Dear Parents and Carers of St Cuthbert’s,   It’s been a very busy and exciting start to the new year at St Cuthbert’s with loads going on in school.   Please see the Dates for your Diary for more information re: the rest of this term so that you don’t miss out on anything.     The Year of Jubilee 2025 at St Cuthbert’s Please read our information letter on our school website re: The Year of Jubilee 2025 which explains this very important celebratory event as part of our Catholic Faith and how we will be marking this occasion across the whole year at St Cuthbert’s.   Parent and Carer Workshops of Hope – Save the Dates! As part of our Year of Jubilee celebrations, we will be hosting a cross decorating workshop in school for our parents and carers to attend alongside their child. The cross is a symbol of hope, sacrifice and love. We have bought a small wooden cross for each child from Year 1 to Year 6 to decorate with any words, symbols or pictures which they feel best represent hope to them. The crosses have a front and back to them and are easily decorated with pencils and felt tips.   We will be sending a sheet home with two blank crosses on over the half term so that children can work at home on their designs with their families, prior to the parent/carer workshop taking place in school. If parents/carers can’t attend the workshops, children will still get to decorate their own cross to keep.   The workshops for parents/carers to join their children are as follows:   Tuesday 4th March 9.00am Year 1 and Year 2 Workshop of Hope parents/carers welcome Wednesday 5th March 9.00am Year 3 and Year 4 Workshop of Hope parents/carers welcome Thursday 6th March 9.00am Year 5 and Year 6 Workshop of Hope parents/carers welcome   Year 5 and Year 6 Lindisfarne Visit and Sponsored Walk Another part of our Year of Jubilee celebrations is a pilgrimage visit to the beautiful island of Lindisfarne where we will be taking the Year 5 and Year 6 children. There is no cost for the children for this visit but we would ask that any children who normally pay for a school lunch, bring a packed lunch on that day. Any children entitled to a Free School Meal will, of course, have a lunch provided for them.   As the walk is a sponsored event, we will be providing the Year 5 and Year 6 children with sponsor forms to share with their families so that we can work together as a community and raise some much-needed funds for CAFOD. As you know, CAFOD are an international development charity who reach out to people all over the world who are living in poverty with practical help, whatever their religion or culture. CAFOD is the official aid agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales and part of Caritas International.   Through our charitable works and fundraising events, the community of St Cuthbert’s can make a huge contribution to the work of CAFOD.   Please encourage sponsorship of the children on their pilgrimage wherever possible.   Reading Success at St Cuthbert’s Our Year 6 class of 2024 achieved 100% at the Expected Standard in Reading in their end of KS2 SATs. This in itself is a fantastic achievement and is the result of much hard work, dedication and enthusiasm from teachers and pupils alike and tremendous support from home. We have just found out that these exceptional results Rank St Cuthbert’s number 1 in the whole local authority along with our partner school St George’s who also achieved 100% at the Expected Standard in Reading in their end of KS2 SATs. Just brilliant news to share!   Champion Heritage School Status In addition to the wonderful news above, we have been contacted by Historic England who have shared that St Cuthbert’s has been awarded Champion Heritage School Status on top of the Heritage School Status we achieved in 2024. This is a fantastic accolade for our school. I must mention Mr Bright and our Heritage Heroes who have been responsible for much of the excellent work completed to gain this award.   St Cuthbert’s Book Day Book Swap – Save the Date! On Friday 21 March, we have our St Cuthbert’s Book Day Book Swap. This event was a huge success last year so we are running it again this year. This is a family event where you can browse the books we have on sale with your child/children, choose a book(s) at your leisure and then get yourself some light refreshments and enjoy your new purchases alongside your child/children.   Please send any book donations into school from Monday 10 March. Please do your utmost to attend the book sale on the day. This is a lovely opportunity for you to spend some time, if you’re able, with your child/children in school.   As always, children are invited to dress as characters from their favourite books or come into school in their pyjamas as if ready for a bedtime story. This can include face paints but please ensure these are washable and removed by return to school on Monday 24 March. Please do not feel under pressure to buy any expensive costumes. More details to follow nearer the time.   If you wish to discuss any item in this letter or anything further, please do not hesitate to contact me via the school office.   Best wishes,   Mrs Anne Bullerwell Executive Headteacher

Please click the link below to find out more about celebrating The Year of The Jubilee in school.

Mrs Marley and Mrs Thompson enjoyed taking some of the Year 6 children to a netball tournament at Blue Flames Sporting Club.  They won one of their matches and showed great determination and team work in the other games they played. Well done everyone.

Year 3 enjoyed gymnastics and playtime. We have been learning about Stone Age beliefs by looking at ancient 'long barrows' which were used as burial tombs. The children also made jewellery and cave paintings during our Stone Age celebration day. Well done to all of the children in Year 3 for a fantastic first week back! The children have worked hard in Maths to revise the place value of three and four digit numbers and have been practising hand- to- eye coordination in PE ready for basketball. On Wednesday we visited our beautiful school library and listened to Mrs Hacking reading a story then chose a new book to read. Year 3 enjoyed a French lesson with Madame Dryden this week. They learnt how to say numbers up to twenty and skip at the same time! In RE, Year 3 have been looking at how The Holy Family show love towards each other by using magnifying glasses to look in detail at a piece of art work called, 'Christ In The House of His Parents. During Science we identified the main bones in a human skeleton and looked at examples of endoskeletons, exoskeletons and hydrostatic skeletons. Year 3 have been adding and subtracting using their knowledge of place value. Year 3 have been learning about Rosa Parks as part of Black history week in school. The children worked collaboratively to produce information posters explaining the key events that led to the bus boycott. We have also been enjoying listening to Tina Turner, OutKast, Aretha Franklin and The Lighthouse Family! Year 3 have started a new topic in History this week. We are learning all about The Stone Age and in today's lesson we looked at using clues to work out the use of a variety of Stone Age artefacts.

The Nursery children put on their fancy clothes and dancing shoes for our Christmas party.  We boogied in the hall to Christmas music, played party games, ate delicious party food and even had a very special visit from Santa.  What an exciting day! We hope you all have a magical Christmas. The Nursery staff were very proud of the children when they presented the ‘Christmas Sing Song.’ The children performed beautifully and loved sharing with their families, songs that told the story of when Baby Jesus was born.  We have been very busy in Nursery getting ready for Christmas. We decorated the Christmas tree, made decorations that we get to take home for the holidays and also have our very own naughty Elf who gets up to a whole lot of mischief in nursery! We have had a colourful and explosive week in Nursery talking about the fireworks we’ve seen and recreating them. We flicked paint onto large paper to create a firework filled night sky. We made some biscuit rockets which tasted scrumptious and explored lots of firework themed tuff trays. Nursery have had a great first week in Nursery playing with all the new toys and meeting lots of new friends. Nursery have enjoyed exploring their senses in the new ‘Sensory Room’. We loved playing in the ball pool, chilling out in the den surrounded by twinkling lights. We have also been learning how to balance on various beams and objects. Nursery have been ‘Happy and you know it’ this week exploring all things ‘Nursery Rhyme’. We have been ‘Five little monkeys jumping on the bed’-Don’t tell Mrs Bullerwell! We have loved playing musical instruments and singing along to different rhymes and have played with numerous nursery rhyme tuff trays. Nursery have been learning about ourselves this week. We painted, chalked,and drew images of ourselves. We talked about how our body reacts to big feelings e.g. happy and sad. We enjoyed making silly faces with different resources in Nursery. Nursery have been exploring the world around them using our Five Senses. We have listened to some mysterious sounds, played eye spy and used our hands and feet to feel different textures. We used our noses to smell some delicious chocolate and some very stinky cheese. We had fabulous fun wearing blindfolds and tasting some salty popcorn and some very bitter lemon. Nursery have loved investigating the season of Autumn. We created our own sticky collage of autumn objects, jumped in a pile of leaves and listened to the crackling under our feet. We enjoyed making our very own Spiky hedgehogs using playdough and sticks. Nursery have been learning all about Remembrance Day. We found out that people wear red poppies to remind them of the brave soldiers who fought in the war. We talked about how the purple poppy is worn to remember all the animals who were in the war.  We made some giant poppies and created our own poppy to take home.  We celebrated the soldiers and animals in our liturgy and observed the two minute silence at 11 o'clock. Ahoy, Me Hearties! We have had a swashbuckling adventure in Nursery. We sailed the seven seas on our own Nursery Pirate ship and we found a treasure chest full of gold coins. When we dressed up for our ‘Pirate Celebration Day’. We danced a jig in the hall and played pirate party games. This made us so hungry and ready for our hearty pirate grub. We were so good at our dancing that we were given a chocolate coin from captain Redbeard himself!

Year 2 created linocut prints using carbon copy paper, rollers, cutters and ink. They look great! Year 1 and 2 love sharing the amazing story of Christmas with our friends and families! Friends Year 2 have loved getting back into school and spending time with their friends after the Summer holidays! Ocarinas Year 2 have been learning the Ocarinas, a wind instrument. We learned to play High D, Low D, A, B, G, C#, E and F#. We used 'OcPics' to read the music. Watercolours We've been experimenting with different techniques to create art using watercolour paints. We tried splatter, wax resist, dabbing techniques and experimented using salt to create different effects. Wizard of Oz Roleplay Our topic this term is The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Today we've been exploring the different characters, focusing on the Lion. We particularly analyzed how his character changed from ferocious to cowardly when Dorothy stood up to him. We acted out the scene and used hot-seating and freeze frame techniques to really get inside the character's head. Paul Klee To round off our watercolour unit in Art, we created art work inspired by Swiss artist, Paul Klee. We studied a variety of his art and discussed how we felt about it and what we noticed. We focused particularly on 'Castle and Sun' (1928) and used our new wax-resist skills to create lines and watercolours to paint over - noticing how watery paint settled on the paper and not on the wax. In our music unit, Year 2 learned to play Twinkle Twinkle using the ocarinas. We used 'OcPics' to read the notes we needed to play Year 2 took part in a Celebration of the Word about our unit in RE. We focused on thankfulness and love. Year 2 created artwork inspired by French artist, Henri Matisse. Later in his career, Matisse switched from painting to creating work by cutting and sticking colourful shapes

Year 1 loved dressing up in their party clothes and enjoyed a brilliant day with a Christmas party, party food and a visit with a very special person indeed! Merry Christmas, everyone! Year 1 and 2 love sharing the amazing story of Christmas with our friends and families! Year 1 had a fantastic 'Polar Explorer' themed day this week. We followed the maps to find the different pictures, created our own colony of penguins and even designed, built, tested and evaluated waterproof, windproof shelters for a Polar explorer! Fantastic work! Year 1 have been learning all about the amazing expedition led by Captain to get to the South Pole!   This week, we followed the clues from Reginald Rake to go exploring around our playground! We made a physical map of all of the places we visited then created our own map with a key. We have also started our 'addition' topic in maths, learning how to read and write different addition equations and solving them using practical objects or jumping on the number line. We have been making representations of different 2 digit numbers, using long sticks to represent the multiples of 10 and little squares for the units. It was hard work putting them all in the right order for our great big class numberline! Reginald Rake sent us a message to say we needed to follow the clues to find all of the items for the scarecrow's wedding! We were so clever to follow the clues and find a lovely treat at the end. We also explored colour mixing, trying to create as many colours as we could by using just red, yellow and blue! We were able to create different shades of the secondary colours by using different amounts of each primary colour. Fantastic! We loved spending time in our school chapel, taking part in a collective worship about the theme of 'families'. We listened to God's Word, took part in a litany of thanks and shared ways in which we will show love to our families. We have also ben practicing counting in 2s, identifying multiples of 2 and solving some tricky problems. It's the right time of year for planting some bulbs! We are so excited to keep track of how they grow and electing a weekly 'plants monitor' to take care of them. Watch this space...! We loved investigating our senses this week! Our favourite investigation was definitely the taste test... We also learned about how much God loves us and created some art to show that we understand the meaning of the message. This week we have launched into our brand new maths topic of 'place value' counting all of the way to 100 and learning about multiples of 10! We have loved playing lots of counting games, creating our own number squares, drawing 100 objects and counting out large amounts by arranging them in groups of 10. We've also enjoyed looking for labels around the classroom and adding our own labels. We even labelled a spider we found! We named lots of parts of our bodies and made amazing diagrams after drawing around eachother! in RE we have been learning about God's love and comparing it to the love of our families. We acted out Psalm 28 and shared our own experiences of different families. What a fantastic first week in Year 1! We have loved catching up with our friends, exploring the Year 1 classroom and finding out all about the story of 'The Wizard of Oz.' Year 1 loved investigating whether materials were waterproof or absorbent!  Year 1 were inspired by the artist Andy Goldsworthy to create some amazing ice baubles using natural materials!

We had great fun at our Christmas party. We looked very festive in our party clothes and loved dancing to the Christmas music. We enjoyed playing party games and eating some yummy party food. We even had a special visit from Santa! Merry Christmas everyone. Reception class loved dressing up in the nativity costumes and telling the story of when baby Jesus was born to the whole school and our families.  They looked fantastic and sang beautifully.  Well done Reception.  You are all superstars.  Reception class talked about things that happen in the environment when the seasons change. We talked about our favourite seasons.  Some children liked the Winter so they can play in the snow whereas others liked the Springtime with the blossom on the trees and lots of baby animals being born.   We printed leaves or snow on a tree to show which was our favourite season.  We loved retelling the story of ‘Farmer Duck’ in the Butterfly Garden. We felt sorry for the poor duck who had to do all the work and we were pleased when the animals chased the lazy farmer away. Reception have enjoyed counting sets of objects from our 'Counting Collections' boxes. We estimated how many were in the box, counted the amount then drew the corresponding number of objects on our wipeboards. Reception love learning new phonic sounds and enjoy writing the corresponding letters on their wipeboards. They had fun going on a letter hunt in the Butterfly Garden. In Reception, we have been learning each others names and thinking about what we all look like. We have painted pictures of ourselves, drawn outlines of our bodies with chalks and made ourselves with the playdough. We have had a great few days in Reception class, making new friends and exploring all of the toys. Reception class heard the story of Guy Fawkes and why we celebrate Bonfire Night.  We talked about fireworks we'd seen and made our own firework pictures. Reception children loved it when their parents came in and read stories to them at the Reading Cafe session. We went into the KS2 library and listened to Mrs Marley's favourite story, 'The Gruffalo', before enjoying yummy juice and biscuits. Thanks to all the parents who could make it.  Reception Class have been learning the names of parts of a skeleton such as skull, ribs, hips and backbone. We read these words and then found them on ‘Sid the Skeleton’.  We couldn’t believe how hard his bones felt.