Olympic Bake 'n' Take

No, we don't mean a marathon session lasting weeks! Instead, the final Bake 'n' Take of the school year will be on Monday 16th January at 3 p.m. until 4 p.m. We hope there are lots of willing bakers out there who are able to provide us with home-baking (especially buns, cakes and biscuits) on an Olympic theme. Any home baking will be gratefully received. Please ensure this is dropped off at school in the morning and we look forward to seeing you all there in the afternoon to make this last fund-raiser of the year a great event!

Finally, Pat Ainsworth (an Olympic torch bearer) will be in school to talk with the children and show them the Olympic torch she carried on Friday 20th July at our final assembly of the year. We are very grateful for Pat's willingness to come into school and show pupils the torch and we hope to be able to take a lot of photos of this event!

Sports Day

Sports Day will be this Friday (13th July) from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m., but unfortunately will not be at Shaw Lane as planned because of the recent wet weather.

Instead, we will be holding the event on split sites, with Primary pupils competing in their House teams in the Sports Hall at school and Senior pupils competing in their House teams in the YMCA across the road. Points from each activity will be added up and the Christina Mulder Sports Day Trophy will be awarded to the winning team (House) at the end of the day. We will also be presenting the House Shield to the winning House at the end of the day.

Because of the change of venue, parents will not be able to attend (neither venue is large enough to accommodate parents as spectators.) We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this change of plan and hope that parents will understand the constraints placed on us by the unfortunate weather.

The schedule for the day is:

10 a.m. - 12 noon
Fun games

12 noon - 1 p.m.
Lunch (all pupils will eat lunch in school whilst completing 'A Question of Sport' quiz, for which house points will also be awarded.) Pupils need to bring their usual packed lunch as well.

FBCS will be providing free ice-creams for all pupils at lunchtime. There is no need for pupils to bring any money for this.

1.00 - 1.45 p.m.
House teams compete in a Penalty Shoot-Out competition

1.50 -2.35 p.m.
Rounders

2.40 p.m.
Senior pupils will return to school where there will be an awards ceremony for the presentation of the Christina Mulder Sports Day Trophy and the House Shield.

Sports Day will finish at 3 p.m. and parents will be able to pick up their children from school at 3 p.m. on that day. Please note that Primary pupils will be supervised until 3.30 p.m. if parents are unable to collect children earlier and that Senior pupils will be allowed out of school at 3 p.m. if they are not being collected.

Jubilee Party fun

Here are the last photos from the Jubilee party:

And the house points? Aylward were the winners, with 19 points. Wilberforce scored with 17 points and Hudson-Taylor scored 16 points. These points will be added to the general house points' total and the winner will be announced at Sports Day, on 13th July.

Meanwhile, downstairs other volunteers were busy serving cream teas and buns and biscuits, but alas... we have no photos from this, as the camera was working overtime upstairs! Apologies for that, and many, many thanks to all who helped in so many ways to make this a memorable end to the half-term. Have a great holiday!

More Jubilee Party photos

We wanted to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, so many of the Primary children made Union Jack hats in their art lessons. They very kindly made one for me as well! We also decided to include teddy bears as a way of earning house points, and thanks to the generosity of a friend of mine who is gifted at crochet, my bear (originally bought for me by pupils at school) was able to be just as patriotic!

Someone's hiding behind a bear here!

This bear is also very patriotic!

More bears:

Even the food was patriotic!

We sang the National Anthem and listened to 'Rule Britannia' as we played 'Pass the Parcel', so all in all, a day to honour the Queen's long reign over us!

Jubilee Party photos

Today was the Jubilee Party in school, followed by cream teas for parents in the Community Café. Altogether, the event raised £145.82, with an additional £6 raised through the sale of BCS anniversary mugs. Many, many thanks to all who gave so generously, who baked for us, who gave their time and efforts to making this such a fun event!

Here we've got photos of setting up the event:

This is what the Sports Hall looked like when it was fully decorated with everyone there:

We started off with a game 'Pin the Crown on the Queen', with beautifully designed props (thanks, Sam!), colour-coded by house:

Then we played 'Pass the Parcel', with Union Jack wrapping paper!

Jubilee Party

As I'm sure you're all more than aware, this year is the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, celebrating 60 years as our monarch. To celebrate this event, FBCS will be holding a street party with a difference on Friday 25th May from 2.30 p.m. until 3.30 p.m.

The difference? Well, it's not on the street, obviously! We will be holding the party in the Sports Hall, but we hope to make it feel like a street party! We will be serving buns, jellies and drinks on a red, white and blue theme and hope pupils will bring along their teddy bears to make it a Teddy Bears' picnic as well as a street party! The whole school will be involved, and hopefully we will enjoy afternoon tea at the same time as raising funds for the school (the party will cost £2 to cover costs, with any profits going into school funds.)

After the pupils' party, we will be serving cream teas for parents in the Community Café, to ensure that no one misses out!

Make a note of the date in your diaries (it's the Friday before we break up for Spring Bank) and let's do our bit to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee in school!

Memories of BCS

One of the things that we like to do at FBCS is give something back directly for the pupils of the school. Fund-raising is a difficult thing to do and it's harder if pupils can't actually see the benefits of the things we do. We've spent a lot of money recently on refurbishing the building and purchasing equipment, but this tends to be functional and practical rather than of visible benefit to pupils. So we were very pleased recently to be able to purchase customised 'Memories of Barnsley Christian School' for Y11 pupils who will soon be leaving school.

This week we had a Senior assembly to present these books to the Y11s.

Mrs Wagstaff and Mrs Stead handed over the books to pupils:

Here they all are with their books!

It's a small gesture, but we hope to have started a new tradition at the school and that in this, our 25th anniversary year, pupils may leave here with some excellent memories of school and take with them far more than simply a leavers' book!