Hello, and welcome to our Badgers class page!

Here on this page you will be able to see our exciting learning activities that we get up to with Miss Hardwick, Mrs Alyas and Mrs Thompson. You will also get to see our art and music work that we do with Miss Hall.

Our current topic this term is Travel and Transport - Sails, Rails, Wheels and Wings.

Our philosophical question is 'Do all journeys come to an end?' 

Each class at St. Patrick’s has a class saint that we learn about throughout the year. We talk about our Saint regularly and encourage the children to learn, talk and ask questions about their Saint. Each Saint has a Feast Day, where we celebrate their lives and what they did in order to become a Saint.

In Badgers, our class saint is Saint Columba. St. Columba was an Irish missionary who is credited with spreading Christianity in Scotland and the building of churches and abbey's. St. Columba's feast day is the 9th of June.

As a faith school, RE as at the forefront of everything we do. We celebrate RE in many different ways across the school day, such as through Collective Worship, Godly Plays and Liturgical Prayers.

Our topics RE topics for Autumn are: Families, Belonging, and Advent. We have also celebrated Harvest, and had an alternative faith week where we learnt about Judaism.

Families

In our Families topic, we started by looking at who was in our family. We discussed the members of our families and also drew them.

We looked at a photo of a family, and thought about where they were and what they were doing. We thought of and wrote down what they may be saying to each other.

In our RE lessons, we looked at Psalm 28, which is about thanking God for how he cares for us. We thought about what we liked the most about the psalm, and tried to write our own psalms to thank God for helping us.

We thought about what we need to do to show love and care to our families. We wrote down the ways we show love and care onto some paper bricks, and with these made a display of the ways we show love and care.

We discussed everything that God takes care of - us, the trees, the animals, and the world. We wrote our own prayers to say 'thank you' to God for taking care of us.

Another psalm we have looked at is Psalm 16, which tells us about God's love. We used some pictures that linked to this psalm and we thought of whether the pictures matched with the words 'safe', 'thank you' and 'happy'. 

We took some time to learn about what Jesus' life was like when he was younger. We looked at the kind of house he would have lived in, the oil lamps he would have used, and the way he would get water. We compared this to our houses, the lamps we use nowadays, and the way we can get water from a tap. With this information we made zigzag books. We also thought of the ways Mary and Joseph would have cared for Jesus.

To end our Families topic, we had a class liturgical prayer. In our liturgical prayer we listened to Psalm 28 again, and had a litany of thanks, where we said thank you for someone in our family. We then had a mission to tell someone in our families that we love them.

Judaism week

In our first lesson about Judaism, we looked at our big question: how important are promises? We then learnt about Abraham and the promise that God made to him: that his family would be as big as the number of stars. We drew our own stars and wrote our families into them.

In our second lesson about Judaism, we thought about what makes someone a good leader. We thought of so many qualities such as brave, kind, and caring! We then learnt about Shabbat - what it is and why it is important. We did a visualisation activity where we thought about what we might see in a household celebrating Shabbat, and drew this.

Belonging

In our first belonging lesson, we thought about all the groups we belong to: some of us belong to dancing, gymnastics, football and swimming. We realised that we  have 2 groups that we all belong to - St Patrick's school, and the Badgers class! We then did some drawing to represent what groups we belong to.

We listened to a story about Jesus where the disciples did not let a group of children go to him, and how Jesus told the disciples to bring the children to him. We looked at a photo for this story, and thought of what Jesus and the children in the picture would be saying and feeling.

We then thought about how a baby is welcomed home, and how they are welcomed into Church. We learnt that Baptism is the first sacrament, and listened to a song called 'We welcome you into the Church'. We then looked at some pictures of a baby being welcomed home and into Church, and wrote down everything we could see in these pictures.

Next we learnt about the Baptism candle, and even saw a really old one that Miss Hardwick had from when she was little! We made a storyboard of what happens in the first part of a Baptism, and prepared some questions to ask Father Albert.

Father Albert really kindly came into our classroom to speak to us about Baptism, and to answer our questions we had thought of. We learnt that Baptism is the first of 7 sacraments, and that Father Albert had baptised thousands of people! Father Albert told us who had baptised him, and why he liked Baptism so much.

We learnt about Godparents and why they are so important - they are helping the parents of the baby being baptised, to live in God's way. We looked at some photos from a Baptism and labelled them with what we could see and knew. We also spent a little bit of time learning about the white garment.

In our final Belonging lesson, we learnt about what the lit candle stands for. We discussed how Jesus is the light of the world, and how when the candle is lit it means Jesus is with us. We talked about how we can share Jesus' love and light, and then drew pictures or wrote sentences to show this.

To end our Belonging topic, we had a class liturgical prayer. In our liturgical prayer we listened to the story of Jesus being baptised by John, and put a pebble in a bowl of water while reflecting on what we had just heard. We then had a mission to invite someone to play with us at break or lunch time.

Waiting

In our first waiting lesson, we were left a present! We had to wait patiently for the present to be opened, and talked about how this made us feel. We then listened to a story of when Miss Hardwick had to wait, and thought of any of our own waiting stories. We did some writing about what we had to wait for and how it made us feel.

We looked at what the liturgical year cycle is, and had a really great discussion about why we have certain colours at certain times of the year. We then thought of different ways we prepare for different festivals we celebrate, such as Christmas, Eid and Diwali. We looked at some different religious advent calendars we can use to help us while we wait for the coming of Jesus, and made our own class advent calendar filled with different ways we can be loving and caring to others during the time of Advent!

We talked about what an Advent wreath is, and what parts it has to it. We discussed how it is a never-ending circle, which is like God's never-ending love for us. We learnt that we have 4 candles (3 purple, 1 pink) to show the 4 weeks we wait in Advent, and we can have a fifth candle (a white one) when it is Jesus' birthday. We labelled a picture of an Advent wreath in our books, and some of us wrote a sentence about what we know about the wreaths. We then tried to make our own paper wreaths!

Topic

In topic we have been looking at rails, sails, wheels and wings.

In our first lesson we discussed the different ways we can transport.

Science

Art