B - 29th Ordinary

Serving Christ

Thinking about the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, we hear the account of James and John asking Jesus for a special favour - they want the seats of honour on Christ's left and right hand in the kingdom of heaven. When the other disciples hear about this request, they are outraged!

Jesus calms and surprises the squabbling followers by explaining that anyone who wants to be the best must be the servant of all, and anyone who wants to be first must be slave to all, "The Son of Man came to serve."

We have challenged the children this week to consider the many ways their parents and the school staff serve them and, in return, to be attentive to opportunities they have to serve their families and the wider community.

Material World

This week in Science, Year 2 have been investigating materials! We have been testing to see which ones can be stretched, bent, squashed and twisted. The children had great fun with towels, playdough, spoons, sponges and much more. This was a great opportunity to encourage their questioning skills, along with making observations about different materials.

Stone Age Style

Year 3 were able to bring their Stone Age topic to life when they visited Butser Ancient Farm last Thursday. They saw the three different stages of the Stone Age homes (Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic) and spent time in a Neolithic home, discussing the materials used and the food that would have been cooked. Children particularly enjoyed sitting on the animal rugs and learning that food could be stored for up to 24 months if continuously smoked! They then got to try various Stone Age activities including an archaeological dig, chalk carving and weaving! A fun, exciting and educational day which enabled all children to empathise with and reflect on Stone Age life.

Autumn Leaves

As we continue our theme of autumn, this week the Nursery children have been exploring the lovely autumn colours. They have been using different creative techniques to make some beautiful artwork and develop our creativity. Not only have we been painting with brushes, we have been using vegetables to paint with, threading and wrapping with coloured wool, conker rolling and using leaves we found on our autumn walks to make an autumn scenes.

Living it up at Legoland!

Year 5 enjoyed a fabulous day out at Legoland this week.

As well as having a great deal of fun on the rides, we also attended a workshop which was amazing and really helped to consolidate our science learning on forces, especially gravity, friction and air resistance.

What a team!

We have had a few busy weeks of sport at St Joseph’s and the children have been fabulous at representing the school and making us all proud. Lots of the children have been achieving personal bests too. Well done team St Joseph’s! The years 5 and 6 hockey teams headed over to Charterhouse School for the first Hockey Festival of this year, they all showed great commitment and team work throughout and proudly cheered each other on. Both teams played against 3 other school and confidently helped each other to gain the victory, they also showed great compassion towards the other teams and respectfully cheered the other team at the end of the matches. All the players represented the school in a very positive manner and all left with big smiles on their faces which was a joy to see.

A little "Thank You"...

We just wanted to say a huge thank you to you and to all of St Joseph's Catholic Primary School Guildford for the wonderful Harvest donations that were dropped down to us.

It was such a large and generous amount and we are ever so grateful as will our clients be!

Please pass on our thanks and warmest wishes to everyone at St Joseph's Catholic Primary School Guildford. It's donors like you that help us continue to provide help to all those who need it in Guildford!

Many thanks again for all that you do,

Best wishes, Annie

Administration Team - North Guildford Food Bank

Sequencing Learning

This half term, Year 1 have been focusing on gymnastics in PE. Throughout our lessons, we have been focusing on ways to travel, shapes, balances, jumps and rolls. This week, we combined all of these skills to make our own sequences. The children were challenged to think creatively about different heights for travelling - one part of their sequence needed to contain a high method of travelling, and another part should contain a low method of travelling. Some children chose to include barrel roles in their sequences, some perfected their forward roll last week and incorporated this, and others thought about how animals move to help them. We were very impressed with their development of skills, and can certainly see some of them competing in the Olympics in the future!

Save the data!

This half term in Year 6, our computing has been focused on spreadsheets. We have built data sets and used formulas with different operations to manage this. We ended the unit with a task of budgeting and planning a party for the class. The children were given the costs per item and then extrapolated this to cover the number of people invited to their party. They quickly realised where they had to make changes when they went over budget and to prioritise the different aspects they wanted to include.

Feel the Force!

The children in Reception have loved exploring forces outside by using drainpipes to watch the gravel go down. They experimented with steeper drainpipes to see if the gravel would move faster or slower - they found out it went faster! They even got some cars to test and see if they would go down the ramps too!

Service with 4N

Our thanks to St Non's Class for a beautiful class worship this morning. The children inspired us by explaining that service brings JOY: Jesus first, others next, yourself last. We heard how figures in the Bible, like Ruth, have stood as a model for generations of what service to others and to God looks like. In a similar way, we heard about and celebrated modern day examples, like Paul Blakey - Street Angels Founder. Thank you 4N for a remarkable and engaging worship that encouraged us all to be of service to St Joseph's!

Art Puzzles

Year 4 had an exciting day this week, when we combined our Maths and Art skills during our first Art topic of Pattern! The children were excited to explore several different types of pattern, including various pen patterns and creating their own tessellating shape pattern, inspired by MC Escher. They continued their day by learning about the famous Dutch artist, Piet Mondrian, and even attempted to continue one of his art works. The most exciting part of the day was their final piece - Year 4 were thrilled to learn that they would be using dice and dienes to create a Maths-inspired piece of Art that was a bit of a riddle for their parents to solve. Can you guess the number that these works of Art represent?

Serving our School

Congratulations to this week's Witness Award winners. All these children have been commended for their exceptional effort in demonstrating a spirit of service to the school community. Well done & God bless you children!

What's on locally?

Guildford Spectrum is participating in the Restart a Heart Day initiative on Wednesday, 16th October, offering free CPR training sessions in the main reception area. This annual initiative, led by Resuscitation Council UK, aims to improve survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests by educating the public on CPR and defibrillation.

Given the 10% increase in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the last reporting year, it’s crucial for communities to feel empowered to perform CPR. The free sessions at Guildford Spectrum will run from 12:00 to 14:00 and 16:00 to 17:00. No prior experience is needed, and it’s a great opportunity for anyone wanting to learn this life-saving skill.

Report abuse