Catholic Life
The Catholic Life of our school is rich in opportunities for the children to encounter God and work with our community. The Gospel Values are a golden thread throughout the school and in all that we do. Through RE displays, dedicated prayer and liturgy areas in all classrooms, outdoor opportunities to connect with God in our outdoor areas, and through regular teacher and pupil-led liturgy, Catholic life is engrained in our school and learning.
Our Mission Statement
As part of God's family, with Christ at our Heart, Our Lady of Furness Catholic Federation aims to deliver a curriculum that excites, empowers and includes everyone and emphasises their dignity as a child of God.
Our Gospel Values
Here are our wonderful children using BSL to sign the Hail Mary prayer as part of our Marian Procession.
Thank you to www.fishermanukmusic.co.uk for allowing us to use the music ‘Hail Mary’ by Mike Stanley.
During the month of May, our thoughts and prayers are focussed on Mary, the mother of Jesus and of us all. During our Collective Worship, we pray a decade of the Rosary together and thank Mary for her love and dedication to us all. During the last week in May, we hold our traditional Marian Procession where we crown Mary with flowers grown at school and listen to readings from the Bible about Mary, lovingly prepared by our oldest children. We also sing traditional Marian hymns as we process.
Harvest is very different this year for us all, but that doesn't stop the Our Lady's family coming together. We organised to have a collection point at school to coincide with CAFOD's Family Fast Day and the food donations were gratefully received by our very own Dalton Food Bank. This was created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the volunteers have been working tirelessly since March 2020 to provide food parcels to local residents. It was great to meet Steve from the Dalton Community Action Group who collected the donations and we look forward to working together in the future.
We also organised a collection during Advent to support our local community.
As well as having a Harvest collection, Key Stage Two also held their own outside Harvest Festival where we had the opportunity to pray together, listen to readings from the Bible read by Class Peregrine, read out our own Harvest poems and thank God for all that we have this year. It was also lovely to come together to sing hymns - it had to be Autumn Days of course!
As part of our RE lessons, Class Puffin have been thinking a lot about refugees. We watched a short video produced by CAFOD and we wanted to do something to help. The children organised a clothing collection for a local charity who support refugees in the Furness area and abroad. The response from our school family was absolutely amazing! A big THANK YOU from Class Puffin for your support.
We celebrated our first RE day on October 8th which is the Feast Day of Our Lady of the Rosary. Each class spent the day honouring Mary in prayer and reflection and spending time praying the rosary. The children in Key Stage Two made their own personal set of Rosary beads that they will keep in school and use throughout the year. The younger children in our school made prayer cards, made flowers for their own Mums and wrote thank you prayers.
Each class have been reflecting on lock down life. After watching Cafod’s National Assembly video, the children have written their own prayers and thoughts on how we can make our world a better place. These prayers have been added to our prayer tree in the entrance hall.
Peregrine Class have been busy preparing their child-led Prayer and Liturgy.
