"The happiest people are those who lose themselves in the service of others."

We are so proud of our amazing children here at Our Lady’s.

During the past 2 months we have been on a ‘Mission’. That mission was to help others less fortunate than ourselves - following Pope Francis’ Extraordinary Month of Mission which began in October. The children decided that they wanted to collect foodstuffs for local families by donating towards Foodbanks. Our parishioners have already taken all the things which were collected and are distributing them to families across our town as we speak!

Our Key Stage 2 children collected items to make Christmas Shoeboxes - to send gifts to children across the world. They have done a wonderful job and we made 30 boxes which will be taken to our local delivery centre this week.

We want to say a huge thank you to families for supporting us in this.

However, it’s always the most unexpected things which can sometimes mean so much. It has been the actions of some of our Year 6 children which have really made such an impact over the past 2 weeks. Due to their entrepreneurial skills (making bookmarks and loom bands to sell) they enabled school to raise enough money to cover the postage and packing to send our boxes to countries abroad - raising an amazing £126.37!!!!

Mrs Ormerod took 2 of the pupils to deliver the boxes today and another child will finish the delivery tomorrow.

Because of all the donations we have been asking recently, school has decided not to fundraise for Children in Need tomorrow. Our wonderful children are already thinking of the next ideas they would like to lead in order to raise further money at Christmas time. Therefore we are not dressing up or collecting our usual pennies for Pudsey.

Again - a huge thank you to everyone for all your help and support for our special ‘Mission’ - WELL DONE!

Safeguarding Survey

We are always looking for ways that we can improve what we do here at Our Lady’s to ensure the very best for the children and families of our community.

We are therefore looking at any ways we may be able to make improvements to our communication around issues of safeguarding and have asked the Local Authority to help us review our current systems. We therefore have a short survey for parents as we would like to here your views about any areas you feel we undertake well/could improve upon or simply that you would like to know more about.

The link is here to take the short survey: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/NHFC3KX

But we will also send it as a text message.

Thank you for your support and please ask if there is anything you would like to know more about.

'MATHS DAY' - Thursday 31st October!

A reminder that Our Lady’s is holding our annual ‘Maths Day’ on Thursday of the first week back after half-term.

This is a wonderful day when we can celebrate our wonderful maths learning and focus on what makes maths fun! We ask that all children try to dress up as a calculator, dice, ruler, a famous mathematician - or just a number!

Please see letter below.

Maths Day letter

RSC First Encounter: Merchant of Venice

Tickets are now on sale for the forthcoming ‘Merchant of Venice’ First Encounters production by The RSC which will be performed in our school hall at 7pm on Tuesday 8th October.

This is such a wonderful opportunity for the whole family to come along and enjoy a simple version of this Shakespeare play. So even if you have never seen any Shakespeare before, the First Encounters productions are accessible for all. You may even remember some quotes from the play from when you studied it!!!!!

Tickets are only £5 and are selling fast! So either come along to school to buy your ticket from the school office or call us on 01253 762833 to reserve your ticket.

Its not how much we do, but how much love we put into the doing...

The month of October has ben designated by Pope Francis as an Extraordinary Month of Mission.

As a wonderful start to this month on Friday, our Year 6 celebrated mass with other Year 6 children from our local Lancashire Catholic schools. This was a very special time when all the children were asked to consider the responsibility of being a disciple of Christ. Fr Peter reminded them that just as Christ is the light of the world, they too are called to be lights for others. The children truly did praise the Lord with their beautiful singing. During the mass, a child from each of the schools lit a candle to signify their mission in the world. This candle was then blown out at the end of the mass and taken back to their schools. Following mass, we walked to the Parish Centre where a team from Castlerigg, lead by Sister Rose explored this theme further asking the children to think about how they are using their gifts to bear witness to Christ.

It is now up to the children to bring this light alive in their schools - how can they bring light to others? What a beautiful way to start this month of mission which officially begins tomorrow on the Feast of St Therese of Liseux.

Each of our children will be thinking about what they can do as their ‘mission’ during October. Please click on the image to reveal more from the day of mission.

We also have tickets on sale for the forthcoming ‘Merchant of Venice’ First Encounters production by The RSC which will be performed in our school hall at 7pm on Tuesday 8th October.

This is such a wonderful opportunity for the whole family to come along and enjoy a simple version of this Shakespeare play. So even if you have never seen any Shakespeare before, the First Encounters productions are accessible for all. You may even remember some quotes from the play from when you studied it!!!!!

Tickets are only £5 and are selling fast! So either come along to school to buy your ticket from the school office or call us on 01253 762833 to reserve your ticket.

European Day of Languages

On Thursday 26th September we will celebrate European Day of Languages. To celebrate this day, each class will learn about a different European language and the children have been asked to dress in the colours of that country for the day:

Reception - English - red and white

Year 1 - Italian- green, white and red

Year 2 - French- blue, white and red

Year 3 - Greek - blue and white

Year 4 - German - black, red and yellow

Year 5 - Spanish - red and yellow

Year 6 - Polish -    white and red

During the day the children will engage in activities about the chosen country and its language. Thank you for your support in this day!

Welcome Back... to a year of new adventures!

After our Summer Holidays I look forward to welcoming everyone back to school for a year of new dreams and new possibilities!

Our Autumn Term starts at 8.45am on Tuesday 3rd September 2019.

I’m sure you will all be really excited to see friends and get settled in to your new classroom and get to know your new teacher.

We are all really excited too - to see how much you have grown and changed over the Summer! We all look forward to the wonderful things ahead in this new school year, knowing that God is there to help us and give us the strength to face all the challenges that lie ahead.

We will be talking about Saint Ignatius when we get back to school - so I wonder if you can find out anything about him and his life before we get back???

School Gates…

To make all visitors aware…

Our main school entrance gates (at the front - where staff and deliveries enter) will remain locked from September to safeguard all our children.

We do apologise for any inconvenience caused - as it will mean that, if coming to office during the school day, a quick call will have to be made to ask a member of staff to come and let you in to building. Hopefully another solution can be found in the longer term, but for this term, the gates will be closed.

Many thanks for your patience and understanding with this matter.

Main School Gates

Will remain closed from now on!

Our main school gates will remain closed fom September due to safeguarding issues.

We need to make sure that our school perimeter is always secure and leaving the main gates open means that this is not the case.

We ask therefore, that if you do need to come to the school office during the day that you call the office to let us know when you will be arriving and the pedestrian gate (on Common Edge Road) will be opened by staff.

Shakespeare Festival Wednesday 26th June

We hope you can join us at our Shakespeare Festival on Wednesday 26th June. There will be games, stalls and showcases from 11 local schools.

We are holding an own clothes day on Friday 21st June, where children can come to school in their own clothes, with a donation of a chocolate bar for the chocolate tombola stall at the festival.