CAFOD CLUB – WORLD GIFTS

The CAFOD Club raised £80 from their two stalls at the Christmas Fair!

Children in the CAFOD Club decided to create a ‘Name the Rudolf’ stall and ‘Guess the Sweets in the Jar’ stall. Children helped run the stalls and promoted the work of CAFOD to help others across the world! The money was spent on:

A Sewing Machine
Chirpy Chickens
Emergency Water
School Starter Pack
Vegetable Garden
7. A Queen Bee

HELP THR HOMELESS

HELP THE HOMELESS THIS WINTER! Our school CAFOD Club is supporting #streetpastors by collecting new and/or used warm items of clothing (gloves, scarfs, socks, hats) to give to the homeless in Preston. Our very own Mrs Kirkham volunteers for Street Pastors and talked to the children about why she helps others and what we can do to help.#treatothersasyouwishtobetreated.

Therefore we ask if you could please drop off your new or used warm items of clothing at school and Mrs Kirkham will take them out to the homeless in Preston town centre, ready for when the cold weather sets in.
We are collecting until Friday 1st December 2023. Please give what you can. Thank you.

CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING WORKSHOPS – CAFOD VISIT

This term, we are working on collecting for Harvest, supporting the local food bank. Working with the homeless in our local community, to collect clothes for them and working towards raising money for CAFOD World Gifts.

Have a look on CAFOD’s website to find out more:

https://cafod.org.uk/education/primary-teaching-resources/cst-pack-for-children

RIBBLE VALLEY FOOD BANK

Supporting local people in need

We were taught by Jesus, to love one another. We have taken this commandment to heart and use it as one of our school values – CARE & COMPASSION. We were delighted to recieve the feedback from Ribble Valley Foodbank, that our collection amounted to 125kg of food and necessary supplies (toothbrushes, toothpaste etc). The Harvest Celebration brought together many friends and families of St. Francis, and we are very grateful for their support. We look forward to continuing to support the Ribble Valley Foodbank, through our link with the parish.

HARVEST FESTIVAL & COLLECTION

As part of our season of creation, we held a Harvest Festival concert: children from the Band, Choir and Glee Club performed for an elated audience of parents, grandparents, parishioners and friends of St. Francis. The Reception Class made their singing debut with Dingle Dangle Scarecrow – everyone did a wonderful job. As part of the Harvest Festival, families brought in tins of food for us to donate to the Ribble Valley foodbank and we had a brilliant cake sale to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support and our friends at the Shalom Academy in Kenya.

Harvest is a time of giving and celebrating the wonderful farmers and the food they produce and a times to say thank you to God for the food we have. A huge thank you to all the friends and families of St. Francis who donated to the harvest collection, we look forward to donating all the food to a local food bank to support local families and to see the money raised from our wonderful cake sale go to Macmillan and the Shalom Academy.

LONGRIDGE ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP CELEBRATION

A group of children from Beacon Class were invited to Longridge Environmental Group’s Celebration of their ‘Plastic Free Town’ status yesterday. As part of our own Plastic Free School status award, Lucy had distributed newsletters to her neighbours, informing them of the plastic crisis. One of these was delivered to the ex mayor of Longridge, who consequently sent us the invitation to be part of this special event. Well done Lucy! We went along with some of our amazing work on display and presented to an audience of like-minded campaigners. What a fantastic privilege – the children did us proud with their heartfelt poems, speeches and confident presentation of our work.

WORKING WITH CAFOD HEADQUARTERS

We had a visit from a man who works for CAFOD Headquarters in London, came to visit our school to speak specifically with the CAFOD Club. The CAFOD Club has been up and running for two years now, and we are the first official Primary School CAFOD Club in the UK. We have supported CAFOD develop resources for their website, and resources to send out to school – so that all other Catholic schools can start-up their own CAFOD Clubs. The children took the opportunity to show CAFOD what we have been learning about in school, and to show them what an assembly by the St. Francis CAFOD Club looks like! We look forward to continuing to support CAFOD, helping them get important messages out to more young people!

CAROL SINGING AT BUSHELL HOUSE

The choir entertained the residents of Bushell House in Goosnargh with a selection of Christmas carols. Celebrating Christmas with the local care home residents, we found to be a wonderful way for the children to interact with people from different age and backgrounds. The residents and children really enjoyed chatting and playing board games with the lovely residents after the singing performance, it was brilliant to make a human link with local residents.

The history of St. Francis Church and School

Valley Singers linking up with St, Francis Choir

Advent Mass with the Catholic Cluster

at Our Lady’s High School

ARMISTICE PERFORMANCE AT THE PRESTON GUILD HALL

VISITING BELMONT CARE HOME

RAISING MONEY FOR OJ’S

LONGRIDGE CLUSTER ENVIRONMENTAL PROJECT

Tree Planting Environmental Project with our Longridge Cluster of Schools

LINKING UP WITH LONGRIDGE JUNIORS

Read about our donation with Longridge Town Juniors F.C

KIND DONATION Click on the link to view.

LINKING WITH ST. JOSEPH’ CATHOLIC PRIMARY SCHOOL IN LANCASTER

The amazing St. Francis band performed six pieces to a very excited assembly, at St. Joseph’s Catholic Primary in Lancaster. Wanting to launch their own band, St. Joseph’s got a taste of what a school band can do when they practice and dedicate themselves to what they love doing! The St. Francis band is made up of nearly a quarter of the school, so two minibuses were required! The children did a fantastic job.

NSPCC NUMBER DAY

GOOSNARGH AND WHITTINGHAM FESTIVAL

CHOIR AND GLEE PERFORMANCE

LOVE ALL GOD’S CREATURES

DOG’S TRUST VISIT

VISITING THE LOCAL SYNAGOGUE

CARING FOR GOD’S WORLD

ACHIEVING THE GREEN TREE AWARD!

CAFOD CLUB TAKE ACTION!

After setting up a stall to raise money for CAFOD Club, the children from the club put their maths skills to good use by counting the money raised.

SUPPORTING PEOPLE TO GET WHAT THEY NEED

CHRISTMAS SHOEBOX APPEAL

AN ANGEL VISITS!

We have created a link with Harris Museum to develop a link with our local community. We chose an angel to link with our Religious Education work and the importance of angels in our Catholic tradition.

MAY PROCESSION

May is the holy month of Mary. We celebrate this with our annual May procession. The procession was led by Father Sony, as we processed prayed the rosary, processed around the school and church grounds, leading us to church to reflect.

SINGING FOR OUR MAYOR

Mayor invite for choir 2019

Children in our school choir are coming home today with this letter for you to sign and return. Many Thanks!

CARING FOR ALL GOD’S CREATURES

SAVE THE RHINO – GOOSNARGH CUB GROUP

The Goosnargh Cub group have been raising money to help the charity, ‘Save The Rhino’. Check out the PowerPoint presentation they delivered to the whole school – raising £70 from a cake sale. Well done cubs!! Click on the link below to see the presentation.

Save The Rhino Presentation

VISITING OUR LOCAL CARE HOME

Thursday afternoon UFA group playing board games at a local rest home.

SUPPORTING REFUGEE & CAFOD DAY

RAISING MONEY FOR SPORTS AID

SUPPORTING THOSE IN NEED

ARMISTICE 2018

St Francis’ is currently involved in an exciting collaborative educational project called “Armistice” and Preston Guildhall has been booked for November 11th 2018 the centenary for the end of “The Great War.”

The project will involve over 500 children and adults from the Longridge School’s Cluster and will tell the story and remember the key events of the conflict through music, dance , drama, poetry and the visual arts. It will culminate with an act of remembrance. We are also wishing to engage the wider community in this project as it was a historical event that touched so many families and communities particularly so in the North of England.

As part of the build-up work, we wish the children to experience a range of different arts and craft based activities, one of which is to knit thousands of poppies 19,240 to be precise which were the number of men who died on the July 1st 1916 the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

We will use the poppies, to create a huge visual display during the act of remembrance, very much inspired by the Poppies at the Tower of London.

We have attached the poppy patterns below

Simple Poppy with Leaf

Knit flat

Crochet Poppy

Knitted Poppy Patterns

If you would like to donate to the Longridge Cluster group (in order to raise £10,000, to fund the project) please click on the link below. All donations are most welcome.

Link to the crowdfunding page

WORKING WITH SIR TOM FINNEY AND SUPPORTING REFUGEES

A Sporting day supporting Syrian refugees…help us to help them donating baby nappies, toys and clothes. Thank you!

YEAR 7 WELCOME MASS – OUR LADY’S

It was lovely to see Luke, Millie, Ellie and Tallulah at Our Lady’s. They have settled into high school life very well. I took two of our Year 6 children to the Mass and we met our other friends from our small school Catholic Cluster.

We are very lucky to be part of a Catholic small school cluster. Miss Deakin has meetings with other head teachers from small Catholic schools and together we plan many exciting trIps and reflective experiences. Children in Year 2 get to know and make friends from other schools as we start of journey together throughout school. It is lovely to meet up with our friends from other schools. There are seven schools in total and we have another exciting year planned, including a trip to a Synagogue, a Laydewell retreat day, Metanoia Day, Beacon Fell creation day, Year 3 Open Air Mass and much more. We visit each other and enjoy a mixture of new experiences together.

We are also part of the Longridge cluster of schools and we are planning a superb Remembrance performance for next November with 14 other schools. The head teacher at Barnacre Rd, Mr Wallis, is passionate about a joint performance at Preston Guild Hall and we are all on board. Information will be coming soon!

Our annual Advent Service at Our Lady’s Catholic High School is wonderful and our children always sing with such heart. Individual Preston Lancaster Diocese Primary schools take part in the service, which is always spiritually moving. We are fond visitors at Our Lady’s, linking with another range of Primary school to pray and learn together. We also visit there to watch performances and to meet authors.

CATHOLIC CLUSTER FEED THE 5000 DAY

RE Day ‘ Feeding the 5000’

The children in Year 2 joined together with other groups of Year 2 children from schools in our small schools cluster. The schools met at St Mary’s & Blessed George Haydock Catholic Church, in Cottam. The theme of the day was the story of Jesus ‘Feeding the 5000’. The children spent all day together, taking part in several fun filled activities, ending with a mass in the church. The children made puppets, created a drama, made prayer cards and created a fishy piece of art work. The children made lots of new friends from the different schools and enjoyed their day out, learning about giving to others and trusting in God. It is a fulfilling experience for the children to link together with other local schools and learn together as children of God. The children came away from the day sharing stories and their experiences. We look forward to linking up with the small schools cluster next year.

At.St.Francis,’ we love to work with other schools and the community. We have visitors from other countries who come to experience schooling in England and we have strong links with local schools and small Catholic schools of similar size. We support each other by sharing staff training, coaching staff from other schools and sharing skills and expertise. The children visit other schools and schools visit us. Recently, Year 4 linked with other chldren in Year 4 from our Catholic schools cluster and went to Great Eccleston Scout Hut for a day of Year of Mercy education. Beacon class are going to visit Queen’s Drive school and are going to a Sikh Temple for the day. We work closely with our high schools and regularly attend sporting events, drama events and workshops. The French lessons were very popular and we are soon taking part in a maths challenge. Goosnargh and Whittingham Festival day will be wonderful as we collaborate with the community and enjoy our Star Wars float. Parents of our school have been busy creating the float and we look forward to the Mayor of Preston opening our Pre-School. We regularly fundraise for local and global charities as part of our service to others and we invite our local rest home residents to come to our coffee morning concerts.

The Queen’s 90th Birthday Street Party

We welcomed all to join us for our street party and it was a beautiful day to get together. Children ate their lunch outside with visitors and it was a great opportunity to enjoy each other’s company.

Village Festival Fun!

What a wonderful day we have had today! Our school band and choir performed many pieces at the Goosnargh Festival Concert. We played alongside other artists, schools and Preston College. The Mayor was there and was incredibly impressed by the musical excellence our children displayed. The children were a credit to us and their excellent behaviour was commented upon many times. I am so proud of them all. Please see our video below. We look forward to being in the paper again so keep looking for the article!

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Catholic Social Teaching in action!