St Augustine's Catholic Primary School

We were blessed with a full playground of MacMillan supporters today. THANK YOU all so much for your committed support for all cancer patients and their families. One of our lovely Year 4 pupil’s cut her hair to the cheers of her class mates. Well done Elia and Mrs Napier,  their hair has been donated to the Little Princess Trust.

There were amazing performances from our Nursery to Year 6 children during our MacMillan coffee morning. We are super proud of you! A huge thank you for all the donations we have received so far. A special thank you to Morrisons for the generous donations of cakes, tea, coffee and treats.

On Wednesday 4^th October we celebrated St. Francis of Assisi’s Feast day as a whole school with a special Mass led by Father Julian in Church and our Chaplaincy Team and other members of Year Six leading the Readings, Psalm and Bidding prayers. As well as this, the children had an assembly all about St. Francis of Assisi with Mrs Faulkner, learning more about his life and how he became a saint. She challenged them to remember at least three facts that they will remember if they are asked by anyone about our Trust Academy saint.

Why not speak to your child and see what they can remember? Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone born 1181 until 1226), known as Francis of Assisi founded the Franciscans. He was inspired to lead a life of poverty. He is one of the most venerated figures in Christianity and set out to imitate and live his life in the footsteps of Christ and literally carry out his work. It became customary for churches to hold ceremonies blessing animals on his feast day of 4 October.  

Sports Day

Sports Day was a great success on Monday.  It was great to be able to open up the event to you all.  All our children competed with great sportsmanship and enthusiasum. On Monday we held our annual Sports Day. It was second time lucky with the weather, with the sun shining all day. Everyone had a fantastic day, with the pupils performing brilliantly. They displayed determination as well as good sportsmanship and a great amount of effort. It was wonderful as usual to see so many family and friends come to support their children. Well done to St Cathrine’s Blue House!, for being the overall winner when the points for the carousel activities that took place the week before and the sports day races were added together. Thank you to all the staff who helped and in particular Mr White and Mrs Caperelli for organising sports day so well this year.

Sponge The Teacher 

We raised a whopping £351!!! Thank you for all your kind donations. These donations will contribute towards our Talent Show finale acts.

Kings Coronation - Tea Party 

The children all looked spectacular today in their crowns and monarch’s, they made such a great effort for the Kings Coronation! A HUGE Thank you to our SAPTA team, they ended the week today with their wonderful tea party. Thank you to those who donated cakes and biscuits, it is always appreciated when we all come together as a community on days like today. We hope you all enjoyed the Kings Coronation Tea Party! Photos will be available next week via our school website. Please read the letter from Cardinal Nichols for the Coronation. https://rcdow.org.uk/cardinal/news/cardinal-to-invoke-blessing-at-coronation-of-king-charles-iii/

Pancake Day 

To mark Shrove Tuesday, classes across the school had eggciting pancake races! After the races, children sampled their own pancakes and decided which topping to have. A mixture of Golden Syrup, Sugar and Lemon appeared to be the favourites! Thank you to SAPTA for funding the pancakes. The children really did enjoy them!

Nativities & Christmas Giving Tree 

It was amazing to watch our Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and 2 classes perform their Nativities, all the children were superb, and so confident, we are so proud of them all! Thank you to all the teaching staff involved for all their hard work preparing the children and to the Parent Forum for their help with arranging the DVDs, and the SAPTA team for providing the teas and coffees.   

The children made incredible posters for Children in Need, which was presented during our Celebration assembly. 

For Children in Need, the children gave presentations in assembly to share what they had been learning this week about a particular group of children who are "in need". Each class had made a poster to present which explained what the need is, who is affected, why it happens and how we can help. The children dressed in dots and gave donations for the ribbons made generously for us by Mrs. Amadi. Thank you for all your support

Remembrance Sunday

Thank you to all our children who represented St. Augustine's on Remembrance Sunday 13th November 2022 whether in uniform or through outside organisations. Thank you to our Champlaincy Team and their mums for helping sell poppies and other items in the weeks leading up to Remembrance Day to raise money for the Royal British Legion. 

St Augustine's Catholic Church Diamond Jubilee Celebration of Holy Mass

To celebrate our parish church Jubilee Mass, we were blessed in having with us His Eminence Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, and among other clergy, Fr Brian Reynolds, parish priest here 1990–2002. We were also honoured to have with us, the Worshipful the Mayor for the Borough of Broxbourne, Councillor Paul Seeby and his Consort, Mrs Phyllis Seeby.

A quote from the Parish leaflet:

2022 is a very special year for our parish: it is the diamond jubilee of the church building. The diocese took over the parish from the Augustinian ‘Canons Regular of the Lateran’ in November 1958, with Fr John Longstaff as its new Parish Priest. He and the parishioners began the great task of transforming the site of Esdaile House into the complex of church and presbytery that we have today. Within just four years that task was completed, with a new presbytery and a brand-new church of St Augustine built and being used by mid-1962.

The first brick of the church was laid by Fr Longstaff on Tuesday 11th July 1961. Then the foundation stone (the Latin inscription by the Sacred Heart of Jesus) was laid on Friday 6th April 1962. The church was completed by the summer, and the first Masses were celebrated on Sunday 5th August. On Sunday 7th October the church was due to have been formally opened by Cardinal Godfrey but, in fact, that never happened, as the Cardinal had to prepare to be present at the imminent opening of the Second Vatican Council in Rome on the 11th October. Auxiliary Bishop Cashman came instead on that Sunday, confirming over 150 young people of the parish; but the formal opening by the Archbishop had to wait for another occasion.

 Blessing of St. Francis of Assisi Gazebo 

Well done to our Year 6’s who were amazing on their Bikeability sessions. We hope this has encouraged them to ride confidently, safely and independently. An extra special thanks to their wonderful bike coaches.

The amazing performances from our Reception to Year 6 children during our Macmillan Coffee Morning. We are super proud of you! A huge thank you for all the donations we received so far. 

A special thank you to Morrison’s for the generous donations of cakes, tea, coffee and treats.  Thank you for the monetary donations we have so far received. We still have the monetary donations open if you wish to make any further donations via school gateway.  

This week we took part in celebrating the European Day of Languages. We travelled around Europe and visited a range of countries learning lots of interesting things; from basic phrases to amazing dances.

We had a fantastic day finding out all about the different European countries and the languages that are spoken within them.

Roald Dahl Day

13th September 2022

On Tuesday 13th September, each class across the school celebrated Roald Dahl Day.

To start the day, each Teacher read their favourite Roald Dahl story to a different class.

Throughout the day, each year group completed a selection of activities including creating a new character for a story, writing character descriptions, creating own revolting rhymes and a selection of artwork.

To finish the celebrations, Parents came into school to share their child’s favourite Roald Dahl story with them.

A wonderful day was had by all!

We had the perfect ending to our school year on Wednesday morning, with a beautiful Mass.

Our Chaplaincy Team read so well and prayerfully, including out fabulous servers. Fr. Julian did a special blessing at the end of Mass for our year 6 children; staff, 2 other children leaving the school and our wonderful year 6 parents who have their last children from their family leaving us. 

God bless you all and keep you safe in the comfort of his arms. 

Mrs Napier

On Friday 15^th July 2022 we had our annual Sports Day. 

It was an incredible day with all the children preforming brilliantly in their races, gaining lots of points to add to our carousel scores from earlier in the week. The children showed excellent sportsmanship, determination and skill in all of their races and made all of their parents and teachers proud. 

The winning house was St. George! 

Thank you to all the staff who helped make sure the day ran smoothly, the parents for attending and participating in their races and of course the children who all performed to the best of their ability. Well done.

On Tuesday 5^th July, some of our children in Years 3 to 6 participated in the annual District Sports event against 9 other local primary schools held at John Warner Secondary school for the first time in two years.

They all took part in trials to be selected and attended practices during the school day to prepare them for the event. They were all amazing and ended up coming 5th out of 10 schools. We were so impressed with them all and how they put in their best efforts into each race. Mrs Faulkner would like to say thank you to a few children in particular: Jean Paul for running in the boys' relay due to illness the day before, Jacopo for filling in and running the boys sprint, Hayden for running the boys' hurdles, Lewis for being asked in the morning on the day and running the relay and the boys jump event and Connor for also being asked in the morning to compete in the boys throwing event. Also well done to Fabio and Aoife for coming fifth and third in the gruelling 400m race!

On Wednesday 29th June, we commemorated as a school the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul by attending Mass in Church, where the children who had recently celebrated their First Holy Communion went to Church in their special clothes with their family and loved ones and then returned to the school playground to have photographs taken.

The Feast of Saints Peter and Paul is a liturgical feast which commemorates the honour of the martyrdom in Rome of the Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul.

Peter was the leader of the apostles and the first pope. Paul was born Saul, but converted to Christianity on the road to Damascus. They had been imprisoned in the infamous Mamertine Prison of Rome and both had foreseen their approaching death. It is said that they were martyred at the command of Emperor Nero.

This is one of the oldest feast days celebrated in the Christian calendar. The feast of St Peter and St Paul is known as a 'Solemnity'. For Catholics, this means they can eat meat on the day, even if it falls on Friday when normally fish would be eaten.

On Thursday 23rd June some of Year 5 & 6 children took part in a Qwick Cricket tournament at The John Warner school. All the children played incredibly well and represented the school perfectly

Last Tuesday, our children took part in St Augustine’s A-Factor 2022: our very first musical talent show. We had over 80 children audition! There were many talents on show during the day: singing, instrument playing, rapping and beatboxing. The children above (as well as Year 5 children who are not in the photo) were the children who made it through to Round 2. They will all perform again - this Tuesday – in front of the whole school. Our school will then vote for 7 children to make the finale. Prizes have been raised by our wonderful community of parents. They will be announced very soon…keep your eyes peeled ;)

On Friday 17^th June we celebrated Clean Air Day. The children looked amazing dressed up as mini beasts and animals. As a school we spoke about why Clean Air is important for our health. We also spoke about how the air becomes polluted. Each class carried out their own activities to celebrate the day.

On Monday the whole school were lucky enough to have coaching from members of the East Herts Community Badminton Network. The children from Reception - Year 6 were able to take part in games and activities that introduced them to Badminton and encouraged their team work skills. All the children had lots of fun and were praised by the Coaches for their impeccable behaviour and attitude.

A message from SAPTA: Thank you parents for your continued support with our first Father’s Day sale. The children love taking part in our SAPTA events.

On Tuesday, Nursery and the Under 5's preschool held the "Toddle" fundraiser. 

We invited children who were coming to Nursery, to join with our current Nursery in a morning of fun.  This involved an obstacle course, face painting, tattoos and a Tombola as well as tea and cake.  It was a lovely morning and all of the staff involved would like to extend a big thank you to everyone who came along.

Thankyou to everybody who attended the Jubilee Tea Party, it was lovely to see so many of you there.

An extra thanks to those who made donations!

Ascension Day Mass 

It is said that by His death and Resurrection, Jesus opened the gates of heaven for all humanity. His Ascension demonstrates this to us. It is His proof that those of us who believe in Him in faith and follow Him will also be raised on the last day, and enter into heaven. 

From heaven, Jesus hears our prayers and intercedes for us with His Father. 

We celebrate this on Ascension Sunday, which is celebrated forty days after Easter. Traditionally it is celebrated on a Thursday as a Holy Day of Obligation. In order to celebrate this, the children in Key Stage two attended Mass in church led by Father Julian. It was great to be able to celebrate at church as a school for the first time in over two years and the children sang the hymns, read the liturgy readings and said the responses throughout Mass with such reverence and respect. We were very proud of them and look forward to being able to celebrate Mass in church more often from now on! 

Ascension Day was our return to the church as a school, two and half years after the pandemic started. This is the essence/a version of the sermon Father Julian told our children when we attended the Ascension Day Mass:

“This year we shall be celebrating 70 years since the queen’s accession. We talk of her ascending the throne, which means more than just ascending the steps to the coronation chair. This ascending or accession marked a real change in status for the queen, from being the heir apparent to becoming the monarch. Such a change necessitated a coronation so that she could be acclaimed visibly as the rightful occupant, and vested with the dignity of the office. I’m writing this on Ascension Day when we celebrate Jesus’ ascending to his Father in heaven. Jesus’ ascension is different from an earthly monarch’s ascension to the throne. Jesus doesn’t assume a position which he had not already held. He returns to the glory which was always his by right, which earthly monarchs can only palely imitate and never attain. His ascension starts with the cross and his true kingship is proclaimed in a coronation of thorns and the outpouring of divine love.”

Mary, the mother of God, was a loving mother and a model for missionaries. In the Catholic Church, May and October are months traditionally dedicated to Our Lady and the Holy Rosary. Last week we celebrated this as a whole school with our very own Rosary Week. Each day, the children were able to deepen their appreciation of Mary and learn how she can help us to become missionaries of God’s love too. We journeyed through each of the mysteries on the rosary beads, with the help of Year Six leading each mystery and completed one every day. 

This year, we were able to pledge 1,155 decades to Maisy Milk’s schools’ rosary for peace campaign and hope we have helped them beat their 2021 record of 70,418 decades as they pray the rosary for peace in the world and ask for Our Lady’s intercession and protection on behalf of those countries in great need. We also thank the parents who joined us at the end of each school day in these prayer sessions.  

Thank you to everybody who volunteered for the St George's Day Parade on Saturday 23rd April. What a lovely day!

Lent is a time of waiting and preparation for Easter, when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. This season is one of penance, reflection, prayer, almsgiving and fasting in order that we can prepare ourselves to better celebrate and live Christ’s Resurrection on Easter Sunday and beyond. God’s divine mercy is a central theme of Lent. The priceless gift of God’s mercy is highlighted and celebrated by the Church and us in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, our sins are forgiven and we are given the grace to be more like Christ. 

During The children in Years 4 to 6 had this opportunity speaking to Father Julian in the school library, where during confession, they were given a chance to ask God for forgiveness for anything they may have done wrong, thus renewing and refreshing their relationship with God. 

These lovely hampers are from the SAPTA Easter Raffle. Well done to our winners! 

It was lovely to see the children and parents with their items of blue and/or yellow for ‘REACH OUT FOR REFUGEES DAY’ on Monday. Thank you for the donations received, the total raised to date is £312. The total raised across Herfordshire Schools so far is £13,500, with cash donations yet to be counted. What a fantastic joint achievement for Hertfordshire schools!

Thank you again to Mrs Amadi and her children for making and selling the blue and yellow ribbons to support our fundraiser; they raised an amazing £127.37. Well done Amadi’s!

 We all donated money to Comic Relief for Red Nose Day 2022.

The children all looked incredible and had a wonderful time completing a range of themed activities.

Thank you for your generosity for this incredible cause.

This week we have been celebrating Science Week.  The theme for the week has been Growth and each class has been considering and investigating different ways in which animals, plants, ideas, technologies, and other aspects of life grow, develop or change.

We have been working together to solve problems, record changes or look more deeply at developing systems - with guest speakers, investigations, research and outdoor exploring. A theme for the week has been Diversity and learning about interesting scientists from history who have changed the world - like Elizabeth Blackwell the first female doctor or BBC botantist Arit Anderson.

Year 4:

1. We observed how different liquids can affect our teeth growth/hygiene.
2. We researched the comparison between a shark’s age and growth (then we created our own sharks using play dough).
3. We went out to the playground discovered what grows around a tree. Next, we drew our very own landscape of that.

Earlier this term, our Year 6 class worked hard on their essays titled “What I want to be when I grow up and why” for entry into this year's Annual Rotary Essay Competition. 

On Wednesday evening our 3 finalists, Erin Ciaran and Fabio, along with Mrs Baldwin attended the award ceremony at Hoddesdon Library when their work was on view to see.  Erin was the winner from our school and won £15 in book vouchers. Although a pupil from another school was the overall winner, we are so proud of our 3 finalists – A huge well done! 

On Tuesday our A Team footballers took part in a tournament at Cranbourne. The boys all played incredibly well and were unlucky to miss out on final due to penalties. They made Miss Colhoun, Ben at Bows Soccer and St. Augustine's proud with their outstanding performance and sportsmanship throughout the tournament. Well done Louie, Rico, Fabio, Arthur, Hayden, Jacopo and Jack! 

This week Cycle Training took place for our Year 6 children. Well done to all those children that took part.

As always, our instructors said how amazing their behaviour was. 

For World Book Day Key Stage 2 took part in a Drama and Dance Workshop based on retelling the events of the Jungle Book.

For World Book Day EYFS and Key Stage 1 took part in a Drama and Dance Workshop based on retelling the story of The Gingerbread Man.

Thank you to everybody who dressed up for World Book Day. It was lovely to see so many of you dressed up as your favourite book characters!

Well done to children who also bought in their books. 

Thank you very much to everyone who donated Christmas presents for boys, girls and mums to our Advent giving tree for Safer Places! We were extremely grateful for all the donations we received. A big thank you to our parent reps who worked on this project!

Nursery performed the songs from the Nativity play 'It's a Baby' during the first week of December.

All the children remembered the words and actions to the songs and thoroughly enjoyed the performance.

Their favourite songs were 'Busy Busy Bethlehem' and 'Knock Knock' and 'It's a baby.'

Well done Nursery for an excellent production. 

This year we had great fun practising and performing 'A Miracle in Town' for our families and friends.

Father Julian joined us to celebrate the end of Autumn Term with our annual Advent Mass. The mass was beautifully led by children from Year Six with the rest of the school joining in their classroom via Microsoft Teams. The third candle, otherwise known as the Shepherd Candle and pink in colour, was lit on the advent wreath to mark the joy that comes through Jesus’ arrival and through the salvation he has gifted us. The Year 6 children led the readings, psalm and bidding prayers as well as singing the Carols and hymns so beautifully as always.

During our annual 'Friendship Week', this year we really dived into understanding the relevance and meaning of the term ‘Friendship’. In each year group, an investigation was completed through the completion of a wide range of activities to solve this question! 

Examples of these were:

• In Year 4, they created Graffiti Posters that had different emotions on. They discussed how and why is it bad/good to feel different emotions in a friendship.
• All of the children took part in a ‘Feeling Good’ Workshop where they learned what a ‘good friend’ looks/acts like. Additionally, how to deal with negative experiences with friends through breathing techniques.
• Finally, our whole school celebrated Children in Need to help raise money for our local charities.

In discussion, as a school, we want to take these three points away with us for the future:

1. To appreciate that all feelings are normal.
2. To respect those from other backgrounds, ethnicities and religions.
3. To accept that ‘It is ok not to feel ok’.

Donation to Broxbourne Foodbank

Broxbourne Foodbank was set up in 2012 to help local people in times of crisis and our donations are vital to help distribute food to those in need throughout the local area. Local churches and community groups work together towards helping to stop hunger in our local area.

In November, we have been supported Children in Need.

It was lovely to see all the children in their outfits. Thank you as always for your generous donations!

Remembrance Sunday

Thank you to all our children who represented St. Augustine’s on Remembrance Sunday 14th November 2021 whether in school uniform or through outside organisations. Thank you to Mrs Davies, Mrs Faulkner and Year Six pupils for helping to sell poppies and other items in the weeks leading up to Remembrance Day to raise money for the Royal British Legion.

Year 1’s Roald Dahl Day

As a class, we found out lots of interesting things about Roald Dahl.

We worked together to complete the Roald Dahl quiz (and did really well!).

We did some super colourings of characters from Roald Dahls stories and some of us have even created our very own characters.

We have also started reading George’s Marvellous Medicine together as a class – we love all the disgusting things George puts in his Grandma’s medicine bottle!