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St Anne's Catholic Primary School

Catholic Life

As a Catholic school, we aim to live out our faith in the interactions that we have with one another and with the world around us. St Teresa of Avila wrote

“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

Ol Moran School

Ol Moran is our British Council link school in rural Kenya.

John Githui – our colleague at Ol Moran School in Kenya - told us that Ol Moran was established in 1935 and has c750 pupils on roll from preschool to Class 8. There are around 50 pupils in each class and a total of 19 classes with 21 teaching staff. The children are of various different faiths with the majority being Catholic. Saint Mark’s Catholic Church plays a major role in supporting the pastoral and spiritual life of the school and sponsors its special needs unit. The children have produced a drawing showing the union between our schools. The learning environment for the pupils of Ol Moran is very different from that at St Anne’s and the children regularly use the school compound for learning adventures. They interact with the natural environment, making learning enjoyable and practical.

Our introduction to Ol Moran took place in September. All the classes in St Anne's took part in activities that would tell the teachers and pupils of Ol Moran more about ourselves, our school and the place that we live. Below are some examples of the children's work.

Our nursery children took part in their usual activities and made the most of being outside in the beautiful early Autumn weather!

Our first meeting on Zoom with Ol Moran - Friday 4th March.

Mrs Orife had been communicating with Mr. Githui via email and has had a virtual Zoom meeting with him to organise a time when our children could meet. It was agreed that our One World Council children would be the first to say, 'Hello' and after a couple of failed attempts we finally made contact on Friday 4th March at around 10am our time (Ol Moran are 3 hours ahead of us until the summer when it becomes 2 hours).

Our children were very excited to see their new friends in Kenya and we wished them all Good Luck with their exams. Mr Githui and the Ol Moran children tried to teach us how to greet someone in their National Language Swahili and Mr Githui has promised to teach us more in the near future. We are now considering how our children and the children in Ol Moran can be 'Pen Pals'. Ol Moran school will be closed until late April for their pupils to undertake examinations. Both schools are looking forward to developing the friendship when Ol Moran reopens, towards the end of April.

One World Council with their questions.

Finally speaking to Mr Githui and children in Ol Moran!

Our Family Fast Day and Walk Against Hunger for CAFOD

On Friday 3th March CAFOD came to our school to give an assembly about what they do as an organisation. Following this inspiring visit we collected donations on Friday March 11th for CAFOD's Family Fast Day and joined the St Anne's Parish to complete a Walk Against Hunger on Saturday 19th March.

Below is a photo of all the walkers when we arrived at Mapledurham! The weather was perfect!

In response to our Family Fast Day collection, Mrs Bernto received a letter of thanks to you all from CAFOD. Attached was a certificate with the total raised on the day. Well done to everyone who donated, you have contributed to a worthy cause and helped someone, either in the Ukraine or in the remote parts of Africa where nutritional food is sometimes difficult to come by.

The Walk Against Hunger went fantastically well and the Parish, along with the support of pupils and teachers from our school were able to raise £2546 for CAFOD. This is not the final total, hopefully the total can get as near to £3000. You are still able to donate online for a few more weeks!

Writing letters to Ol Moran School - July 2022

Children from St Anne's have written letters to the children in Ol Moran School in Kenya. It will be exciting to find out how long it takes for the letters to reach them.

Taking our letters to the post office.

Posting the letters into the post box.

Letters of condolence from Ol Moran children.

We received letters from Ol Moran sending condolences for the loss of our Queen Elizabeth II and to let us know that they have a new President in Kenya and that people are happy about it.

Some of the letters that Mr Githui shared with us at school. We wish them all the best and will keep them in our prayers.

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Autumn Term 2022 - Our October Harvest Collection for Readifood

We understand the difficulties some families are facing with increasing living costs and would like to launch our Harvest Collection in aid of Readifood. The charity is continuing to help those in our local community who need food parcels and we kindly ask that anyone who feels able, please brings a tin or some boxed/dry food over the next week. Each class will have a box for the donated food items and ideas for your donations could include:

 Tins of soup, baked beans, vegetables

 Jars of jam, pickles and pasta sauces

 Coffee, tea, biscuits

 Pasta, rice and boxes of cereal.

Please do not send any fresh fruit or vegetables or any foods that require refrigeration. We have a wonderful community at St Anne’s and we know that you will do what you can. Thank you for your support!

Thank you so much for the fabulous donations!

Children helped us to move all the donations onto the school stage.

All the food was delivered to Readifood depot during half term holiday.

Certificate from Readifood - Thank you for your donations!

Autumn Term 2 - Ol Moran received our letters at last!

Mr John Githui gave his pupils the letters our children wrote and much joy and excitement was felt as they have not received any post from the UK before!

We are looking forward to connecting with Ol Moran in the New Year and allowing our children the opportunity to work together on a project to help us look after God's World.

Christmas Cards from the children of St Anne's School - December 2022

During the preparation for Christmas our pupils made Christmas cards for the parishioners at Our Lady and St Anne's Church. Mrs Houghton put the cards in a box at the back of the church and any parishioners who wanted to take one could help themselves. Mrs Orife took some of the cards to St Luke's Care Home (Emmer Green) for distribution to the residents and staff. We wish all the parishioners and elderly people in our community a very peaceful and blessed Christmas and Happy New Year.

Pupils from Reception to Year 6 created wonderful Christmas cards for people in the community. Residents of St Luke's Care Home in Emmer Green and the parishioners of Our Lady and St Anne's were able to enjoy! We hope to develop links with our wider community going into 2023!

The Big Lent Walk! - March 2023 (Spring Term 2)

As we did last Lent we are joining with Our Lady of St. Anne's Parish and some of the other Catholic churches in Reading to complete the Big Lent Walk for CAFOD. Mrs Orife and Miss Talbot will be walking and hopefully we will see lots of families from St Anne's School on the day. Hundreds of schools across England and Wales are going to be walking to help CAFOD support families in extreme poverty around the world.

Please join us to walk on Saturday the 18th March 2023. We will be gathering at Thames Lido/Kings Meadow at 10.15am for a 10.30am start. Our walk will be along the Thames from Reading Bridge to Sonning and back (about 3hours in total). We will be all ages (children can scoot or cycle) and all levels of fitness but have a shared goal of helping our brothers and sisters across the world affected by hunger, conflict, natural disaster and climate change. These are all areas that CAFOD helps to support people. It would be fantastic to see as many of our families as possible on the day but we would also appreciate it if you could make a donation to support the fantastic work that CAFOD does across the globe; enabling people and communities and assisting them in putting themselves in charge of their futures.

CAFOD is also part of the DEC, the umbrella group helping to provide urgent food, water and shelter to survivors of the earthquake in Syria and Turkey.

Please join us on the 18th March, it would be fantastic to see you and if you can make a donation online that would be wonderful (there will be a Parent Pay set up for donations). The donations will then be forwarded to CAFOD when the walk is finished.

At Mapledurham

A couple of images from the Big Walk for Hunger when we joined the parish to walk for CAFOD last year.

Our Lenten promises 2023.

As we are undergoing our solemn preparation for Easter, all the children in school were asked to focus their minds and consider a Lenten Promise or Pledge they could make. As Catholics Lent is an important time of Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving for us. The children have been learning about this important time in their classes and the Promises/Pledges they recorded have been displayed as a whole school 'Pledgehog' to remind us of our promises during this time.