The children were treated to the amazing music duo, Travelling by Tuba, today. The whole school joined together for the first part of the morning to watch their concert, which the children thoroughly enjoyed, and then each class was given an opportunity to take part in a music workshop with the duo. What a wonderful way to start our Christmas celebrations!
Last night we had the opportunity to join with children and families from our Catholic Cluster of schools at St Bernadette's catholic Church Blackpool.
We celebrated a really beautiful Advent reflection based on 'The Jesse tree' in which all the schools represented one of the characters who led the way to Jesus through the Old Testament.
Our Lady's had the first reflection upon the wonder of God's Creation. The whole school had made beautiful boxes representing each day of the Creation Story (these are in our entrance if you want to come and have a look!) and last night 5 children sang (and signed) a lovely hymn about .. 'The Wonders We See'.
We were so proud of how well they represented Our Lady's. A huge well done to Reece, Liliana, Chloe, Ellie and Alana.
On Wednesday 6th December Our Lady of the Assumption will have a special visitor to school.
A gentleman from Ofsted will be inspecting Our Lady's school throughout the day. He will be talking to parents, staff and children in order to find out more about our school.
Please do try to speak to him if you get a chance. Also, you have received a letter with a link to the 'Parent View' site, this is another way you can give your comments about school.
Thank you for all your support.
I know that the children all enjoy making and giving cards at Christmas time; indeed it is part of our own preparations during Advent to send our good wishes and possibly keep in contact with those we do not see often.
In school it has been our policy for many years to ask all children not to bring in individual cards but instead, if they wish to send Christmas wishes, to bring one card for the whole class - which the teachers will read out and display at the front of the room.
With individual cards we have found that children drop them, lose them, put them in their trays or bags, and then unfortunately simply forget about them. As we break for the holiday and into the new year we then find many, many unwanted cards in and around school. This is so sad - and such a waste of money!
As above therefore, we have always discouraged the writing of cards to everyone in class. A hand drawn on is always so unique and beautiful!
So please, following school policy, can I urge you to ask children to bring just one card in for class if you want to write Christmas wishes for everyone and not waste money on individual cards. As a staff we usually give a donation to our local hospice; Brian House, instead.
with my many thanks
Miss Haggerty
Advent 2017
Advent is now here and all classes have been preparing by making their Advent Promises and thinking about how we can really prepare ourselves for Christ's coming at Christmas.
As you will be aware, our Reception and KS1 classes are busy rehearsing for their nativities - a beautiful way to really reflect upon what Christmas really means for us. We look forward to sharing in their joy when they perform these for us.
For parents, we know this can be a particularly stressful time of year for any family, particularly those in difficult circumstances and we hope you can find time to share in Christ's message of love together. One of the resources we use in school has put out a newsletter for December which you can read here. - 'Life to the Full' December 2017
Our Year 3 and Year 4 children who attended athletics club this year took part in a very exciting competition at Stanley Park on Tuesday. They were all very enthusiastic and made us so proud by the supportive way they cheered all their teammates on in every event. Well Done all of you.
Here they are receiving their certificates in assembly
Year 3 & Year 4 Athletics Team in assembly
We look forward to welcoming everyone back on Tuesday 7th November and have a busy half term ahead of us...
Many thanks to you all for your support with our fundraising for Cafod - through your 50p for the hot chocolate (School Council loved making all the drinks for you!) and also for raising money for extra reading books through your amazing (and very creative...) silly socks. A great day was had by all!
Following the notification of a space for a Parent Governor on Our Lady of the Assumption Governing Body, we are delighted that we have had 2 candidates apply for the position. This means that we will be holding a ballot to elect one of the candidates upon our return after half term. Look out for the letter and ballot forms!!!!
Thank you to all the parents who came into school on Thursday 26th October to speak to your child's class teacher. We hope you found this helpful and we would very much appreciate your further feedback and views on school.
Did you know that Ofsted have a site dedicated to this for every school? You can answer some simple questions about your child's school online. The site is called 'Parent View'. You can access the site HERE - or it can also be accessed on our school website on the Parents area on the 'Ofsted Reports & Assessment Results' button (The picture/box right in the middle) There is a leaflet explaining more about the site and the questions you can respond to - Parent View Leaflet
If you do have the time - please take 5 mins to answer the questions. Feedback is always useful and can help us to change/improve things for our whole community!
Our children who have been attending athletics clubs in the mornings will have the opportunity to take part in the Blackpool Athletics Tournaments at Stanley Park on: Tuesday 28th November - Y3 & Y4 Tuesday 12th December - Y5 & Y6
The events begin at 4pm and end at 6pm when parents will collect their children to take them home. Good Luck to everyone taking part!
We will be joining our family of Catholic Schools on Tuesday 5th December at 6pm when we will be participating in the Advent Liturgy being held at St Bernadette's Church, Devonshire Road Bispham FY2 0AJ. We hope families will be able to come along to this wonderful event.
Our Reception Nativity will be held on Friday 15th December at 2pm and KS1 (Year 1 & 2) will perform their Nativity on Tuesday 19th December at 2pm and also 6pm. REMEMBER... because of the number of people we can safely contain in our hall, these events will be limited to 2 tickets per family for each performance. KS2 will hold their afternoon of carols on Wednesday 20th December. We look forward to seeing you there!
We will be holding our Friday morning masses at 8.10am during Advent for the last 3 Fridays of this wonderful season. As usual, we will have tea and coffee (& toast) in the hall afterwards. We think these masses are a very special time of prayer during these important seasons and hope that as many of you as possible can join us for these. There are a very special way to reflect upon preparing ourselves to receive Jesus in our lives.
Yes... its that time of year! We will again be asking the everyone at Our Lady's to get a sponsor and dress up for a special 'elfie' run before school on Thursday 21st December. (No prizes for guessing the theme this year...) So get your elf hats at the ready and join us for a frosty wake up call for a good cause before we break up. Sponsor forms will be sent out closer to the date!
And finally....
We have again organised for a 'bargain' shopping trip to Manchester by coach on Sunday 3rd December. The coach will leave school at 8.30am and return from Manchester about 5pm. This is a very popular trip to the Christmas Markets as it is a very reasonable cost of only £11 for the day - and will obviously very soon be booked up. If you would like to buy a ticket for the trip please contact the school office and Mrs Wilson will put your names on the list!
The cost for this is a donation of 50p to help replenish our new reading books across school with our 'Accelerated Readers'
This is the brainchild of Our Lady's School Council children who want to raise money for CAFOD - particularly relevant at the moment as we are hearing about further refugee crises in Myanmar...
The cost of the hot chocolate is also 50p
Also being held on this day is a 'Hot Chocolate & Mallows' morning!!!
This is the brainchild of Our Lady's School Council children who want to raise money for CAFOD - particularly relevant at the moment as we are hearing about further refugee crises in Myanmar...
The cost of the hot chocolate is also 50p
If each child brings £1 on Wednesday they can take part in both of these events and be giving towards 2 very good causes.
We hope you can support us!
You will know that Our Lady of the Assumption hasn't run a Holiday Club for several years - however we were approached this week by Blackpool Football Club to ask if they could 'trial' a club at Our Lady's this coming half-term!
We have agreed to host the club which will be run by the sports coaches from BFC - many of whom the children will know from the sports clubs, football etc held here at Our Lady's. The club will run from 8am - 5pm beginning on Monday 30th October until Friday 3rd November.
The cost of the club is £10 per day.
Please do not contact school regarding bookings - but on the leaflet attached there is a phone number and social media links where you can get further information.
You can see the leaflet by clicking HERE....
