Christian Vision

As a school in a rural location surrounded by farming, we seek to know and care for each other; to look outwards to our local communities and the wider world – caring about everything and everyone in God’s creation. 

As the parable (Mark 4:30-32) teaches ‘Great things can come from small seeds’ as we seek to ‘Enrich, Inspire and Achieve’ with our Christian values at the heart of all we do. 

This could be summarised as follows:

• The Vision has two main emphases: Growing and Caring;

• The Parable of the Mustard Seed (Matthew 4:30-32) focuses on how large things can grow from tiny beginnings - the black mustard seed Jesus refers to is a tiny seed and grows into a bush that can be 9 feet tall;

• We are a rural school surrounded by the natural world which we see growing week-by-week through the year - in livestock, in the school garden, in the school pets, and in the children themselves;

• Like the tiny mustard seed, every child at Crosthwaite School has the potential to grow into somebody impressive. Each child can grow in confidence, in their education, in their faith, and even beyond their own expectations;

• The large mustard bush also provided shelter for the birds and so ended up being something which provided care. Likewise, we encourage our children to look out beyond the school and to discover ways they can be of help to others, “providing shelter” through their caring outlook and attitudes and living out those Christian values we are especially focussing on - Love, Respect, Kindness, Friendship, Forgiveness, Peace:

  • Firstly, in our own school community in the way we care for each other;

  • Secondly, in our support for our local communities in the ways we may raise funds for good causes (food banks, etc.);

  • Thirdly, in the ways we provide “shelter” for the wider world in the causes we support (Boxes of Hope, raising support for Ukraine, etc.).

Finally, we look to the whole of God’s creation as we seek to care for it (in the light of climate changes), and so our children seek to be caring stewards of our planet and to protect and “provide shelter” for creation where it is vulnerable.

Christian Values

Our values:

We have six core values in our outstanding school:

• Friendship;

• Peace;

• Love;

• Forgiveness;

• Kindness;

• Respect.

These were selected by the children, parents, staff, governors and each half term our ‘Ethos team’ organises a half day where we do activities on the value for that half-term.

Ethos Days

A typical Ethos day would begin with a Collective Worship and then all the children being split into their four sports teams. Four activities are then rotated with the groups and the Ethos team split up to lead each group in their activities. Some examples of the activities we have done in the past include:

• Decorating biscuits with our names;

• Making bunting;

• Drama and role-play activities;

• Various craft activities;

• Designing posters for each value;

• Parachute games outside;

• Sandcastle building in the giant sandpit;

• A reflective walk in the garden linked to respecting nature.