St Catherine's RC Primary

Sam in Year 3 recently gained the place of number 10 at the Under 9s national tennis tournament at the National Tennis Centre in London - what an incredible achievement!

Sam plays tennis at an elite level and trains so hard in his spare time. He even recently got to meet Emma Raducanu! We are really proud of his wonderful achievements - well done, Sam!

We are so proud of Jacob in Year 6 for his fantastic cheerleading achievements!

Jacob is part of our school cheerleading team and also competes with a team called Electric Athletics outside of school too.

He has recently received the very prestigious award of 'cheerleader of the year', as well as a first place medal at a cheerleading competition in May for his stunt group.

Jacob, we're so proud of your brilliant achievements - well done!

Our Reception children are so creative... our four girls pictured here used their shapes in class and said they'd made the St. Catherine's cross! Great work, children!

The children in Year 2 were set a homework challenge to research their favourite country and present facts about this country to the class. They focused on the human and physical features, culture, weather, languages spoken and lots of other mind-blowing facts. All of the children were amazing and the Year 2 team are now itching to travel to these fantastic locations!

We've had the most amazing day celebrating Pentecost in school!

This morning, we learnt all about Pentecost in worship and how the Holy Spirit can help us just like it helped the disciples.

This afternoon, we had a whole school party on the playground, dancing to music from Chip, a Christian rock singer! It's been such a special day and we've loved celebrating the birthday of the church. Bring on next year!

On Tuesday, some of our Year 4 children visited 'Venture Out' for some practical, real-life learning opportunities linked to their 'rivers' topic in school. Our children had a fantastic time learning more about the River Mersey, including taking a trip out to canoe down the river!

The rest of our Year 4 children will be visiting Venture Out tomorrow. What a great opportunity for our children!

Take a look at Manchester Environmental Education Network's summer newsletter where St. Catherine's children are on the front page!

Eva, Lucy and Rose from our Climate Change Champions team wrote a fantastic article about the work they have been doing in our school.

We love celebrating the great work our pupil leaders are doing - well done, children!

https://www.meen.org.uk/Assets/Documents/Beehive-Summer-2024.pdf

Thank you to all of our wonderful children and families who helped to raise money for the Caritas St. Joseph's Penny Appeal. As a school, we managed to raise £705.38!

Kath from Caritas Salford led worship for our children a couple of weeks ago and explained how money raised from the St Joseph's Penny Appeal helps so many people across our Diocese.

Thank you to everyone who took part for helping to make a difference in our community.

On Monday, a small group of our Year 4 children visited Francis House for their open day. Francis House is our local children's hospice and our children had a tour around their facilities and heard all about the amazing ways Francis House supports children and their families. It helped us to see just how important fundraising is for hospices like Francis House and we're already thinking of more ways we can fundraise to support this wonderful hospice further.

Today, some of our Year 5 children met with the Town Hall and local fire department in Nigran, Spain to take part in a tree planting programme. After the Galician wildfires in 2017, over a thousand new trees have since been planted to return the countryside to its natural beauty.

Take another look at the fantastic graffiti wall at Palacios school, one of our partner schools in Nigran, Spain where some of our Year 5 children are this week.

The children have created this graffiti wall with their Spanish friends, which celebrates 15years of our exchange with CPI Palacios!

The sun has been shining all week in Nigran. This morning, some of our Year 5 children have had great fun with their Spanish friends learning how to surf in the Atlantic Ocean!

Today, some of our children in Nigran, Spain visited the horse sanctuary 'Llamas de Cea'. They learned how to care for horses (such as brushing their tails correctly) and had the chance to clean out some stables! Our children then even got the chance to go for a ride!

We love seeing the great adventures some of our Year 5 children are having in Nigran as part of our Spanish Exchange, as well as the fantastic opportunities our other Year 5 children are having back in Didsbury! Today, they are visiting Venture Out for a fun day of team-building activities, including archery, bouldering and canoeing on the river!

Some of our Year 5 children are currently in Nigran, Spain enjoying our wonderful Spanish Exchange opportunity!

Yesterday, we continued the mural tradition on a section of the wall at Palacios school, one of our two partner schools in Nigran. Each year, children use graffiti to represent the special relationship between Palacios school and their partnering exchange schools (both in England and France). Can you spot our St. Catherine's logo?

Our Climate Change Champions are featured in this month's Didsbury Post! We are so proud of our Climate Change Champions who are making such a difference to our school, alongside our sustainability lead Mr Westbrook. We're so pleased our children's hard work is being celebrated within our local community.

This morning, our worship centred on our Core Value of 'Compassion', our theme this half-term. We looked at what compassion means, as well as looking at different examples of how we can show compassion.

Our children loved watching this video to see how the man changed and started to show compassion to those around him, as well as even helping someone else to learn to show compassion!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN18kGdPHzk

We asked God to help us to show compassion to others, just as Jesus did, so that we can follow in His footsteps.

Our children are always so responsive to our learning during worship time and we love to hear their insightful responses!

#GiveInToGiving | #العطاء_ثراء As we celebrate World Kindness Day on 13th November, let’s take time to reflect on how we can make a difference. Let’s reach out to those who need help and v...

Before Easter, we set children in KS2 an optional challenge of creating an Easter garden or 'Easter eggstravaganza' during their Easter holidays. We were blown away by the number of children who chose to take part, as well as their amazing creativity! Take a look at just a few of the very many designs that were brought in, which we celebrated in worship on Friday. Well done, everyone!

Mrs Quiligotti had a lovely visit from some Reception children this afternoon. They had chosen to write her some postcards to ask if we could have a hot tub in school! They even made sure to put a stamp in the corner and they did a great job with their use of question marks.

We're very impressed with our children's fantastic writing, as well as their ambitious school plans! Well done, children!

On the last day of our Spring Term, our Climate Change Champions ran a fantastic and very successful eco fair! They organised stalls for swapping books and toys, a 'postcards from the future' stall, a visit from Biffa waste management and more! They also created a great display to show off all of the wonderful things they have achieved so far this year to help our school and local community become more sustainable.

Our PTA joined our eco fair as well to sell pre-loved school uniform and other items, and we were also joined by Dr Locke from Manchester Environment Education Network, who works with our eco group each week to make a long-term difference in our school and community.

Thank you to everyone involved in running our eco fair and everyone who visited too!

Last week, our Climate Change Champions were invited to Manchester University to present to students about the work they are doing to help our school and local community become more sustainable.

Our children were asked to run an interactive stall in the University of Manchester's Student Union, engaging with students through a range of climate change activities.

Our Climate Change Champions were also invited to attend the BSc in Education undergraduate conference where they gave a presentation on the environmental work they are doing in school.

We are so proud of our wonderful children, who presented with knowledge and confidence. Well done, Climate Change Champions!

Happy World Book Day, everyone! We are having a fantastic day in school celebrating our love of books and reading. We really enjoyed seeing our children show off their wonderful costumes in this morning's parade too.

In true St. Catherine's style, our staff love a dress-up challenge as well... take a look at their great efforts today!

We're all set up for our Spanish Café and we can't wait to welcome our parents and carers in soon!

Our Year 5 children have been working very hard to prepare for our Spanish Café, including creating their Spanish menus, practising their Spanish speaking skills and decorating our school hall. They can't wait to show off all of their fantastic skills and serve their family members!

Happy Birthday, Father John!

Our children have been busy this week making birthday cards to celebrate Father John's birthday. Father John is such a special member of our school community and we wanted to make sure he knows how much we love and care about him.

We hope you have a fantastic birthday, Father John!

Today has been our first day with Harvey our school therapy dog in school with us!

He's been to visit our Year 5 classes this morning and our children have had a fantastic time learning more about Harvey and getting to meet him.

Harvey will be back in school to visit our Year 6 children on Thursday and then he will be visiting our Year 3 and 4 children next week as well.

Leo in Year 6 recently represented the Manchester Schools Team in Cross Country at Heaton Park recently. He had a fantastic run (even after showing true perseverance with a tricky and slippy start) and we are so proud of his amazing efforts. Well done, Leo!

On Friday, our children received some very exciting news. We told them about a new member of our school family who will soon be joining us - Harvey the golden retriever!

Harvey belongs to Mrs Taylor, our Spanish teacher, and both Harvey and Mrs Taylor have undergone lots of specialist training with Pets As Therapy over the last year, meaning Harvey is now trained to come into our school and work with our children!

Over the next few weeks, Harvey is going to start coming into school and visiting classes so that children can meet him and get to know his role in school. How exciting!

Yesterday, the children in Early Years were visited by Teach Rex. They met lots of dinosaurs and learnt about what they like to eat and all about their similarities and differences. Here are a few photos of our wonderful experience! 🦖🦕

Yesterday, our children attended church to celebrate the Epiphany. As part of our Epiphany celebrations in school, our children have been thinking about what gift they would give to Jesus. Each class then chose one of these gift ideas and presented it during Mass yesterday.

Our children came up with some really beautiful and thoughtful ideas, including:

'My gift for Jesus is love because Jesus always shows love to everyone so I am showing love to him.'

'My gift for Jesus is perseverance because he tries his best with all of us.'

'My gift for Jesus is my heart because he made me and shows me love every day.'

'My gift for Jesus is respect because Jesus wants us to be kind in this world because it doesn't matter who we are or what we look like.'

'My gift for Jesus is faith because throughout his life he will need to have faith for many people, including his father God.'

'My gift for Jesus is inspiration because Jesus was inspirational to his disciples and taught them many important lessons.'

Yesterday, we had not one, but two surprises for the children! A visit from Father Christmas and his reindeers! It was a magical day in school.

We want to wish all of our families and wider school community a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We look forward to seeing you all in 2024! 🎅🦌🎄🌟