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.

Collective Worship - Saying Thankyou - October 2024

Rev. Jenny taught us all about how we can pray using different objects such as prayer stones. We all used a prayer stone as a way of offering our prayers to God.

Collective Worship - Saying Thankyou - October 2024

This week, Year 4 led worship, challenging us to show our thanks to the other people in our lives in many different way.

Collective Worship - Our School Values - October 2024

This week, we reflected on our school values and shared stories of how we had experienced them across the week.

Class Worship - Gratitude - September 2024

Each week, we reflect on the values and morals discussed in Wednesday's collective worship. This week, in class worship, we enjoyed creating gratitude spirals, reflecting on the things that we are thankful as well as discussing the benefits that gratitude has on our mental health and wellbeing. We enjoyed celebrating our reflections in Friday's celebration worship.

Class Worship - Forest Church - A Love for Nature - September 2024

Each week, we reflect on Monday's collective worship together in class. This week, we learned about the British Wildlife Photography awards and how it helps people develop a love for the natural world. In class worship, we headed out to the forest to take our own photographs of aspects of nature that find beautiful.

Collective Worship - Our School Values - September 2024

This year, we're excited to launch our new school vision which is supported by a set of core school values: love, peace, hope, and faithfulness. In collective worship, we enjoyed an swapping wool each time we noticed a specific value in a story. We noticed that all of our values are interwoven. We are excited to champion our values across the year.

Welcome and Blessing -  September 2024 

The whole school started the year by joining Rev Jenny in prayer and blessings. Each class presented the cross from their reflection area which was decorated through experiential worship.

Year 6 Bible Presentation

A huge thank you to the Bollington Sunday School Foundation for a warm and meaningful Bible presentation. We're delighted to continue the tradition which has been a Bollington tradition for decades. Going forward, we hope and pray that the wisdom of the Bible continues to provide hope and strength for our children, families, and wider community.

Picture News Special - Collective Worship - July 2024

Key Stage 2 enjoyed a live Q&A with Paralympic medalist and world sprinting champion, Stef Reid. We reflected on how her story echoesHebrews 12:1 -  “…let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” It was a truly inspiration experience for everyone and it was great to see the Bible reflected in daily life.

Class Worship - Perseverance July 2024

In collective worship, we all enjoyed learning about the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic games. In class worship, we enjoyed trying to collect multilink with chopsticks in order to help us consider the character strengths needed to become an Olympic or Paralympic athlete. We thought about determination, resilience and perseverance. We then reflected on how God perseveres with us and how like with anything in our lives, including our faith journey, we must persevere.

Class Worship - June 2024

In class worship this week we have focused thinking of others. We came together to pray for our community and the wider world by creating handprint prayers where each finger stands for the different people in our lives. We put our prayers together on a cross which is now displayed in church.

Thumb - those nearest to us.

Index finger - those who lead and support us.

Third finger - world leaders

Fourth finger - the weakest and most vulnerable in our society.

Little finger - little old me.

Bollington Festival Thanks-Giving Service

An enormous thank-you to all of the children, families and people of the community, who joined us for a fantastic open-air service of thanks-giving at the Bollington Festival. It was great to see everyone engaged in worship and taking time to pray for Bollington of the past, the present, and the future. The children did a superb job at leading the music with energetic dancing and our community trinity-knot, packed with prayers, was a fantastic way to mark Trinity Sunday. Thank you to St Oswald's Church and Pott Shirgley Church and everybody involved in what truly was a special celebration.

Pentecost 2024

Across school, we have enjoyed learning about how the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit which led to them being able to spread the word of Jesus in different languages, resulting in the baptism of 3000 people in a single day. Pentecost is considered to be the church's birthday. In classroom worship, we created prayerful party chains which we used to decorate our church. We wrote the names of and prayed for people whom we are thankful for as well as considering how we might treat them with love. On the other side, we reflected on how we might be better disciples by spreading values such as 'the golden rule' - treating others like we would like to be treated, and the Fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 

Thy Kingdom Come

In classroom worship, we've been learning about the Thy Kingdom Come prayer initiative. Started by the Church of England, churches and communities right across the world now enjoy participating in a special time of prayer between Ascension Day and Pentecost. For more information, including resources and videos that you could use at home, click here

. In school, we've been focusing on what prayer is. Across the school, we have enjoyed interesting discussions about prayer as well as trying some different ways of praying. KS2 enjoyed reflecting on 'The Way' podcast where a group of young peope discussed their experiences of and questions about prayer. KS1 were introduced to The Cheeky Pandas - an animated Bible story series, before enjoying a labyrinth prayer. 

Weekly Worship Challenge - Walls of Encouragement - April 2024

In collective worship, we learned about how the Bible tells us to encourage. We explored the benefits of encouraging others we thought about how encouragement makes us stronger. In classroom worship the following day, we were challenged to create a wall of encouragement, packed with ways that we can encourage others. 

Weekly Worship Challenge - Psalm Translation - April 2024

Collective worship always ends with a 'Go-Forth Challenge' and this week, we enjoyed translating psalms into our own words as we reflected on the theme of sticking together and sticking with God. We reflected on how the Bible can feel quite challenging due to its size, language, age, and how we can sometimes feel quite far removed from the time and culture in which it was written. We thought about how it was perhaps not the Bible's job to express how we feel but our job to feel what the Bible expresses. We thought about how if the Bible is timeless and if it was 'updated then it would feel even more dated much sooner - much like a video game.

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.