St Barnabas CE Primary Academy, Darwen

04/09/2026

Just a week to go until our exciting weekend of events! Which ones are you coming to?😀

04/09/2026

🖼️ Year 5 - Art Exhibition 🖼️

This afternoon, we had the opportunity to visit the Art Explora Mobile Museum in Darwen town centre. We received a guided tour of the exhibit and had the opportunity to explore and enjoy a wide range of art forms including film, photography, sculpture and paintings. We then made a collective piece of art, using charcoals to create a seascape populated with real and imaginary creatures.
What a great end to a brilliant first week in Year 5! 😃

04/09/2026

💙Reception's First Week!💙

What a fantastic first week it has been! We could not be prouder of how our new Reception children have settled into school life. They have already proven to be a wonderful addition to our school family.

Over the past few days, the children have been achieving great things—building new friendships, exploring their classroom, and showing incredible courage as they adapt to new routines and big changes. Seeing their confidence grow each day has been an absolute joy.

We are so excited for a full week next week packed with fun, discovery, and learning!

04/09/2026

💙Friday Celebration Worship💙

This morning, we began our celebration worship by reflecting on what has been a fantastic start to the year. Well done to all of our children across school for returning with such a wonderful attitude to learning, demonstrating the Barney’s 4Bs and showing great courage. Today was our first Celebration Worship of the half-term, which will always be reserved exclusively for our children to share and celebrate the awards and achievements they have gained outside of school. We started with our infant children. A huge congratulations to Indie who achieved Star of the Week at gymnastics and has also been demonstrating great skill at Tae Kwon Do, Bo for gaining Star of the Week at football and achieving 6th place in a biking race, Olivia, Eleanor, Phoebe, Callie, James, Isabella and Harry for completing the BwD Summer Reading Challenge, Isabella for achieving her Stage 6 in swimming, Callie for achieving her Stage 7, completing 100 metres and achieving 25 metres in breaststroke and front crawl at swimming, Phoebe and Max for completing the Explorer Challenge at Whitehall Park, Fiia for achieving her cartwheel in gymnastics and swimming 5 metres, Tommy-Joe, for being awarded his Stage 3 swimming certificate, Vienna and Ohana for both gaining their Water Safety Award with Ohana also achieving her 100 metres swimming certificate. We then moved on to celebrate our Juniors. Well done to Renee for achieving an award in bravery for flying and gaining her orange and white striped belt at kickboxing, Ella, for being awarded her Stage 4 swimming certificate, Elijah, Seb and Harry for competing in the All Stars Cricket Club Camp, Fletcher for getting through to the Blackburn Youth Darts Academy Final, being recognised as an All Stars Cricket Club superstar and achieving his Bronze Award at Beavers, Lyla for achieving an array of dancing medals in recognition of her great skill in improv, lyrical, jazz, ballet and commercial dance, Annabel for being welcomed into the Blackburn Centurions Swimming Club after successfully attending a trial and James for beating his rival team in a recent football match and being awarded Man of the Match. We then ended our worship with some lovely prayers from James and Olivia, before Mrs Ham announced that our clubs will soon be going live. Keep an eye on Arbor for further information and opportunities to get involved. Finally, a huge thank you to all of our parents and families for your continued support and encouragement. Thank you to those who were able to join us for our Celebration Worship this morning.

04/09/2026

04/09/2026

🌟 Welcome to the end of a fantastic first week back at St Barnabas! 🌟

🧸 A Special Welcome to Reception! 🧸 We are absolutely thrilled to welcome our new Reception children to the St Barnabas family! They have settled in brilliantly, and we are so incredibly proud of them.

👔 Smart Uniforms & Fantastic Starts! 👔
A huge well done to all the children for looking so incredibly smart in their new uniforms! They have settled into their new classrooms wonderfully and are so ready to learn. 👏

👾 Class Dojo Update! 👾
The new reward system has been a massive hit! It’s wonderful seeing so many points earned for being safe, kind, ready, respectful, achieving great things, showing our Christian values, and those special WOW moments! 🌟

Reminder: You do NOT need to buy a paid subscription! 🚫💳 Using the free app, you can award up to 3 'home dojos' per day. We ask you to please stick to this maximum to ensure fairness across the entire school. ⚖️

🎉 Highlights of the Week:
🏆 Celebration Worship: It was fantastic to see the children achieving great things in our out-of-school awards celebration worship!

🎨 Years 5 & 6 Art Trip: Today, Y5 and Y6 visited a special mobile art gallery in Darwen Town Centre for a brilliant workshop. They behaved beautifully and represented our school brilliantly! 🖌️

📅 Upcoming Events Next Week:

🎭 Tuesday - Behaviour Reward! All children will watch a live production of Pinocchio for their fabulous first-week behaviour! A huge thank you to FOSB for their generous donation, and to everyone who donated to last year's fundraisers to make this happen. 🤥🪵

🎶 Wednesday - Junior Jam :
Specialist teaching begins! Welcome Madame Hyatt (French 🇫🇷), Miss Jolley (Music 🎵), and Mr Barker (Computing 💻).

Thursday: Meet the Teacher Times: Reception @ 2.45pm | Y1 & Y2 @ 3.00pm | Y3 & Y4 @ 3.30pm | Y5 & Y6 @ 4.00pm. 👋

✨ Friday - Celebration Worship: Parents of Barney's Brilliant Beacon winners will be contacted on Wednesday but all parents are welcome to attend each week. Reception will not be attending Celebration Worship for a few weeks yet. 🥇 (Note: Out-of-school awards are now presented on the first Friday back after a half-term holiday, or can be presented in class if it's a weekly award).

📌 Important Reminders:

🌐 Stay Updated: Check our website for the latest class news https://stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/news and events https://stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/events . We also have a page.

🚗 Parking & Road Safety: Please park courteously to our neighbours and encourage slow driving outside the school gates. Please do not park on the kerb on Knowlesly Road as it makes the pavement very narrow for our families to walk up and down.

🛑 Wraparound Care Safety Tweaks: Progressive wraparound care has been a great success this week, but we have a few safety tweaks starting next week:
*Please park on the road outside school or in local streets.
Enter via the top gate (NOT the carpark). 🚶‍♀️
*Walk through the Reception yard and up the steps near Year 2 to the hall external side doors (drop-off and collection).
*The carpark is strictly NOT to be used for parent parking, turning around, or walking through, as it isn't safe. Your support in keeping our children safe is hugely appreciated! 🛡️

Thank you for your continued support and for ensuring the children have come into school so smart and ready to learn. Have a wonderful weekend! ☀️💖 Best wishes, Mrs Ham

04/09/2026

If your child attends our new Progressive Wraparound care, please read the following safety information . Thank you 💙

03/09/2026

This looks like great fun! 😎

Just a week to go until our exciting weekend of events! Which ones are you coming to?😀

03/09/2026

💙Year 5 - Art💙

In Art, Year 5 worked together in teams to plan and build 3D art installations using objects around the classroom. The art needed to communicate a message that had been agreed upon by the group and focused on creating surprising and surreal juxtapositions. As you can see, Year 5 combined their imagination with their engineering skills to crest some very interesting pieces.

💙Year 5 - PSHE💙

Year 5 learned about the challenges and the power of team work by making a tower only using 6 pieces of paper and some sticky tape. This task involved children working together, communicating, compromising and problem solving. The children did a wonderful job of exploring some innovative ideas and engaging in friendly competition.

03/09/2026

💙Year 1 Maths: Sorting Objects💙

Year 1 tried really hard with sorting objects into groups of either colour, shape or size. We were really impressed with how fast they could figure out the groups. Some children even found that some objects can be sorted into multiple groups.