Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school at the moment.

• Key Stage 1 Liturgical Prayer

  Tue 28 Feb 2023 J. MacDonald

  The children in Y1 and Y2 took part in a Lent Liturgical Prayer. They thought about how sometimes they can be tempted to make bad choices like Jesus was in the desert. They spent time reflecting on their bad choices then they offered them to God and asked for his forgiveness

  

• Lent

  Tue 28 Feb 2023 J.MacDonald

  As we returned to school this week, we began our journey in Lent. We shared our Lenten Challenges through out Lent Blog (see newsletters) but also thought about how, as a community, we can grow closer to God in Lent

  

• Cake Sale to Fundraise for the Earthquake Appeal

  Sat 18 Feb 2023

  Fundraising to support worthy causes is something the children and families at St. Mary’s do very well.  A group of Y4 girls asked in the autumn term if they could run a Cake Sale to raise money for charity.  As autumn was such a busy term we agreed to do this in spring term.  The girls met with Mrs Bland to plan the event - when would it be, which charities would it support, how would they let everyone know about it etc.  They made final arrangements and got busy making posters to put up around school.  Then they woke up to hear about the Earthquake in Turkey and Syria and they came to see Mrs Bland to ask if they could change the arrangements for the Cake Sale - they wanted to charge more than originally planned for the cakes to raise as much money as possible and wanted to give the proceeds to CAFOD’s earthquake relief fund.  Mrs Bland was overwhelmed by their sense of EMPATHY for those affected by this natural disaster and agreed that this was a great idea and a wonderful way for our school community to support the relief aid.   Today the girls ran their cake sale and raised £359.53 for this worthy cause.  A huge thanks to the girls and their families for their support in baking all those amazing cakes. 

  

• Empathy

  Tue 14 Feb 2023

  Our Value this term has been Empathy.  Today we held an assembly so that all classes could come and share their learning about this with one another.  We all now know that ‘Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person’.  Children in KS1 used the feelings of characters in stories (The Selfish Crocodile and Hey Little Ant) to explore this.  Whilst in KS2 some children compared sympathy and empathy and thought about the difference between them as often they are confused by people - we realised that feeling empathy is much deeper and more challenging for us.  Some children wrote wonderful acrostic poetry showing their understanding of empathy.  As a school we concluded that we are all different, that we need to pay attention to the feelings of others and think before we speak.  If we can do this then we are hopeful that we can show true empathy to others.  We finished by having a quiet moment to think about those in Turkey and Syria affected by the earthquake, we prayed that they will get the help and support that they need and we hope that our cake sale later in the week will raise some money for the relief effort. 

  

• Catholic Social Teaching

  Tue 14 Feb 2023

  Many organisations including schools do things to show care for the planet local and global community and to raise funds for charity.

  What should set us apart as a Catholic School is not what we do but WHY?

  Our faith calls us to love God and to love our neighbours in every situation, especially our sisters and brothers living in poverty. Following in the footsteps of Christ, we hope to make present in our unjust and broken world, the justice, love and peace of God. 

  We can achieve this by following Catholic Social Teachings. 

  Today Mark Maughan from CAFOD visited our school and delivered a series of interactive workshops to help our children develop their knowledge and understanding of Catholic Social Teacing and how we can live out these principles in our lives.   We will be looking at this further during the season of Lent.
   

  

• Big Art Week 2023

  Fri 10 Feb 2023

  In January we had a collapsed curriculum Art Week.  During this week each class explored the work of a modern artist looking at a range of pieces of their work, learning the different techniques they used and finally producing their own masterpieces inspired by them.  This week we turned our school hall into 'Tate St.Marys' and invited our families in to view the exhibition of the children's work.  It was wonderful to see how proud the children were of their work and to hear them talk so knowledgebly about artists such asYoyoi Kasuma, Piet Mondrian, Picasso, Murakami, Damien Hirst, Keith Haring, Frank Stella and Gerhard Rihter.  Thank you to everyone who visited for celebrating the children's achievements.