ASIAN HORNET

I've attached the Asian Hornet identification sheet and Asian Hornet watch app, that was mentioned in assembly yesterday by Dr Margaret Riches, chair of Penrith & District Beekeepers Association.

It's really important that we report sightings of these hornets, as they can devastate the local bee population.

Mrs Jones

Science Lead

Bees Week

We've had such a good week so far, whilst working with Beekeepers Margaret and Mark from Penrith Beekeepers Association.

We've learned about;

• the different types of bees and their roles in the hive
• the anatomy of a bee
• flowers that attract bees to suck their nectar and pollen
• other pollinating insects
• the 'waggle dance' that bees carry out whilst searching for flowers

We were fortunate enough to have an 'observational hive' in school and it was fascinating watching the bees carry out their roles.  The Queen Bee was very prominent in the hive.  

We're all excited about wearing black and yellow on Friday and also about sharing our learning/work with parents during an assembly on Monday 12th June, at 2.40pm.

Mrs Jones

Science Lead

(Photographs to follow)

Lake District National Park Water Workshop Day

Friday 17th February 2023

Tasha from the LDNP came to visit school today to work with us all about water. She began with an assembly for KS1 and moved on lead KS2 workshops. We found out all about the water cycle, the importance of saving water and how we can do this. We also found out about how important our beautiful Lake District is and how important water is to it! We have used Geography, science and problem solving skills today!

National Storytelling Week

The whole school enjoyed taking part in National Storytelling week from 30th January to 5th February, 2023.  

Over the week, each individual class put storytelling at the forefront of English lessons. Children had the opportunity to tell each other stories within a timed session. 

Some classes watched storytelling events on-line with authors like; Abi Elphinstone and Wendy Shearer.

Across the school,  the younger and older children joined together for 'paired reading' sessions which was lovely to see.

Mr French, who comes in to school to teach multi-skills PE, even shared his new published book, 'Action Ants' with Class 3 during their session on Thursday.  

St Catherine's is definitely a reading school!

Mrs Proudfoot

3-10th October 2022

National Libraries Week

Every Class has been invited to the library to find out what they offer to the community in Penrith. Some children even had time to choose some books for withdrawal. Thanks to Claire at Penrith Library for organising an excellent week. 

Visit to Penrith Library - Helen Haraldsen (Author) Workshop

Class 3 went to Penrith Library on Friday 7th October, to meet Helen Haraldsen, who they have been working with since they won her lovely book 'A Tale of Two Shoes'

Helen talked about her book and then the children wrote some free verse poetry or prose based on the environment and the two characters out of the book, Shane and Sheila shoe.

The children also had the opportunity to purchase Helen's books and were presented with them on the day.  

It was a lovely experience to meet a 'real author'  Class 3 are still continuing English lessons based on this book, which they have found very exciting.

Thanks to Claire and Vicky at the library for their continuing support!

(photographs to follow)

Mrs Jones

16th September 2022

Class 3 won a copy of the book The Red Shoes by Helen Haraldsen in a library competition - Claire from Penrith Library came to visit to present the book. Class 3 get to meet the author Helen in a few weeks and to do a writing workshop with her - aren't they lucky!

15th September 2022

What a pleasure it was to be all together again for our first National Cafod Assembly about Harvest. 

14.7.22

Sports Day 2022

What a ball we had - no rain and so much fun.

Thanks to all the parents for your support, it was so good to be back! Well done to St David's team.

4.7.22

Summer Reading Challenge Assembly

Thanks to Claire from Penrith Library for coming to school to launch the Summer Reading Challenge; 'The Gadgeteers.' I'm sure everyone in school will get involved over the summer! See the link below for information and links.

1.7.22

Penrith Town Council Jubilee Presentation

Thanks to Penrith Town Council for presenting all our children with a souvenir Jubilee medal. 

Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee Celebrations

British Science Week - Monday 14th - Friday 18th March 2022

We opened British Science week with a ‘bang’ today!  We talked about famous scientists and watched an amusing clip about what Science is.  Mrs Jones made ‘carbon dioxide’ by using of all things; red cabbage, vinegar and bicarbonate of soda. Miss Elliott put a pin in a balloon and it didn’t pop. Wow!

We’ve even got chance to design our own ‘lab coats’ in a competition!

Watch this space to see what each class is doing during Science week!

Mrs Jones

Closing Assembly - British Science Week 

We had a lovely assembly to share what we had been doing during Science week. Each class had been extremely busy!

Mrs Proudfoot even made ‘Elephant Toothpaste!’

We also revealed the winners of the Lab Coat Competition.

All in all a fantastic week!

Mrs Jones

Class 4

It's been a busy week in Class 4 learning about LIVING THINGS AND THEIR HABITATS

We have found out about life cycles of animals and plants, how animals are adapted to their environment. We completed fabulous artwork using watercolours of life cycles and researched Jane Goodall, an important scientist of the last 40 years who has helped us understand primates. Our homework was to investigate an endangered species too and consider what we could do to help! To top it off we had a fabulous lesson from Mr French about how to save lives with CPR, the recovery position and defibrillator machines!

Class 3 - British Science Week

What an amazing week we had during British Science Week.  Our over-arching topic was 'Animals including Humans.'

We started off this new topic finding out about the importance of 'teeth.'  We found out about the functions of incisors, canines, pre-molars and molars.  We even tried to eat food with our incisors but found out that it was virtually impossible as the molars do that job to grind and chew.  We looked in our mouths and counted our different teeth.  Children have around 20 teeth and an adult has 32 teeth in total (including wisdom teeth).

Next we moved on to the 'digestive system.' We found out that it takes 6 seconds from swallowing for the food to reach your stomach.  We carried out experiments to emulate the digestive system using; crackers, a banana, water, orange juice, masher, tights and a cup.  The main organs that make up the digestive system (in order of their function) are the mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, rectum and anus. Helping them along the way are the pancreas, gall bladder and liver.

Mrs Richardson moved on to the animal world and we found out about omnivores, carnivores and herbivores.  We did experiments in the hall and then carried out activities based on food chains.  

Finally, we had a session of 'First Aid' in the hall with Mr French.  We learned about bandaging an injured person, resuscitation and the importance of using a defibrillator and finding out where they are located in Penrith.  It was really interesting.

Next week, we are having a session with Gill from Phunky Foods to make a healthy dip.  We'll also be using 'plaque disclosure tablets' to check how well we are looking after our teeth!

Mrs Jones

3.3.22 World Book Day

We all had a wonderful day celebrating books. There were some fantastic outfits inspired by book characters. Thank you to everyone for making such a huge effort. Well done to the KS1 and KS2 winners, in the excitement I forgot to get a picture of you!

National Storytelling week 29.1.22-5.2.22

This week we are telling lots of stories across the school and asking children to talk to their families about their favourite stories when they were young?

Year 5/6 have been hearing Grimm’s Fairy tales this week!

NATIONAL STORYTELLING WEEK - CLASS 3

We are enjoying National Storytelling Week, which is a chance to promote and encourage storytelling.

We've listened to the traditional story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.  During our WWII topic, we found out that the operation to evacuate the city children during the Blitz was called 'Operation Pied Piper'.  

Some of the children have brought in their favourite books to share with the rest of the class. They are loving reading a section of their book to the rest of the class in the role of 'storyteller'

The children have also been talking to their parents about their favourite books when they were younger.  

Monika's Dad enjoyed 'Journey to the centre of the Earth' by Jules Verne as he loved adventure books.  Her mum liked to read a book called 'Anne of Green Gables' by Lucy Maud Montgomery.  This story was about an red-headed orphan girl who was talkative and had lots of imagination!

Penny's Mum read the 'Famous Five' books by Enid Blyton and also any books by Roald Dahl.  Her love of Dahl was also shared by Penny's Dad who read them too.  

Rosie's Mum's favourite childhood book was 'Alice in Wonderland'.  She loved the adventure and the amazing, unusual places Alice went to and things she saw.

What fun so far!

Mrs Jones

St Catherine’s School Choir

It was lovely to hear the school choir today, as they welcomed us onto the playground singing Christmas carols.  It put us into the Christmas spirit!

Mrs Jones

Reindeer Run

We all enjoyed a sponsored ‘Reindeer Run’ today in aid of Jigsaw, Cumbria’s Children’s Hospice.  Key stage 1 children ran around the playground with Key stage 2 running around the school field.

An amazing effort by all involved!

Mrs Jones

Roman Workshop at Penrith Library 

KS2 enjoyed a Roman workshop at Penrith Library this week with Claire Dougherty and Karen MacDougal from Robinson School (Penrith Museum). The children learned lots about the road systems that the soldiers built.

They also used various different sources, including microfiche to find facts about unusual Roman finds.

Karen from Penrith Museum had brought in various Roman artefacts to show the children which included; a sistrum (bell), Roman helmet, sandals, a strigil (used to scrape dirt from skin), map pointer, brooches and knuckle bones (Roman type game of Jacks). 

 It was a very enjoyable and informative session! 

Mrs Jones

Be Bright, Be Seen Get Active

We joined in with the Autumn Term ‘Get Active Day’ and Be Bright, Be Seen on any day during Road Safety Week 15th-19th November 2021. Children wore bright colours to school and decorated their coats and school bags with bright colours.

JELD-WEN, Penrith very kindly sponsored some reflective stickers and arm bands for the children to wear on coats and bags.

What a bright week!

Mrs Jones

National Poetry Day 7.10.21

We have all enjoyed celebrating this special day in school today. Have a look what we have been up to. 

Class 3

For National Poetry day, we wrote acrostic poems on the theme of RAIN, especially since we've had lots of it recently!  We thought of lots of different sounds that the rain makes and how it falls from the sky.  We listened to different 'rain' poems where some rhymed and some poems that didn't actually sound like poems.  We decided that poetry can be virtually anything, so we just enjoyed 'playing around with words'  

We'll update some photographs of our finished work and maybe even some clips of the children reading their poetry this week.  Watch this Space!

Mrs Jones

Class 4 

Wrote their own emotion poetry to share with the local community of Penrith. The library are creating a QR trail around Penrith and using our National Poetry Day poems. Year 6 also visited the Library to take part in a poetry workshop to celebrate National Libraries week! What a busy day!

LIVE PE SESSION WITH SHAUN

What fun we had in school and home exercising with Shaun our PE coach, on a live Zoom yesterday. He taught us lots of ball skills.  It was a fun 🤩 afternoon!

Thanks Shaun. We’re really enjoying your fun weekly PE sessions!

Mrs Jones

February 2020

JOURNEE FRANCAIS 

(French Day)

All the children from Key Stage 2 were fantastic ambassadors of the school when they attended Ullswater Community College for a French morning. We had the privilege of experiencing two workshops: pancake making and learning all about the French Festival Calendar. The morning finished off with a spectacular French inspired lunch cooked by Sue back at school. The children had an amazing time and were so enthusiastic about French and couldn't wait to tell their class teachers all about their morning. 

Fr. John blessed our new Prayer Garden.

The sun shone through our wonderful stained glass cross!

Congratulations Chloe in Y3 

for your winning entry

Rainbow Girl

in the Cumbria Library Services Competition!

Border TV came along to record interviews

with Chloe and her friends.

We look forward to watching you on tv!

Bishop Paul celebrated Holy Mass with Fr. John and Fr. Jerome for our school and our Parish.

The Blessed Sacrament was placed on the altar and we came into church in small groups to act as witness to Christ.

Bishop Paul also came into school for a very quick tour

and to say hello!

Certificates have been given out for

Cross Country Competitions

and

Orienteering.

Well done to everyone involved!

Congratulations to our KS1 pupils

for their fantastic efforts in Cross Country!

Some of our KS2 pupils had a wonderful time making Easter Bonnets with the ladies. The staff complimented the children on their caring attitude and exemplary behaviour.

We hope to carry on with more exciting projects throughout the year.