WORKING WITH CAFOD HEADQUARTERS

We had a visit from a man who works for CAFOD Headquarters in London, came to visit our school to speak specifically with the CAFOD Club. The CAFOD Club has been up and running for two years now, and we are the first official Primary School CAFOD Club in the UK. We have supported CAFOD develop resources for their website, and resources to send out to school – so that all other Catholic schools can start-up their own CAFOD Clubs. The children took the opportunity to show CAFOD what we have been learning about in school, and to show them what an assembly by the St. Francis CAFOD Club looks like! We look forward to continuing to support CAFOD, helping them get important messages out to more young people!

 

Visits to a local Synagogue and Mosque…

Choir singing at Mayoral Service

Our fantastic choir were honored to be invited to sing at the mayor’s service at St George’s Church in Preston.

Carol singing at Bushell House

The choir entertained the residents of Bushell House in Goosnargh with a selection of Christmas carols. They enjoyed chatting to the lovely residents afterwards.

 

 

Developing a CAFOD Club toolkit with CAFOD

Gemma, from CAFOD headquarters, London, came to spend a full day in our school to learn about our Catholicity, RE work and CAFOD club successes. We are helping CAFOD develop resources for all school globally to use. This is a super opportunity for our children. Have a look at our first mention on the website…

 

12th June 2019

RE Day ‘ Feeding the 5000’ 

  

The children in Year 2 joined together with other groups of Year 2 children from schools in our small schools cluster. The schools met at St Mary’s & Blessed George Haydock Catholic Church, in Cottam. The theme of the day was the story of Jesus ‘Feeding the 5000’. The children spent all day together, taking part in several fun filled activities, ending with a mass in the church. The children made puppets, created a drama, made prayer cards and created a fishy piece of art work. The children made lots of new friends from the different schools and enjoyed their day out, learning about giving to others and trusting in God. It is a fulfilling experience for the children to link together with other local schools and learn together as children of God. The children came away from the day sharing stories and their experiences. We look forward to linking up with the small schools cluster next year.

A Sporting day supporting Syrian refugees…help us to help them donating baby nappies, toys and clothes. Thank you!

Year 7 Welcome Mass at Our Lady’s

It was lovely to see Luke, Millie, Ellie and Tallulah at Our Lady’s. They have settled into high school life very well. I took two of our Year 6 children to the Mass and we met our other friends from our small school Catholic Cluster.

We are very lucky to be part of a Catholic small school cluster. Miss Deakin has meetings with other head teachers from small Catholic schools and together we plan many exciting trips and reflective experiences. Children in Year 2 get to know and make friends from other schools as we start of journey together throughout school. It is lovely to meet up with our friends from other schools. There are seven schools in total and we have another exciting year planned, including a trip to a Synagogue, a Laydewell retreat day, Metanoia Day, Beacon Fell creation day, Year 3 Open Air Mass and much more. We visit each other and enjoy a mixture of new experiences together.

We are also part of the Longridge cluster of schools and we are planning a superb Remembrance performance for next November with 14 other schools. The head teacher at Barnacre Rd, Mr Wallis,  is passionate about a joint performance at Preston Guild Hall and we are all on board. Information will be coming soon!

Our annual Advent Service at Our Lady’s Catholic High School is wonderful and our children always sing with such heart. Individual Preston Lancaster Diocese Primary schools take part in the service, which is always spiritually moving. We are fond visitors at Our Lady’s, linking with another range of Primary school to pray and learn together. We also visit there to watch performances and to meet authors.

Trolls Village Float-yes, we came 2nd!

Thank you to Mrs Hamer and the team of amazing parents who have worked so hard on our floats. Pictures of the floats can be found n school. I couldn’t take any because I was roller booting behind! Thank you to our friend Alex Johnson, for organising such a great day-again! Alex was also part of Preston College performers who performed a super Puss in Boots pantomime in school at Christmas.

 

 

This year, we have had great fun attending and participating in the Goosnargh Festival (of which our Star Wars float came third!), Longridge Field day, Longridge Show and the Grimsargh Field Day. We had a St.Francis’ stall at all of these events and it was wonderful to talk to the community about our school. We enjoyed singing and playing in the school band at the Goosnargh Festival Day and we join in with all community events as possible. We thank all of  our parents and families who support school at these events. We even have our two year olds distributing leaflets!

 

At.St.Francis,’ we love to work with other schools and the community. We have visitors from other countries who come to experience schooling in England and we have strong links with local schools and small Catholic schools of similar size. We support each other by sharing staff training, coaching staff from other schools and sharing skills and expertise. The children visit other schools and schools visit us. Recently, Year 4 linked with other children in Year 4 from our Catholic schools cluster and went to Great Eccleston Scout Hut for a day of Year of Mercy education. Beacon class are going to visit Queen’s Drive school and are going to a Sikh Temple for the day. We work closely with our high schools and regularly attend sporting events, drama events and workshops. The French lessons were very popular and we are soon taking part in a maths challenge. Goosnargh and Whittingham Festival day will be wonderful as we collaborate with the community and enjoy our Star Wars float. Parents of our school have been busy creating the float and we look forward to the Mayor of Preston opening our Pre-School. We regularly fundraise for local and global charities as part of our service to others and we invite our local rest home residents to come to our coffee morning concerts.

 

 

The Queen’s 90th Birthday Street Party

We welcomed all to join us for our street party and it was a beautiful day to get together. Children ate their lunch outside with visitors and it was a great opportunity to enjoy each other’s company.

Village Festival Fun!

What a wonderful day we have had today! Our school band and choir performed many pieces at the Goosnargh Festival Concert. We played alongside other artists, schools and Preston College. The Mayor was there and was incredibly impressed by the musical excellence our children displayed. The children were a credit to us and their excellent  behaviour was commented upon many times. I am so proud of them all. Please see our video below. We look forward to being in the paper again so keep looking for the article!