On Monday we had a fantastic whole school retreat day on the theme of ‘Creation’. As October 3rd is the feast day of St Francis of Assisi, that made it even more special, as he is the patron saint of ecology and was is well known for his great love of everything that God created, especially animals.
Dan and Emily, from One Life Music, came to lead the day. They started by leading a whole school collective worship followed by Key Stage workshops and focussed sessions in classes. There was lots of time to focus on creation across the day, including class quiz rounds, where the children had to guess what part of creation Dan and Emily were thinking of from sets of clues, memorise aspects of creation in a picture and see how many they could remember, and identify aspects of creation from the sounds they made. The children were fantastically knowledgeable about animals and geographical features and had great fun using their knowledge and their thinking skills to work out the answers.
Each Key stage workshop included learning some wonderful new songs about creation, which the children can’t wait to sing again in assemblies and at mass!
After the workshops each class then focussed on a different aspect of creation in their classroom activities and created some beautiful pictures and prayers. Here are some of the ones Year 4 wrote:
The day finished off with another collective worship, where our Values Council and members of Year 6 helped out by leading the actions in songs and reading the Gospel reading and prayers. It was a lovely end to a fantastic day. Before Dan and Emily had let the building the Year 5s were already asking us to book them again for another retreat next year.
Thank you Dan and Emily.
