Catholic Life Blog

Year 3 and 5 walked to the War Memorial Park to do their BIG LENT WALK.  All together we walked 496,000 steps or 221.02 miles. Well done Year 3 and 5!

Year 6 felt privileged and welcome to be invited to St Mary Magdalene’s Church (‘The Church with the blue roof’) to take part in the Stations of the Cross service on Wednesday. The children would like to thank Father Edward for leading them in such beautiful prayer and reflection.

PRAY…FAST…GIVE

This week we invited our adults into the classroom to participate in our Lenten workshop. We spent some time creating a ‘Prayer Through Colour’ where we reflected on words that come to mind when we think of Our Lord. We had many different ideas such as Saviour,  Our Father, God, Most High, The Almighty and several more. We decorated our word of choice with illustrations and words to offer up our prayers and intentions for people and causes close to our hearts. The children were each invited to place their colour-prayers close to our prayer table as we listened to our readers recite the Liturgical readings of the day.

We then shared a video of the children talking about what Lent means to them in which they told us what they might consider giving up for Lent. They also had some great ideas as to what sacrifices their adults could also make during this time – with some wonderful (and at times amusing) ideas!

The final part of our workshop was to spend some time reflecting on the season of Lent as we crafted a stained glass crucifix or a colour-scratch crucifix, which we plan to take to church next week to be blessed by Father Paul. The children crafted some beautiful crucifixes and we look forward to offering them up to be blessed during the mass.

Thank you to all of the adults who joined us for the afternoon. We understand that it isn’t always easy to attend these events and appreciate that you have given up your time to spend the afternoon with the children. These events are always incredibly special to the school and to the children and we are thankful to be able to share them with you.

The children have been really enthusiastic recently rehearsing Year 1 prayers and learning Year 2 prayers. Enjoying quiet reflection time alone or sharing with each other.

Today we have celebrated St Philomena’s birthday – We discussed how her feast day is on the 10th of August when we are on our Summer Break so we are celebrating today.

We reminded ourselves of St Philomena’s story and the icons associated with her. We learnt about St Philomena’s cords which are worn by Catholics as a belt as a sign of honour to St Philomena. We tested our resilience and learnt a new skill to create our own!

We spoke about how St Philomena is often pictured with an anchor, arrows and lilies. We decided to make our own lilies using our handprints to display on our prayer area and use as part of a special art project.

It was time to head out side and work together as a team to create a collaborative piece of art using natural materials. We collected a range of materials and then decided which would work in the best position to create the anchor shape. We added on two arrows and finished off our art work with some of our handmade flowers. We were so proud of our work and loved showing some of our parents at home time.

Year 1&2 had a wonderful time today exploring and experiencing the story of Christmas. They enjoyed dressing up and completing crafts to support in their experience.

All of the school staff were very proud of how the children behaved and contributed during the session and also received several compliments from the staff and visitors at the Cathedral.

They even had lots of the public stop to listen as they sand some of their Christmas Nativity songs.

Well done children!