Church Service

Today the whole school took a visit to Church for a wonderful Easter Celebration. We had our amazing Worship Warriors leading the service along with Reverend Alex and Reverend Josie. Everyone took part in some beautiful singing. They told the Easter story and reminded us all that it's not all about the chocolate on Easter Sunday, but about what that egg represents: New life, hope and the empty tomb. 

Competitions 

In our first competition of the New Year we took part in a Year 6 Sportshall Athletics on Tuesday 16^th January at King’s Leadership Academy Hawthornes, taking 19 pupils. The competition focus was teamwork and the 19 pupils worked fantastically well as a team finishing third overall.

Year 2 took part in a Disney Festival on Monday 22^nd January at King’s Leadership Academy Hawthornes with the focus being teamwork and to get young girls active through story telling. The event was non-competitive with the girls having a fantastic time dressing up as their favourite Disney characters and taking part in different sporting activities.

Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3 all took part in separate football competitions organised by Everton Football Club with 8 pupils from each year group attending GOALS in Netherton. The inter-school competition had a focus on respect with Year 1’s competition being non-competitive with children playing just for the enjoyment and the other year groups both finishing 6^th in their respective competitive competitions.

As part of the #LetGirlsPlay campaign the school took part in the Biggest EVER Football Session on Friday 8^th March to promote equal opportunities for girls to play football. At lunch time Mr Courtney-Ward challenged the girls in Year 5 and 6 to attempt as many keepy uppies as they could and see how many foot taps they could do in a minute.

On Monday 18^th March 6 pupils from year 5 and 6 attended the Believe Grand National Mutli-Skills competition at King’s Leadership Academy Hawthornes with the focus being on self-belief. On their return to school the pupils were full of confidence and had really enjoyed taking part in the activities.

We had a visit just before Easter from the Easter Bunny who arrived on Wednesday 27^th March on the Key Stage 2 yard. The Easter Bunny decided he wanted everybody to take part in an Easter fun run ensuring all pupils had the opportunity to take part in an active event in school. The Easter bunny jumped, hopped, gave out hundreds of high fives and was even caught on a few occasions eating leaves near the school fence.

Wellbeing Week 2024

To help us understand how important our wellbeing is, we held a special Wellbeing Week. Throughout this week we participated in lots of new and exciting activities such as:

• Tri Kidz - we learnt all about triathlons and participated in a mini race.
• Circus Skills - we loved becoming a part of the circus for a day and learning lots of new skills and tricks!
• Silent Disco - we danced and jived away to all our favourite songs making us feel happy and positive.
• Scoot Fit - as part of our PE lessons, we happily rode around the playground on our fantastic scooters working on our balance and fitness. 
• Bully Busters - we had a special assembly on anti-bullying to help us keep our school bullying-free!

Christmas Performances 

Wow! What an incredible week we've had performing our Christmas productions! Well done to all of our children who made us so proud by standing up confidently on the stage and doing their part to tell the Christmas story to all our mums, dads, nans, grandads, aunties, uncles and many, many more! 

Our Nursery and Reception children started us off with with their performance: The First Nativity. Their singing was fantastic, our narrators were nice and loud when delivering their lines and our actors brought the story to life. For such little people, they were full of confidence and bravery and made us so proud. 

KS1 followed with their Nativity: The Bossy King. Our children once again made us so proud with their ability to perform on a stage with such a big audience watching! They sang their songs loudly and proudly and showed us all the actions to go along with them. Our actors and narrators told the story of the baby Jesus and reminded us about how mad King Herod was about the new king. It was brilliant to see once again how confident and enthusiastic our KS1 children are about performing and how well they know the Christmas story. 

Finally, KS2 took to the stage for a Carols by Candlelight performance. Through song and narration, they too told the Christmas story in a unique and uplifting way. Surrounded by candlelight, our singers, narrators and choir all felt the sense of peace as they took us on a journey through lyrics and music. We were so proud of how well they learnt all the songs and how beautifully they sang. 

A massive well done to all of our children, we were so impressed! And it was lovely to have all of our parents and carers there with us to rejoice in the Christmas story.

Wellbeing and Distinctiveness Ambassadors 

Today we held a special assembly to welcome all of our new ambassadors to their faculties. The newest members of our team will be responsible for ensuing that our Wellbeing and Distinctiveness faculty is listening to the pupils and improving our subjects accordingly. They will be involved in conducting pupil voices and they will aid us in the planning of our special events. We can't wait to see them flourish in their new roles and would like to say a massive well done to all our faculty ambassadors!

Santa Dash

Our mini Santas were out in full force today as they raced around the playground for a special Daily Mile. With Christmas music blasting and Santa hats on their heads, children from Nursery - Reception enjoyed keeping fit and healthy in a fun and festive way. Children from lots of different school also participated in this South Sefton event so it was great to know that we were all contributing to the total number of Santa's miles together. 

Our Food Bank

Here at Christ Church we are really passionate about helping those in need and we endeavour to positively contribute to our community. So far this year, the generosity of our parents and carers has been overwhelming and we are so grateful for all the support they have given us whilst collective for our food bank. 

We have also been staggered by the generosity of those outside our community who have recognised the efforts we have put in and pledged to aid us in our collections. Thank you so much to Insul-eight Contracts who kindly donated to our food bank and have made a huge difference to those struggling as we approach the festive season. As we focused on our value of Hope during our assembly, we are hopeful that families in our parish will benefit from the generosity shown to us through these donations. Thank you. 

Year 6 Trip to Liverpool Cathedral 

Year 6 had a brillant time at Liverpool Cathedral participating in an Advent workshop. 

The workshop took us all around the cathdreal and it was fantastic to see the fabulous architecture of the historical, iconic building. 

Throughout the day, Year 6 learned a lot about Advent. They learnt all about special messengers and looked in detail at the gifts the Wise Men brought for the baby Jesus. They also focused on the true meaning of Christmas and decided what was 'Bubblegum or Fluff' - they revealed the real reason we celebrate Christmas by 'defluffing' the connotations around it. 

Children in Need

To end our Kindness Week, Christ Church was invaded by bears! Donning their best Pudsey merchandise, our children came to school with a donation for Children in Need and were determined to raise as much money as possible for such a brilliant chairty and we were not disappoined! 

Overall, we raised a whopping £915! 

Thank you so much to our parents for their generosity and support, we couldn't have done it without you. Together We Can! 

Kindness Week

Kindness week was yet again a fantastic example of how wonderful our children are! 

All week we have been thinking carefully about how to show kindness to not only those in our daily lives but those in our community too. As a school, we decided to collect food for our food bank to help those who are struggling and we wrote messages of kindness to give to them too, to show that we are thinking of them.

This week we have also been giving out 'Kindness Stickers' for children who have displayed real acts of kindness. Some recieved stickers for something simple like helping a friend tie their laces or holding the door open for somebody - things that we do on a daily basis without even thinking about it but it makes such a big difference to somebody's day. Others recieved stickers for going above and beyond to be kind and helpful to people around their community. We have been so proud of our children this week and have relished the opportunity to celebrate their kindness!

Remembrance Day

11.11.22

11am

Lest We Forget

Today we held a special assembly to remember those who have suffered during war, those who have been scarred and those who have anxiously waited at home. We prayed for those who returned wounded and those who mourned and we continue to pray for the communities still suffering. 

During our two minutues silence, we quietly reflected on the sacrifice all the men and women who fought for our country made for us and we thought about those still fighting and asked God to help bring peace to our world. 

Religious Education

Year 5 were privileged to be able to welcome Christ Church's new Vicar, Rev. Heather Goldsmith, to one of our RE lessons during our 'Bible' topic. Pupils asked her about how and why she reads the Bible and what it says to her when life gets tough. She explained that she reads the Bible every day and she finds good advice there when she has difficult decisions to make.

We have worked hard over the past year to achieve our Bronze Health and Wellbeing Award in which we focused on our pastoral care towards our pupils especially during Covid.

This year we continue to work towards achieving the silver award which will include a focus on health and hygiene - in particular healthy lifestyles including packed lunches and dental hygiene. We look forward to working together with parents and carers to achieve these important goals.

CORAM Life PSHE Workshops

Megan (and Harold!) from Life Education visited our school during the Spring term and we enjoyed participating in a range of workshops designed to develop our understanding of the PSHE curriculum . The focus of these workshops was tailored specifically to suit each Year group, covering a range of topics such as; the benefits of a healthy diet and exercise on the body, the effects of alcohol and tobacco, legal and illegal drugs, how to understand and help our own feelings and mental health and how to build, recognise and maintain positive relationships.

Take a look at some of the photographs from our workshops.

Dentist Visit 

In line with our healthy well-being initiative, we want to support and promote dental health and general hygiene in our school.  

Our Infant children had a visit from a local dentist. The dentist discussed and promoted the importance of looking after our teeth, how to brush teeth effectively and how healthy food and drinks (which have less sugars) can protect dental health in the long term.  

Each child was provided with a dental well-being pack, which included:  

• Tooth brush  
• Tooth paste  
• 2-minute timer  
• Tooth brushing worksheets and information pack 

Our children found these sessions fun and engaging and were very eager to collect their pack and practise brushing their teeth reguarly at home!

'Together We Can' Curriculum

We work hard to develop our own unique and specific way for teaching Values and to respond to the needs of our children and their wellbeing. In this way, children and staff come together each term to work collectively on a whole school project for example: ‘Belonging Week’, ‘Together as One Week’, ‘Little Me, Big Dreams Project’ and most recently, our Kindness week - examples of which you can see below. These whole school projects give both pupils and staff the opportunity for discussion, reflection and worship as a whole school community.

During such projects, teachers facilitate values activities; helping pupils to connect with their own values and live them. Pupils talk about and build upon skills such as relationships, aspirations, diversity and mental health and the aim is to give pupils a greater understanding of the world and their place within it.

The children also learn and practise mindfulness techniques – being aware of thoughts and feelings as they happen, in the present moment. Quality story books are carefully selected to use during these projects to give pupils a greater understanding of the issues discussed. Pupil voice is of great importance at Christ Church and we also use the projects as a forum for when we want to ask children’s opinions on many aspects of school life.

Kindness Workshop 

During Autumn term we have celebrated Kindness Week at Christ Church.  We spent the week focusing on how we can be kind to ourselves and spread kindness throughout our school.  We  enjoyed developing a deeper understanding of kindness and looking at all the ways we can make our world a kinder place.

On Monday we started the week by celebrating Odd Socks Day.  We all came to school wearing odd socks to show that we are all different and unique.  We spent the day celebrating each other's differences and individuality.

We enjoyed reading Big Panda and Tiny Dragon by James Norbury.  This beautiful book is filled with positive, inspirational messages on how we can spread kindness and throughout our lives and work together to build a better world.  We were inspired by the stunning illustrations in the book and enjoyed creating some of our own artwork.

On Thursday Krish from 52 Lives - School of Kindness came to visit.  He told us all about the amazing work 52 Lives do to help people around the world.  During our workshops we enjoyed creating Christmas cards for anybody who might need some kindness this year.  We wrote messages inside that will hopefully help to make someone's day a little better.