Faith
Faith at Bollington Cross Church of England Primary School
Faith and spirituality are an inspiration to our community. Everybody is invited to share in daily worship where we aim to cultivate hope, wisdom, community, and dignity in order to support each child's spiritual journey, enabling children to live life in all its fullness. Below, you will find a snap-shot of just some of Christian-rooted worship experiences enjoyed by the children in school. We are very lucky to have such a close relationship (and proximity) with St Oswald's Church, including the fantastic clergy - Rev Nancy Goodridge and Rev Jenny Fox Eades. If you would like to get involved with faith at Bollington Cross, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
Easter
What a fantastic week of Easter reflections and celebrations! Each day, we have enjoyed learning about different parts of the Easter story and along the way, there have been some real highlights...
Year 3 teamed up with children from St John’s and enjoyed a tremendous day of experiential learning in church before leading worship for parents and our community in the afternoon. A huge thank you to St Oswald’s for hosting the event.
Across the school, children enjoyed a variety of interactive learning opportunities such as creating a palm pathway; re-enacting the Last Supper - including washing each other's hands; toasting hot-cross buns on the fire; heading outdoors to create crosses and crowns of thorns; retelling the Easter story as a comic strip, and by creating Easter cards.
To round-off our Easter celebrations, everyone enjoyed an interactive worship experience in church, where Year 3 shared their learning and our glockenspiel club showed how the resurrection can be celebrated in the most unsuspecting of ways - with dance music!
Happy Easter and thank you to the children and everybody involved making Holy Week such great fun!
Ash Wednesday
Thank you to Rev. Nancy and Rev. Jenny for an engaging and reflective Ash Wednesday service. We all thought about what we might let go of and what we might pick-up during Lent.
Shrove Tuesday
It's been quite a Shrove Tuesday in school today! Everybody has enjoyed learning about different Shrove Tuesday traditions from across the world. Here are just some of the things we enjoyed today:
- Tasting pancakes
- Running a pancake race
- Parading in a Mardi Gras Carnival
- Making Mardi Gras bracelets inspired by the traditional Christian colours
- Reflecting on what we might let go and pick-up during Lent
Thank you to everyone who helped make today such a success.
KS2 Collective Worship - Wednesday 7th February
In KS2 collective worship, we learned about encouraging others. The Bible encourages us to love and support one another. It also says that when we give, we are given to. KS2 encouraged 6 volunteers to do their best at each task. The encouragement spurred them on to do even better which in turn, earned everyone an extra 2 and a half minutes of break time - supporting the idea that when we give, we are given to. We also used 6 volunteers because each volunteer represented a day of the week. Our worship represented the seventh day because worship is there to refresh and regenerate us so that we can spread love and use the values that we have reflected on across the week! Across the remainder of the week, we will be looking to spot people in our school community supporting one another.
Epiphany
We lit-up the New Year with Epiphany celebrations right across school. After a special collective worship led by Rev Jenny, we were all invited to create crowns and write the intents that we aim to take with us into the New Year. Next, we took our intentions to Jesus on a mini-pilgrimage to St Oswald's, placing our intentions in the manger outside church. Each class also really enjoyed the 'chalking the door' cermony where we wrote '20 C + M + B' on each door. The initials traditionally stand for 'Caspar, Melchior, Balthezar' - the three wise men. However, they also mean 'Christus Mansionem Benedicat' - translationg to 'Christ bless this house'.
Christmas Service
As part of a special Christmas serivce on the last day of term, everybody was invited to lay their pebbel on the path to Bethlehem as we thought about how we might come to Christ this Christmas and take his message and God's word into the future.
Christmas Celebrations
What a week of celebration it has been in school and St Oswald's. Reception performed a magical retelling of the Nativity and Key Stage 1 thoroughly enjoyed teaching us all about Advent. In Key Stage 2, it was a jolly Bolly affair as the children brought the Christmas story to life with a local spin. Maria and Yousef travelled across Bollington on their way to have a baby, reflecting on how their situation mirrored particular aspects of the Christmas Story. A huge thank you to everybody who came together to join us in rejoicing.
Christmas Dinner
A huge thank you to our wonderul kitchen staff for providing a delicious and festive Christmas dinner. As ever, we said our lunch-time prayer before digging-in.
Bless us O Lord as we sit together.
Bless the food we eat today.
Bless the hands that made our food.
Bless us O Lord.
Amen
To Sing is to Pray Twice!
St Augustine wrote that 'to sing is to pray twice', and during Advent, we have certainly been doing that. A huge thank you to everybody involved in the Christmas Fair, the Rocksteady Digital Concert, and the piano evening which was packed with traditional Christmas music. You really helped bring the joy and elation of Christmas to our community!
Being Christ's Light in the World - Advent
This week, we reflected on the Christ candle, focusing on how Jesus is the light of the world. We used leaves to show how we are all unique and candles to show how we can all let Jesus' light shine through us.
Advent
Inspired by the Church of England's 'Follow the Star' Advent calendar, we are enjoying bringing the bible to life by connecting the Old Terstament to the Gospels as well as reflecting on how the Christmas Story can inspire our daily lives. The example below comes from Luke 1.26-28, where the Angel Gabriel appeard to Mary. We learned that 'Gabriel' meant man of God, which inspired us to find out the meanings behind our own names. We then reflected on how we can be part of God's story.
Christingle
This week, Key Stage 2 enjoyed launching our Advent preparations by creating Christingles. We learned that the orange represents the world; red ribbon represents the love of God and the blood of Jesus (his sacrifice). The four sticks represent the 4 seasons and the sweets and fruit stand for the the food that we are blessed with. The candle represents Jesus as the light of the world. Key Stage 2 made enough Christingles so that they were able to spread the word of God by gifting one to every child in Key Stage 1. Everybody then enjoyed a magical Christingle service led by Reverend Jenny at St Oswald's Church.
Remembrance - November 2023
This week in class worship, we focused on remembrance. We reflected on what life was like for the soldiers and children of the First World War and wars since, including ongoing conflict in today's world. We learned that there are different coloured poppies to represent the different people, animals, efforts, and feelings towards war. We reflected on our own thoughts and created a school wreathe which will lie in St Oswald's on Armistice Day. We offered prayers for those whom have lost their lives and served in war.
All Saints Day - November 2023
This week in class worship, we enjoyed learning all about different saints, including St Oswald, whom our church is named after. St Oswald is known for miraculously curing the sick. Therefore, we created prayer cards, offering prayers for those whom are unwell. They prayers will be taken to St Oswald's and prayed by our local prayer group.
Weekly Worship Challenge!
Every Wednesday, we end worship with a 'Go forth'. This is where the children are encouraged to put what they have learned in worship into action. This week, we recorder ways that we had clothed ourselves and others in compassion (Colossians 3:12-14).
Harvest Festival- The Fruit of the Spirit October 2023
Thank you for joining us for our Harevst Festival. Today, we reflect on the Fruit of the Spirit. Please find the order of service below for both KS1 and KS2 celebrations or you may wish to download the them as PDFs.:
/uploads/55/files/KS1 Harvest Festival.pdf
/uploads/55/files/KS2 Harvest Festival.pdf
Leading Worship
A huge thank you to the children from Year 4 who went in to Year 6 to teach a beautiful autumn prayer. Everyone also enjoyed reflecting on what they like most about Bollington at autumn time.
Collective Worship - October 2023
Each week, we reflect on a different Christian value in our key stage collective worship. This week, key stage 2 were amazed by Mrs Marhsall's family heirloom - a book that is over 100 years old! We reflected on how it is precious and delicate...just like our planet. This led us to consider ways in which we can care for God's creation.
Learning from Parables - October 2023
Children in Year 4 enjoyed searching for the lost sheep in St Oswald's before considering the story's deeper meanings.
Messy Church in School - September 2023
Year 4 enjoyed a Messy Church taster session with Mrs Wearden. Everyone enjoyed this exciting, hands-on approach to worship and we invite you to join the fun on Sunday 17th September at St Oswald's at Messy Church runs from 4pm - 5:30pm. Can't make it? For further Messy Church dates and more details, click here.
Welcome and Blessing - September 2023
The whole school started the year in church learning to pray with a welcome from Reverend Nancy. Each class presented the cross from their reflection area which was blessed ahead of the new school year.
