Personal Sacrifice

We looked ahead to the Fourth Sunday of Lent (Year B) this week and the introduction of the character of Nicodemus. He is drawn to Jesus, with many questions about life and faith, and seeks to understand more. Jesus explains to Nicodemus, "God loved the world so much, he gave his only son."

Lent is a time for giving more of ourselves in preparation for Easter. We might seek to pray, fast or support through almsgiving. Identifying opportunities to make personal sacrifices, and allowing these little acts to become habits within our daily life, can be a very powerful way of helping to build God's kingdom, one small act of selflessness at a time.

We challenged and supported the children this week to find opportunities to enact personal sacrifices that benefit others: putting ourselves last in the lunch queue, gathering up fallen coats/bags in the cloakroom, noticing and responding quickly to requests for attention in the classroom.

B - 4th Lent

Year 3 Directions

This week the children have been getting to grips with compasses in a practical lesson outdoors. They worked in pairs to use a compass and locate North in relation to the school. They then drew out their own chalk compasses on the playground. Then they set each other challenges to follow a set of directions and see where it took them. It was wonderful to be outside learning; why not see if your child can remember which way North is?

I will blow your house down!

This week Reception children turned into scientists. They explored how far they could huff and puff and whether they would be better than the wolf! The children predicted how far each object would go and then tested it out to see if they were correct. The brick was the hardest to move, the third little pig chose the right thing to build their house out of!

Silver Stories- Communicating Across Generations

This term, Albert, Jess and Bobby have been taking part in a wonderful partnership with Silver Stories. Wonderfully simple but with the most incredibly positive impact for both Silver Listeners and Silver Readers. Children (known as Silver Readers) telephone a Silver Listener every week and then read a short story, a chapter or poem to them.

This not only helps the children to become more confident in their reading skills but also links our children to the older members of our communities and helps diminish their chances of feeling isolated.

In our RE we have been learning about vocation and commitment - what a wonderful example of this in their lives.

Thank you also to our parent volunteer, Mr Gillbert, for making the commitment and giving up his time to facilitate this.

Celebrating Stories

On Thursday World book day was celebrated throughout the school. The Nursery children looked great in their wide array of costumes. These included firemen, princesses, dragons, spacemen, the hungry caterpillar, Moana and many more. In the morning we went to watch a performance of Peter Pan by Playhouse Productions, which the children thoroughly enjoyed. Back in the Nursery, the children enjoyed listening to some stories and taking part in some book related activities.

The Mighty Widow

In RE, children in Year 1 have been learning about stories from the last week of Jesus' life. This week's focus was on the story 'The Widow's Mite', a poor widow that gave all she had to the Church. To help us understand how the Widow felt, we asked the Widow some questions. This then took us nicely into our next activity, thinking about what we can give this Lent. What will you give this Lent?

Dissolving Discoveries

Do all soluble materials dissolve in the same way? How much material can you dissolve in water? How can we increase how much material dissolves?

This week in Science, Year 5 has been investigating soluble and insoluble substances. They used an investigation to understand that some materials will dissolve to create a solution. Although it was a little messy, they had great fun trying to find out which substances would dissolve and those that wouldn't - no matter how much they mixed it!

Neverland News

Following the fun and engaging production of Peter Pan on World Book Day, the children of Year 4 were inspired to write about what they had just seen. The brief was fairly broad; they could write about anything to do with Peter Pan just as long as they included all the punctuation and grammar that we would expect at this point in the year. Some chose to review the play like theatre critics, some chose a particular character who they really enjoyed while others wrote about the plot and the story. We were so proud to see how well the writing in Year 4 has progressed since the beginning of the year and here are a few of our favourites.

3N give us a message

Our thanks to St Non's Class for sharing an important message about the different ways we can give to others this Lent. Through poem, song and drama the children taught us about giving away kind words, homemade crafts, second-hand toys and advice. All these well-intentioned actions can help to make our families, homes and schools a better place. The children taught us how the story of the Widow's Mite shows that we can be generous even in small actions. Well done and God bless you 3N!