Year 5 Weekly Blog 12.12.25- ‘Peace on earth will come to stay when we live Christmas everyday’

What a final week of full learning it has been- the festive spirit has certainly ramped up as we lead towards our third Sunday of Advent. Our week has been filled with numerous trips to church to practice for our Christmas Carol Concert. In RE, we have been looking at the O Antiphons and reflecting on the deeper meaning behind these pieces of art. Later in the week, it was the children’s turn to create these pieces of wonderful and spiritual art and the results were fantastic! The end of our week has been very festive, starting with an invitation from Mrs Tierney to join her in forest school for a festive lesson on the forest symbols of Christmas. We then finished our lesson with a story of the ‘Winter’s Solstice’ around the campfire. Christmas week had truly began today with Christmas Jumper and Bake Off Day! Myself and Mrs Johnson were blown away with the festive bakes on show and they tasted amazing!

Conversation Starters

In Geography, we have been comparing biomes around the world and the animals that live within these environments. We finished with a ‘what is your favourite and why’ question about biomes. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live and why?


Riddle of the Week

I lose my head every morning but I get it back at night.

What am I?


Let’s Celebrate

Virtue Star of the Week: Our virtues for this half term are faith-filled and hopeful. Our winner this week goes to Myles. In the midst of all of the festive madness and the lead up to our final week of advent, you have such a calmness about you Myles that is needed in times like this. Your calm and composed nature allows you to focus solely on your task at hand and to remain faith- filled throughout this special holy time of year.

Learner of the Week: This week, our learner of the week goes to Isaac for being a determined and focused learner. You have really impressed me with your article writing this half term Isaac. You have applied your creativity along with our newly learnt grammar skills and layout. You were super focused during our independent writing of this and determined to finish every single feature of your article. Transfer this into all aspects of your learning.


Notices

  • Homework- Please check the homework blog for your child’ weekly homework, including the deadline date.


  • Travelling Nativity has started to go home so please use this as a special time to connect with Jesus and to get you in the Christmas spirit! This will need to be brought back in the following school day.


  • We have began to prepare for our KS2 Christmas Carol Concert which is taking place on Tuesday 16th December. Song lyrics and recordings of our songs are on the homework blog for you to practice.


  • Christmas Raffle- This will be taking place on Wednesday 17th December. Tickets are to be bought at the office.

  • This is also the day of our KS2 Christmas Party. Children can come into school in their own clothes and are allowed to bring one chocolate bar and one small non fizzy drink.


  • The final day of term is Friday 19th December and we will be finishing at 2pm

Year 3 Weekly Blog Friday12th December

We have had a fantastic week in Year 3 as we continue journeying through Advent. Our word of the week has been rejoice, and we have certainly had lots to celebrate! We have also been practising for our KS2 Christmas Carol Concert, which will take place next Tuesday 16th, with performances at 2pm and 6pm in church. We can’t wait to share the joy of Christmas with you all.

Read more

Year 5 Homework- Due Thursday 18th December

Compulsory Homework


Reading

Only a couple of weeks left to hit your reading target- lets aim for at least 20 minutes of reading per day. You will be amazed by how much you can read in a week if you stick to this routine.


Spellings

We have changed our spelling practice lessons in school to focus more on retrieval spellings- especially our high frequency and common words.

Practice writing these words three times on the line in your BEST handwriting. Make sure to complete lots of mini spelling tests in preparation for our weekly test on Friday.


  1. actually

  2. gently

  3. accidentally

  4. wrinkly

  5. differently

  6. occasionally

  7. greedily

  8. critically

  9. easily

  10. beautifully

  11. strangely

  12. giggly

  13. frantically

  14. basically

  15. dramatically


KS2 Christmas Carol Practice

This week, we have learned three songs for our Christmas celebration which will be in church on Tuesday 16th December. Please practice and learn these off by heart.

Silent Night- French

We are challenging ourselves this year by applying our french skills to one of our most well known Christmas carols. We will only be singing up to 2:12 on the video. We have split the song into 3 verses. Year 5/6 will sing verse one which will be from 0:00-0:43 seconds on the video. Year 3/4 will then sing verse two and everybody will be joining in for the final verse which will be 1:28- 2:12. The children have all been given a song booklet of our Christmas songs.

This week....

Another fun and exciting week as we journey together to the stable. This week has been full of special events. It started on Tuesday where went to watch KS1 Nativity. It was absolutely wonderful, we are still talking about it! Well done KS1!!

On Tuesday and Wednesday our resident elf brought us a special delivery…movie tickets! We took our tickets and joined reception in the year 1 classroom to watch a short film- Alien Christmas and CBeebies Cinderella panto. What a treat!

Even though we have been out of nursery quite a lot this week we have still managed to have our two PE lessons and have completed lots of Christmas learning challenges!

Forest School

On Tuesday Mrs Tierney invited us to join her to listen to Christmas stories around the camp fire…and to eat chocolate biscuits, mmmm.

We listened to Little Robin Red Vest and Stick Man.

Click here for Little Robin Red Vest

Click here for Stick Man

Enjoy!

Worship

Advent Stations.

Advent is the four-week journey in the Christian calendar that prepares our hearts for the celebration of Jesus Christ's birth at Christmas, while also reminding us of His promised return.

This week we visited the Advent station which have been set up around school, one per class.

The Advent Stations took us to seven Advent "stations" or "stopping points" and provided us a way to ponder the mystery of how God prepared the world to receive his Son at the moment of the Annunciation.

Christmas Party

Next Thursday will be our Christmas Party, everyone is invited to join us! It will begin at 9.30 am until 11.30 am. If it is your childs usual session please bring them at the normal time. You do not have to bring any food as we will be having birthady cake with Baby Jesus. Lunches will be as usual.

Party clothes and dancing shoes are COMPULSORY! We aim to have a fabulous time!!!!!!!!!

URGENT PLEA

Nursery no longer have any spare clothes in case of accidents. If you have any nursery clothing at home could you please send them back in or if you have any items you are willing to donate we would be most grateful.

Item needed include: socks, underwear, leggings and trousers

Thank you

Finally, next week is going even busier that ever so have a good rest this weekend!

Stay safe and God Bless

Barbara

Year 1 Weekly Blog 12.12.25 - "For those who love, nothing is too difficult, especially when it is done for the love of Jesus Christ." St Ignatius of Loyola

In this weeks Gospel we heard how John the Baptist had heard about Jesus Christ’s miracles and all the other wonderful things that Jesus was doing. Jesus came to teach us to forgive and heal anyone who put their trust in him. In Year 1 we have reflected on how we can share Jesus throughout todays world. The children have offered many wonderfully kind ideas such as sharing, including everybody, looking after God’s animals and making sure we don’t litter.

Going deeper in conversation

During RE we have continued our focus on the Nativity and have discussed how there are no photographs of the special night Jesus was born, however there is so much artwork that people have created. The children closed their eyes and listened to a description of Jesus’ birth, we then shared what our minds pictured. We then went on to look at artwork from around the world and the children put these in order of their favourite to their least favourite, explaining there reasons.

Question to ask:

This week’s Wednesday Word was ‘Christ’ What can your child tell you about this word?

Magic moments

We have enjoyed the most magical of moments this week. The pure joy and pleasure of watching Year 1 take to the stage - alongside our brilliant Year 2’s - to deliver the most wonderful story and message of all. We are sure you will all agree that they did a tremendous job. They sang with love for baby Jesus and made us all feel incredibly proud. Thank you for joining us in school to share this special moment. Please don’t forget that it was recorded so you have the opportunity to watch it all again together at home with all the family!

A special message for Year 1…

Year 1, we are unbelievably proud of you. You have shown such bravery taking to the stage to share this very special story and have done so with such love and joy in your hearts. What a wonderful team you make! You should all be very proud of yourselves; well done!

Let’s Celebrate

A huge congratulations to Henry who has been awarded the learning certificate this week for being a Focused Cooper Crab. Henry, your focus has certainly not gone unnoticed this last few weeks! At the start of each lesson you are listening and ready to grow your brain. With this brilliant focus you have engaged in discussions, challenged thinking and dug even deeper into our learning. We have lost count of how many times your name has been used as an example of a brilliant role model! Well done Henry!

A huge congratulations to Florence who has received the Star Virtue award for demonstrating our Faith Filled and Hopeful virtues. Florence, you always take the moment to reflect deeply during our prayer and liturgy and during our discussions in RE. We can see how you think carefully about these teachings and how they can help you make positive choices in school. This care and respect was demonstrated during our Nativity performance and our discussions within which you spoke beautifully about the very special moment when baby Jesus was born. Thank you for helping us all to be reflective, faith filled and hopeful. Well done Florence.

Reminders

Hot snack menu - The order form is on Mrs Gregan’s blog, if you would like to order any hot snacks for your child this coming week. Please complete your orders ASAP (before Monday).

Christmas Lunch - Wednesday 17th December.

KS1 Christmas Party: This is the morning of Thursday 18th December. We ask for children to come to school in party clothes and bring a drink (not fizzy) along with a treat snack such as a packet of crisps or a chocolate bar. We also please ask for sensible shoes as the children will be outside during breaktimes and lunch time break.

Emails:

c.bassett@ourladystarofthesea.lancs.sch.uk

s.hartley@ourladystarofthesea.lancs.sch.uk

Have a lovely Christmas!

Year 6 Weekly Blog- 'Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day'

As we move towards the third week of advent, it seems unbelievable that we have nearly completed our first full term together in Year 6. As I reflect on how much the children have grown, learnt and enjoyed every experience in Year 6, it seems only fitting that the third candle of advent represents JOY. It reflects the joy that comes through Jesus’ arrival, and through the salvation he has gifted us and as we continue to approach Christmas Day, our joy grows more and more.

Thank you to the following children for such a beautiful liturgy this week...


We have also met with our Reception buddies this week, where half the class took their partners around the school for the prayer pilgrimage, following a prayer map. The children went to each station, where they focused on each stations key message during advent. It was a beautiful and reflective afternoon, where the children got to listen to prayer and scripture…

This week we have had a wonderful week of learning and practice for our Chrsitmas concert next week. The children are speaking out beautifully in church and singing their hearts out- we can’t wait for you to see it.

This week we have started to look at biographies in English and pull out its features. We have collected biographical language, looked up any unfamiliar words and looked at the importance of using choronology. In Science, we have been looking at the circulatory system and the main components that move the blood around the body. What a busy week of learning …


Christmas Bake Off…

Wow what an amazing selection of cakes, brownies and cookies! So much effort has gone in to each and every one of them and they look FABULOUS, never mind taste FABULOUS!! Thank you to all the effort you have gone to, to make our ‘Bake Off’ extra special! The judges found it incredibly hard to decide on the winner, look how tasty they all look …

Well done to our ‘Bake off’ winner! Yummy brownies that tasted divine!!


Leading Learners

Well done to William this week.

William, you work tirelessly in lessons to be the best you can be and we love teaching you as you are always so focused and engaged. Your reflective attitude towards your learning has really improved and  helps you to take your learning that step further.

Faithfilled and Hopeful Stars

This half term we will be on the lookout for all the children that are intention in their actions. Children who show great faith in themselves, others and God. We will also be spotting children who are hopeful, who show hope for the future, enabling us to trust ourselves and those around us with the decisions that will shape our future. These children are the role models of the school. This week we thank Matilda for being faithfilled and hopeful.


Helpers in the mornings:

This week we have the following children helping to take the younger children to their class:

Logan Toby Lily Isioma

Reminders

  • Bikeability has been rescheduled for Wednesday 7th January- please remember to bring bikes, helmets and coats this day!

  • We are out and about a lot next week, walking to church. Please could you make sure children have a warm coat and hat each day to keep warm.

  • We have decided as a school not to send individual Christmas cards to each other, but to instead put this money towards a chairty of your choice. Children can if they wish, write one card for the whole class.

  • KS2 Christmas Concert: This will take place at Church on Tuesday 16th December. The children will perform the concert twice at 2pm and 6pm

  • Tudor morning in Year 6- Tuesday 16th Decemeber- Dressing up is optional - but if you do want to dress up then we will need to bring our school uninforms to get changed in to ready for the Christmas concert!

  • We close for Chrsitmas at 2pm on Friday 19th December

  • Wednesday 17th December Key Stage 2 Christmas party. Children can come to school in party clothes and sensible shoes. They can bring a non-fizzy drink and a small snack such as chocolate or a packet of crisps.


Have a lovely weekend with your family.


Year 3 Homework- To be handed in Tuesday 16th December




Spellings

This week we are focusing on common exception words, words that have an usual spelling or don’t follow the usual spelling rules.


1. sentence
2. bicycle
3. address
4.heart
5.arrive
6.believe
7.Father
8.because
9.clothes
10. eight

Maths - Please complete the questions in your homework book.


Christmas songs practice

Every year, our wonderful KS2 children prepare a carol service in church for the community. The service is full of prayer, scripture and song - it really is a special afternoon and evening. The children have been practising the songs in school and have all been given a song booklet so that they can practise along with our recorded videos at home.


Autumn 2 Optional homework

Autumn 2 Optional Homework





Wyre & Fylde Dance Competition 2026

Our Lady Star of the Sea is taking part in the Wyre and Fylde 2026 Dance Competition at the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool on Monday 2nd February.

Schools will perform and receive a score from a panel of judges. Each act will receive positive feedback following their performance from one of the judges. The theme for 2026 is "Rhythms of Unity": Celebrating the spirit of major sporting events happening all over the world in 2026 where sport, culture and imagination come together as one.

The competition will mean that we will spend the afternoon and the evening at the Tower Ballroom, but specific details will be given after Christmas.

This is not like the annual dance fesitival we usually take part in, therefore auditions for this will take place next Monday 15th December, during the school day, and the dancers will find out whether they have made it in to the dance competition before they leave for Christmas. The form below is an expression of interest only and will tell me how comitted the children are to rehearsals, as well as whether they will be auditioning in school next Monday. As we only have 4 weeks to put a fully choreogrpahed routine together, attendance is vital.

Dance rehearsals taking place in school hall for 4 consecutive weeks on Monday 3:30 - 4:45pm and Friday mornings from 8:30am - 9:15am. 

 
expression of interest form

Year 3 Weekly Blog Friday 5th December

We’ve had a wonderfully busy and festive week in Year 3 as we journey closer to Christmas. Our word of the week was messenger, and in RE we explored how the prophet Isaiah was given a message from God about a special baby called Immanuel. We also decorated our class Christmas tree with beautiful baubles showing the names of Jesus, and learned about Joseph’s visit from the Angel Gabriel. The classroom is definitely feeling joyful and ready for Advent!

Read more

Year 5 Weekly Blog 5.12.25- 'Make your heart a manger so that it can be born to God'

The weeks are certainly flying by now as we travel through advent together in love, prosperity and reflection. We have just indulged ourselves into advent this week with no better way than with our Nursery and Reception Nativity performance on Tuesday. We then strapped up and bared the winter weather for some Christmas tree planting around our forest school area. In art, Mrs Mather has been testing the children’s drawing skills as they have been replicating the scene of the Nativity. We have also been down at Church for our first altar practice of our KS2 Christmas Concert, ready to fill our sacred place with song and scripture. To end our week, as a school we came together for our ‘Travelling Nativity’, again coming together with song and scripture to really celebrate this wonderful time.

Conversation Starters

In Geography, we have been comparing biomes around the world and the animals that live within these environments. We finished with a ‘what is your favourite and why’ question about biomes. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live and why?

Riddle of the Week

I have legs but I can’t walk. I have a back and arms but I can’t reach.

What am I?

Notices

  • Homework- Please check the homework blog for your child’ weekly homework, including the deadline date.

  • Travelling Nativity has started to go home so please use this as a special time to connect with Jesus and to get you in the Christmas spirit! This will need to be brought back in the following school day.

  • The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe Parental Guidance- We are currently reading this book as our class novel. We are due to finish the book just before Christmas and are hoping to watch the film during Christmas memory week. If you have any queries or issues about your child watching this film, please email me. If no emails are received, I will take this as a yes to your child being okay to watch the film.

  • Christmas Bake Off- This will be returning on Friday 12th December. I can’t wait to see (and mainly taste) your chocolatey crimbo creations! This will also be our Christmas Jumper Day!

  • We have began to prepare for our KS2 Christmas Carol Concert which is taking place on Tuesday 16th December. Song lyrics and recordings of our songs are on the homework blog for you to practice.

  • Christmas Raffle- This will be taking place on Wednesday 17th December. Tickets are to be bought at the office.

  • The final day of term is Friday 19th December and we will be finishing at 2pm

Year 5 Homework- Due 11th December

Compulsory Homework

Reading

Only a couple of weeks left to hit your reading target- lets aim for at least 20 minutes of reading per day. You will be amazed by how much you can read in a week if you stick to this routine.

Maths

The children have a sheet of word problems to complete in their homework books. You can choose any of the four methods we have learned over this unit of work but you HAVE TO SHOW YOUR JOTTING IN YOUR HOMEWORK BOOK.

  1. Multiplying 2 digit by 1 digit numbers using short multiplication- word problems

Spellings

We have changed our spelling practice lessons in school to focus more on retrieval spellings- especially our high frequency and common words.

Practice writing these words three times on the line in your BEST handwriting. Make sure to complete lots of mini spelling tests in preparation for our weekly test on Friday.

  1. taught

  2. built

  3. leave

  4. swept

  5. shone

  6. favourite

  7. important

  8. interest

  9. heard

  10. knew

  11. different

  12. actually

  13. accident

  14. occasion

  15. critic

KS2 Christmas Carol Practice

This week, we have learned three songs for our Christmas celebration which will be in church on Tuesday 16th December. Please practice and learn these off by heart.

Silent Night- French

We are challenging ourselves this year by applying our french skills to one of our most well known Christmas carols. We will only be singing up to 2:12 on the video. We have split the song into 3 verses. Year 5/6 will sing verse one which will be from 0:00-0:43 seconds on the video. Year 3/4 will then sing verse two and everybody will be joining in for the final verse which will be 1:28- 2:12. The children have all been given a song booklet of our Christmas songs.

Year 1 Weekly Blog 5.12.25 - "Prepare a path for God so that he can enter your heart." - St John Baptist De La Salle

In this weeks Gospel we listened to a piece of scripture from Matthew. We heard John the Baptist calling to the people to come back to God and to prepare themselves for Christ’s arrival. Christmas can be such a busy time organising the day itself that we can forget of prepare ourselves for the birth of Jesus. In Year 1 we have been busy preparing ourselves to give our gift of our Nativity… which we cannot wait for you to see next week. The children have been loving rehearsals and have been SO well behaved when in the hall practising.

Going deeper in conversation

During RE we have been discussing what angels are… we know they give messages sent by God.

Question to ask: What is an angel?

Magic moments

With the Christmas excitement felt all around the school there are just so many wonderful moments that stand out! On Friday we had our Travelling Nativity, every year group gathered outside, sang hymns and watched as Mary and Joseph and of course a real donkey, paraded through the school grounds. The children absolutely loved it!

Reminders

Hot snack menu - The order form is on Mrs Gregan’s blog, if you would like to order any hot snacks for your child this coming week. Please complete your orders ASAP (before Monday).


Nativity: Our Nativity is next week, 10th and 11th December at 9:30. We cannot wait for you to see the children on the stage retelling the Christmas story.

Our Lady’s Great Christmas Bake Off: This was a great success last year and will be held again this year on Friday 12th December.

Forest school: Our children are going to experience a story by the fire on Tuesday next week. No additional clothing will be needed, just please make sure your child comes to school with their winters warmers!

KS1 Christmas Party: This is the morning of Thursday 18th December. We ask for children to come to school in party clothes and bring a drink (not fizzy) along with a treat snack such as a packet of crisps or a chocolate bar. We also please ask for sensible shoes as the children will be outside during breaktimes and lunch time break.

Emails:

c.bassett@ourladystarofthesea.lancs.sch.uk

s.hartley@ourladystarofthesea.lancs.sch.uk

Have a lovely weekend!

Come to the manger..

It has been such a wonderful week in nursery as we have travelled to the manger to greet baby Jesus.

I am sure you will agree that the childrens portrayal of the the birth of Christ was truly magical. Each year when I watch the children perform the Christmas Nativity I am overwhelmed by their joy and happiness. You should be very proud…we are!

Even though we have been so very busy with the Nativity this week we still have had time to doing our learning! We are so exhausted!

We have played ‘what number’ Christmas hook a duck -great fun

How many baubles can you balance on a Christmas plate?

We have decorated the Christmas tree!

Played a tricky Christmas pattern game, see if you can have a go at home, click here

Make my shape Numberblocks

Capacity and counting at the Supermarket

and our favourite…number shapes using Numicon (we have a new number shape, 6)

Worship

This week in Worship we have continued our ‘Prophecy and Promise’ topic. Our key words were MANGER, ANGEL and SHEPHERD.

We watched a different video telling the wonderful story of the journey Mary and Joseph took and the birth of Jesus. We are so good at re telling the story – especially as this week we re told the story for our grown ups in our Nativity performance.

We had to decide if some statements were true or false by showing a thumbs up or down. Why not have a go at home:

Jesus was born in a hospital

Mary laid Jesus in a manger

Angels told the shepherds about Jesus

The shepherds stayed in their field

Maybe you could come up with some new ones of your own!

Our child led worship this week was all about the three kings. They saw a big star in the sky and we thought about the questions: ‘What could it be?’ and ‘What did it tell the kings?’.

We added our three kings to our display in the classroom and listened to the hymn ‘We three kings of Orient are’. The display is looking great – maybe next week we will make a donkey and some camels!

You will have noticed that we have not sent home the children’s white t-shirts We are going to keep hold of them so in the Summer the children can decorate them in readiness for Sports Day. If this is problem please do let me know.

Walking Nativity

On Friday we joined the whole school and some parents to take part in a walking Nativity. The story began at the Year 6 classroom and then led us all the way to the chapel, where we sang carols and said prayers. It was such a lovely event to be part of…and Mary rode a real donkey!!

Later on in the day we visited the stable again! We read the story ‘Room for a little one’. It was truly magical.

Take a look at the photos!

Spare clothes

This is a huge plea for spare clothes. We have no longer got any spare socks, underpants/knickers, boys joggers/trousers, leggings…in fact everything! Also, if your child has been sent home in any nursery items would you please send them back in. Thank you.

Don’t forget…Family Mass at church is this Sunday. Please try and come along, we would love to see you.

Have a fabulous weekend and I will see to all on Monday

Stay safe and God bless

Barbara