Catholic Life

The Catholic Church provides schools to:

  • Assist in its mission of making Christ known to all people.
  • Assist parents, who are the primary educators of their children, in the education and religious formation of their children.
  • Be at the service of the local Church – the diocese, the parish and the Christian home.
  • Be a “service to society.”(Christ at the Centre: Why the Church provides Catholic Schools – Monsignor Marcus Stock. First published 2005, Revised 2012.)

Home learning links can be found on each class website page and you can link to the Wednesdayword via this link. http://www.wednesdayword.org/school/index.htm

Popping out with our poppies

Reception pupils painted some pretty poppies for Remembrance Day. They painted them onto plates and stones.

The pupils then went down to Sleaford memorial in the Market Square to place their painted poppy stones.

They took time with Mrs Frisby to think about the importance of their poppies as a token of remembrance.

Prayer Spaces

Take a look at how Y4 created their own beautiful prayer space as part of their learning for R.E. They chose what they wanted to use to decorate the outside space with. It looks like a colourful and calming space to be in.

There are many prayer spaces around our school for the children to use, both inside and outside of the building. Prayer is central to how we encounter Jesus and God and the theme of “Encounter” comes from Bishop Patrick’s teachings on how we can be closer to God through talking and listening to him.

Catholic life in our school

Our pupils in school learn about liturgical colours and special symbols for the church’s year. They enjoy creating their own prayer areas and we encourage them to help prepare these special places around school.

Our Mission

School Mission Statement:

To Love, Live and Learn in the Light of Christ

The Our Lady family learn together with love and faith in Jesus, to become the people God calls us to be.

Our School is part of the Church’s Mission to pass on the good news of Christ’s Gospel through learning, worship and the formation of character in a caring environment, which embodies Christian values and discipline. God has created every child out of love and the human dignity of each will be rightfully valued and respected.

Our School community will embrace a spirit of welcome, fairness and understanding as it strives to recognise God’s Grace within each of us and within our whole community.

Renewing our mission September 2022

We begun our school year by reviewing our school mission and thinking about how we will live this out in school.

Collective Worship

Here’s a great link for those who would like to explore the Sunday gospels whilst we cannot go to church. The Mark 10 mission provides age appropriate exploration into the gospel each Sunday and includes some discussion about the gospels and some upbeat songs.There is a also a “Little Liturgies” for our KS1.  Take a look!

Mark 10 mission

November – we pray for the souls of the departed

On the 1st November, we went to church to pray for ‘All Saint’s Day’ where we remember all the saints up in heaven. Throughout this month, we take time to reflect and pray for all souls that have left this earth and are now with Jesus, in heaven.  During the month of November, we saying the ‘Eternal Rest prayer, daily, in class. Here is a display in our school created by the Shining Stars, who have written some prayers of their own to remember loved ones we have lost.

If you would like to join us in saying this;

“Eternal Rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.”

Please feel free to take a look at the prayers we say during our school day.

Morning And Midday

End of day and sorry

Hail Mary and Our Father

Glory Be and God Who Speaks

Thy Kingdom Come – Thy Kingdom Come is a global prayer wave between the feasts of Ascension (13th May) and Pentecost (23rd May). It is a time when Christians around the world are invited to pray for more people to know Jesus and answer the call to be his disciple. There are a collection of Catholic resources you can use on your own or with others in this time including: morning and evening prayer, praying with Our Lady resources, live streamed night prayer, resources to pray for those you know who aren’t followers of Christ, and more! Further information here: www.thykingdomcome.global/resources/resources-catholic-church. Resources for children and families here: https://www.thykingdomcome.global/cheekypandas. We will be following these in class too.

Here is our special prayer based on our “Year of the Word” where we celebrate that God speaks to us through the bible and we try to live out our lives by following his teaching.

Year of word god who speaks prayer

Singing is a wonderful way of praying. Here is a link for some fun singing that children can join in with at home.

Singalong

Liturgical Prayer in school

Every Friday in school, we have a celebration assembly and invite parents in to celebrate their children’s success with us. Children are awarded Special Mentions, Star of the Week or Marvellous Missionary certificates for their academic and personal achievements.

We always have lots to celebrate and encourage pupils to bring in certificates from outside school too.

Stations of the Cross

KS2 have been leading in liturgical prayer weekly to explain the stations of the cross to us.

This is Y4 and captures the poignant moment of Jesus dying on the cross, which was retold and re-enacted beautifully.

Deacon Tony kindly came in to lead liturgical prayer with our pupils and crown Mary. May is the month of Mary and Catholics devote the whole month of May to celebrating and honouring her, the mother of Jesus. Mary is even sometimes known as the ‘Queen of May’

Deacon Tony chose our youngest pupils to crown Mary.

The children in Year 5 held a Pentecost party to celebrate the birthday of the church. They started  with a whole class liturgy and some children used their knowledge of weights and measures to make beautiful cakes  to share with everyone.

Helping our neighbours in need

Fairtrade October 2022

Our value for Term 1 was respect. As part of learning about what this value meant, Y4 were taught about Fairtrade and how they work to give farmers around the world the respect they deserve and ensure they are paid fairly for their goods.

The pupils looked at how Fairtrade worked and created posters on respect and how we can show respect by buying Fairtrade products. They also baked cakes using Fairtrade ingredients.

Later in the afternoon, they welcomed parents in to enjoy a cuppa and cake and requested donations for this. They shared their learning to spread the message of respecting everyone around the world.    

They raised £42.20 which was sent to Fairtrade. As you can see they learnt a lot, had lots of fun and raised an a great amount by living out our value,

Rainbow Stars is a local charity who offer support to families in Lincoln who have family members with additional needs. One of our pupils requested that we did some fundraising to support them, as it is a group close to her heart.  Grace and her family have received support from the charity who rely on donations to keep offering their services and resources and they wanted to and so she wanted to give something back.

On Grace’s suggestion, we all came dressed in colours of the rainbow and gave a donation for this. Grace also sold some trolley tokens and gave out information about the hospice after school. We managed to raise £121!

The Shining Stars Liturgy Team wanted to help our local community and recognised that times are quite tough recently for us all. They decided to help families in our own school and set up a “Drop and Swap” event.

Firstly, they collected and sorted donated school uniform and childrens clothing and then invited everyone in to come and take items they could use. This was a great way to follow Pope Francis’s Laudato Si teaching because we showed care for our common home, both by recycling clothes which meant less waste and care for our school family.

We had some clothing left after the event, which we were able to give to our lovely office lady Mrs Hunt to keep as spares when needed in school.

Over the period of Lent in school, every child and adult has been working hard to support CAFOD and walk for hunger. Over the last few weeks the children have all walked a mile a day and have aimed to do over 15 miles each as part of a sponsored walk to raise money to help other people in less fortunate situations than ourselves. The children have thoroughly enjoyed the experience and have hopefully raised lots of funds which we will bring in and tally up after the Easter holidays. Thank you in advance for all your great support and sponsorship.

During Lent, the children and adults in school took part in the Big Lent walk to raise money for CAFOD.  The children walked twenty times around the playground everyday.