End of Year Thanksgiving

As we finish our academic year in Year 2, we give thanks for all those people who have helped us on our continued school journey through Year 2. We have grown in knowledge, faith and love. 

A celebratory Mass with Year 6

This morning we celebrated our last Mass of the academic year and also the last Mass for our Year 6 family. We were reminded by Father Sean to be thankful for all of the people in our lives at home and school who have helped us on our journey this year.

Commonwealth Week

This week has been a special week in school as we have celebrated Commonwealth Week. We have thought about the School Games Values of Passion, Self-belief, Respect, Determination, Teamwork and Honesty and tried to show these in all of our activities. We prayed a special prayer to Saint Sebastian, the patron saint of sport and athletes before we started our Sports Day this morning.

Jesuit Virtues-Attentive and Discerning 

Our virtues for this half-term are Attentive and Discerning. We started the week sharing in an assembly about what it means to follow these Jesuit Virtues. We also worked in our House Teams to think about how we can ensure we are following these virtues in our everyday lives. 
How will you ensure you are listening, noticing and learning? Ensure you are making the right choices in your work and play at home and school?

Ss. Peter and Paul

The 29th June marks the feast day of Ss. Peter and Paul. We are reminded of the challenges they both faced to spread the word of Jesus and that when they were faced with difficulties they persevered. We hope to persevere when faced with challenges just as they did and remember that in times of difficulty Jesus is with us. 

Celebrating Family Love

Pope Francis invites us all to join in with the celebration of the ‘World Meeting of Families’.

To share in this we took part in an assembly to reflect on the theme of family love. We used these reflections to write a prayer thinking about what we can do to celebrate family life in the home, school and parish.

Parish Day of Prayer - Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

Today we celebrated Mass as part of Our Lady of Lourdes’ Parish Day of Prayer for Vocations, which was led by Year 4. This afternoon we visited Church to pray before the Blessed Sacrament which was exposed on the altar. We thought about the people God is calling us to be and said special prayers for Father Sean and Deacon Tim. 

Ascension Mass

Year 2 lead the School Mass in Church to celebrate the feast of the Ascension of Jesus. We remember Jesus ascending into heaven,  after telling his apostles to wait on the Holy Spirit to come upon them. 

Gospel Virtues House Meetings- Grateful and Generous

The children worked in their House Teams and explored how they could show these virtues. Here are just a selection of their ideas. 

Feast of Our Lady of Fatima

To celebrate this important feast day, we joined together for a school Mass and then afterwards had our Marian Procession to the grotto where we prayed the Rosary and lay flowers at the feet of Our Blessed Lady. 

Regina Caeli 

During the season of Eastertide, our Liturgy Leaders will lead us in the special prayer to Mary known as the Regina Caeli. This means ‘Queen of Heaven.’ Today we stopped our work at midday to pray this beautiful prayer. 

End of term Mass and Stations of the Cross 

Year 4 led the whole school in the Stations of the Cross at the end of our end of term celebration of Mass. We remember how much Jesus loves us that he sacrificed his life for us. 

We continue on our Lenten journey into Holy Week as we break up for school for the Easter holiday. 

Our Reconciliation Liturgy

We started our week with a Reconciliation Liturgical Assembly where we were reminded that during the season of Lent we can repent. We created a prayer garden using ‘sin stones’ as stones can feel heavy and weigh us down just as our sins can. As our garden grows we will be reminded that we can repent and grow a new relationship with God.

The Annunciation of Mary

Today we celebrated Mass on the Solemnity of the Annunciation of Mary. We celebrate the announcement made to Mary by the Angel Gabriel and Mary’s willingness to do what God asked of her. Our Lenten calendar reminded us to sing the Magnificat today. Earlier this week we reflected on the events of this story in our class Rosary prayer lead by our Liturgy leaders. 

St. Patrick’s Day - 17th March 

Today we celebrated the feast of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. We started our day celebrating Mass with our school and Parish family. St. Patrick was a humble, pious, gentle man whose love and devotion to God should be a shining example to each of us.
Our school was a colourful scene of green, white and gold and our green outfits helped get us into the spirit of the day. 

Live Simply

We have been sharing our Lenten and Laudato Si promises daily this week as well as thinking about how we can ensure we are being intentional and prophetic in our choices and the ways in which we look after God’s world. We have shared CAFOD’S ‘Live Simply’ prayer where we have been reminded to be thankful for all that God has given us.

Lent

Today marks the start of Lent. We attended an Ash Wednesday Service at Church where we received ashes on our forehead to remind us that during this liturgical season we repent for our sins because Christ died for us.

We have also written Lenten and Laudato Si promises that we will try and live by.

Take a journey with us to a sacred place

We have started our week by exploring our class place of pilgrimage, Fatima, Portugal. We watched a video tour of this sacred place and invite you to do the same.

We then discussed how in our daily lives we can continue to carry out our own journey with God, Jesus and Mary.

The Feast Day of Our Lady of Lourdes

Today we celebrated the feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes. We joined Father Sean and the Parish community for a special Mass in Church. 

This morning we received our traditional French celebration snack of croissants, which we enjoyed in class. 

Our Historical Figure is St.Lucia of Fatima

This week we have been thinking not only about our class saints but also our historical figure, St.Lucia of Fatima. She, along with Ss Jacinta and Francisco, saw visions of Our Lady at Fatima, Portugal. We have been thinking about how we can be active like her in sharing our faith.

                                                        St. Lucia

Mass to celebrate the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas

Today we enjoyed celebrating online Mass with Father Sean as we thought about the life of St. Thomas Aquinas. He was known to be a brilliant theologian and philosopher and is the patron saint of universities and scholars. We know that he is Year 6's class saint. 

Mass- Beauty inside is the heart of the matter

This week in Mass we were reminded that the Lord does not see as man sees; man looks on outward appearance; but the Lord looks on the heart and this has been reiterated in our class text with the moral of the story being 'beauty inside is the heart of the matter'

In response to this, we have spent the week thinking about how we can show others that our inner beauty shines as Jesus wants it to.

Benediction

On Tuesday we were invited to Church to take part in a Benediction with Deacon Tim. We were reminded that it is a time for blessing and guidance. We thought about the love and adoration we receive from God and how we can share this with others. We hope that through receiving a blessing through our Benediction, we continue to receive and share good wishes. 

Epiphany of the Lord - 6th January 2022

Today we celebrated the feast of the Epiphany when we remember the visit of the Three Wise Men to the baby Jesus. We gathered together for Mass and produced artwork based on the Epiphany. We paid a special visit to the crib in Church to see the arrival of the Three Wise Men to the nativity scene. 

Bronze Merit Awards

These children have received their 'Bronze Merit Award for demonstrating the Gospel Virtues in their work and play this term. What an outstanding example they are to us!

Advent Week 3

This week we have been preparing for our Christmas concert and have enjoyed hearing the Christmas story told through the readings, prayers and carols of each Year group. 

We have celebrated our end of term Mass together in Church with Father Sean. 

Gospel Virtues : Learned and Wise

These two children have been awarded Gospel Virtues certificates for demonstrating the virtues of learned and wise in their daily actions in school. 

Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Today we were able to go to Church to celebrate Mass with Father Sean where we remembered the sinless lifespan and Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. 
On our return, we thought about how we could try and live a life like Mary free from sin. What could you do?

Advent

We marked the beginning of Advent at the start of our week with a class assembly and thought about ways we could prepare for the coming of Jesus, the Light of the World, this Christmas. We finished our week with a lovely prayer bag service reflecting this liturgical season. Our prayer area reflects the colours of this season and we are delighted to have many beautifully created Advent wreaths from members of Oak class which will help us in our preparation for Christmas. 

Red Wednesday

Today, we remember how lucky we are that we are not persecuted for our faith and have all we need. We visited church to share in a prayer service as Oak family and the family of God to pray for those who are being persecuted and to remember how lucky we are to be able to share our faith as and when we want.

We are Learned and Wise

This week we have been thinking about the virtues for this half-term, to be Learned and Wise. We know that we should take all we learn and share our wisdom with others especially the wisdom we gain from God.

We were asked to think about how we can use our knowledge to help support the refugees as we remember 70 years since the start of the UN Refugee Convention so we worked in our House Teams and wrote prayers.

Remembrance Day

This week we have  been thinking of all those people who lost their lives during the war. We reflected on their bravery and courage in making the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms. We spent time in prayer during our Prayer Bag service on Remembrance and during our class collective worship time. Our classroom display is a reminder to never forget their sacrifice. 

All Souls

Today we enjoyed the celebration of Mass on the feast of All Souls Day. We prayed for the deceased members of our families. Our prayer cards with the names of our loved ones have been placed into Church for the month of the Holy Souls. 

The Rosary

This week we were led in The Rosary by our Liturgy Leaders. We remember that October is the month of Mary and that she is our protector. We thought about all those people in our lives who offer us protection and who we would like to protect so we ask you to do the same.

Be Proud!

We started our week thinking about how we can ‘Go Green with CAFOD’ to protect God’s wonderful world and discussed the things we are proud of that we do in our lives to achieve this and also thought about what we could do better. We also shared in a Rights Respecting assembly to further remind us of the UNCRC Articles that link to God’s and Jesus’ teachings of not being discriminatory and respecting all.

Prayer Bag Service

We enjoyed being led in a very reflective prayer service about the 'Good Samaritan' to end our week together. We were given lots of ways to think about helping others just as the 'Good Samaritan' did in the Bible story.  

Liturgy Leaders

Our 'Liturgy Leaders' confidently lead us in the Angelus prayer every Friday. Their reverence is a great example to us all. 

A special visitor!

Deacon Tim visited us this week to welcome us to our new school year and new classroom as members of Oak. He shared a prayer with us and blessed our classroom. 
Following his visit we discussed how important it is to remember that every day is a new day and fresh start that we share with God and our school community.

Go Green for CAFOD!

We shared in an assembly to encourage us to take on a green fundraising challenge to help tackle poverty and the climate crisis. We were reminded that we need to protect God’s creation and our common home.

What will you do to Go Green? We would like to use our family car less and reduce our waste.

Happy to be back in Church in the presence of God.

We were so pleased to be able to attend Mass with the rest of our school family. We enjoyed answering Father Sean's questions about the Exaltation of the Cross and thinking about our Lord. We have also listened to some new prayers that we need to learn now we are in Year 2 and discussed the meaning of them.

Christ at our centre 

We shared in a celebration of welcome and new beginnings in Oak this week. We know that with Christ at our centre we can achieve so much this year. We also thank God for each day where we can start afresh and remember this through prayer and through listening to Bible stories.