understanding of the French language by exploring the vocabulary and grammar associated with sport. They expressed their sporting preferences through written and oral sentences, explaining themselves through language such as facile (easy), ennuyeux (boring) and amusant (fun).
Year 5 - Geography
In geography, the children worked in groups to determine the correct features of a mountain before using their artistic skills to draw a labelled diagram in their books. We then went on to explore how mountains are formed by the ever shifting outer crust floating on the liquid rock inside the mantle before describing the different types of mountains that can be found on Earth.
DPSSA Football League
Some super game play this evening down at the DPSSA Football League at Witton. Our first game was against Ashleigh when we unfortunately lost 7-0 . Our second game was against Holy Trinity and through pure grit and determination we can away with a draw.
Snow White Pantomime
The children had a brilliant time today at Blackburn Empire Theatre. The whole school watched Snow White. It was wonderful to see their faces light up, Christmas is in full swing at St Barnabas! All of the photos will be uploaded shortly to here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/photo-galleries/snow-white-pantomime
Year 5 - Snow White
The children had a great time at Blackburn Empire Theatre watching the pantomime Snow White. The children enjoyed every minute as they heckled the evil queen Horibella, celebrated the love of Prince Charming and Snow White and tried in vain to warn Tilly that there was a ghost behind her. They sang and danced along to every song and during the intermission, the children had an ice lolly.
KS2 Football Practice
Today’s football session focused on using bounce back players to create overloads, giving the children the chance to develop their passing accuracy, movement off the ball and tactical awareness. They worked on making quick decisions, supporting teammates and finding space to keep possession under pressure.
Year 5/6 Sportshall Athletics Trials
Our first Sportshall Athletics trial for Years 5 and 6 took place this week. The children mainly worked on their field events such as chest push, javelin, ling jump and triple jump. They developed their techniques by working on hip thrust and swinging their arms when jumping. We finished with sprint relays and the children really encouraged each other and thoroughly enjoyed the session.
Year 5 - Online Safety
We continued our exploration of the online world by discussing the popular computer game Roblox. The children’s talked about their experiences and we considered how to stay safe during multiplayer experiences, how best to deal with friend requests alongside the financial elements of robux online payments.
Year 5 - RotaKids
Darwen Rotary Club visited us again to inspire us for our next project in the new year. We talked about how our shoebox collections helped refugees in Darwen and further ideas on how to support our school and international communities. The children were inspired by the principles and ideals of the Rotary Club and are already full of ideas for the future. We also received badges and certificates confirming our role as RotaKids.
Year 5 - Geography
We started our geography unit on mountains by revisiting past knowledge of the topic. The children’s mind maps included names of famous mountains, their height, their climate and where they are found. Then we moved onto defining a mountain as a steep landform 600m above the ground before using atlases to find the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents (the seven summits).