Herringthorpe Valley Road, Rotherham, S65 2NU

01709 361502

St Mary's Catholic Primary School

Our Catholic Life

Saint Mary's Catholic Primary School

2022-2023

Maundy Thursday

Today we celebrated Maundy Thursday through key stage liturgies where we remembered the events of the Last Supper.  After each liturgy, we washed each other hands, just as Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, as an act of service to one another.

Palm Sunday

Today we started Holy Week with a mass to celebrate Palm Sunday.  The Year 3 children did an excellent job preparing the Gospel reading of the Passion for the service.

The Blessed Sacrament

This afternoon representatives from each class visited church.
We prayed the rosary with members of the parish before the Blessed Sacrament.
Prayers were offered for ourselves, our families and our school community.
Today is a special day during lent where adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is celebrated for twelve hours.
We are very privileged that our church is next door to our school and that we could visit our Blessed Lord.
Our children were most respectful and enjoyed some quiet time with Jesus after a very busy week.

Mother's Day Mass

We’ve had another great week in year five and they’ve all worked hard. We’ve had the opportunity to support and help with foundation prepare for their Mother’s Day mass.  Year 5 loved helping and singing along - they are definitely going to make great Year 6 buddies next year!

Lent Prayer Group

Throughout Lent, the children have had the opportunity to attend a prayer group every Wednesday dinner time. This week we had our biggest number of children attend yet. We have be looking at three Stations of the Cross each week and thinking about how we can follow the example of Jesus in our own lives. This week we finished by writing a prayer to hang on our prayer tree.

The Stations of the Cross

Throughout Lent, each class have been across to Church to take part in the Journey of the Cross.  Such a wonderful and humbling experience to share together.

Ash Wednesday

For Ash Wednesday, our Key Stage 2 children led the Parish mass at church with Fr Desmond.  Our Foundation and Key Stage 1 children took part in a beautiful liturgy led by Mrs. Dodson.

Christmas Celebrations

Nativity and Carol Service

Our Foundation and Key Stage 1 children put on a wonderful Nativity play with their performance of 'A King is Born'.  There was fantastic acting, singing, excellent musicianship, Makaton signing and Italian!

The Key Stage 2 children led a beautiful carol service in church for parents and parishioners.  The children read confidently and clearly, and led the carol singing beautifully as a choir.  It was the perfect way to end our term and celebrate together as a school and church community, 

Saint Mary's School Choir sing at Rotherham Hospital

Some of our Key Stage Two children have represented Saint Mary’s at Woodlands, Rotherham General Hospital, to sing carols and entertain the team who work there and the patients.

We sang a variety of carols from our upcoming production and two of our Year Six violinists played ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas.’

Well done to you all.

The Blessing of the Advent Wreaths

We started our Advent preparations with the a special mass today led by he children of Year 5 in which Fr Des blessed our Advent Wreaths.  The wreaths will be placed on the the prayer tables in every classroom as a focus for our Advent reflections and prayers. 

A lovely mass was celebrated at church to celebrate the Feast of Christ the King with the other schools in our learning community.  Thank you to the the children who read and all the families that joined us to make this a wonderful celebration as a Catholic community.

Every year we support the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal by selling poppies and other items at playtime.

After celebrating mass led by the children in year 6 on the theme of remembrance, we returned to school to take part in a very special assembly to take part in a two minutes silence.  We remembered all the people who have died in any kind of war.

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Our GIFT Leaders (Growing in Faith Together) from each class visited church along with our other catholic community schools to be commissioned to our chaplaincy team by Father Des. It was a lovely service and the children were presented with their certificates.

Well done everyone and we look forward to many wonderful chaplaincy events in the future.

The Relics of Saint Bernadette

Along with our learning community schools, the children took part in a 'mini pilgrimage' to Saint Marie's Cathedral in Sheffield during the national tour of the relics of Saint Bernadette.  This very special once in a lifetime event provided an opportunity for our children to experience the special gifts and charisms of Lourdes at Saint Marie's Cathedral.

Parents joined us for our Harvest Festival liturgy today which was wonderfully led by Year 5.

Our very generous food donations have been picked up today, the Maltby food bank were thoroughly pleased with the amount that we could donate! Our head boy and girl as well as the deputy boy and girl kindly helped pack up the car.

A huge thank you to all our families that have donated to our Harvest Festival. We know that lots of families in the local area will now be helped through the autumn and winter.

What an amazing morning we have had packing our Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes. It was really lovely to hear the discussions about how the children were so eager to fill their boxes for children that may have never received a gift before. A huge thank you to Liz for coming and helping us carry out this activity for our children to help others and show our love for them.  In total we packed an incredible 146 shoe boxes!

Our Catholic Life

2021 - 2022

The Stations of the Cross

Throughout Lent, we have been learning about and preparing the Stations of the Cross using the skills we have developed in our art lessons.  The art work we produced made a focus point for the services we prepared and delivered in church for pupils and parents leading up to Holy Week.

Good Shepherd Appeal

Throughout the season of Lent we have raised money for the the Good Shepherd through selling toast every Tuesday in school.  Some children went to Saint Marie's Cathedral in Sheffield to celebrate mass alongside other schools in the Hallam Diocese.

A Synod Poem

As part of the Synod 2021 - 2023, we looked at the logo and reflected what the logo meant to us.  We put all our ideas together and produced a poem.

A Synod Poem

The poem written by the children of Saint Mary’s was published on the Pope's website! The poem is a reflection of the synod logo and the children's own faith journeys.

The full article can be viewed by following the link below.

https://www.synodresources.org/resource_post/245586/

Our School Prayer

The development of our school chapel continues with this exciting delivery!  We have the Hail Mary and our school prayer, which was written by the children of Saint Mary's to as part of our celebrations on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception,  ready to display.

Lent 2022

During Lent the children will be taking part in the 40 Acts challenge. Here is a copy of the wall chart that we will be following so you can continue at home with the weekend challenges.

Carol Service 2021

A huge thank you to our fantastic children and parents for all your hard work and for joining us tonight - it really was such a special evening which completed our advent preparations perfectly.

Summer 2020