Dear Parents
What a very busy week in school! Most especially for Year 4, who impressed us all with their amazing production of Rocking Romans on Thursday evening! They were very confident with all of their lines and sang and delivered the jokes beautifully – the best of it was that they had learned a tremendous amount about the Romans as well as having fun putting on their production! Well done Year 4 and a huge thank you to the whole Year 4 staff team who have worked really hard to enable the children to perform so well!
In Monday’s collective worship, we celebrated the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord (Candlemas) and reminded the children that they too were presented to the Lord at the Sacrament of Baptism. We reminded each of them that, in the words of our school mission statement, , they are
“uniquely created and loved by God.” 
Children and adults alike can lose sight of themselves as God’s beloved creation and don’t always have the opportunity just “to be.” We thought about how it is good for all of us to take a moment to be thankful for the people we have in our lives, who show us how much we are loved by God, and maybe find an extra opportunity to spend some special time just being together.
As we approach the end of Mental Health Awareness Week, we have been considering this in school in PSHE. In our hectic society, where mobile phones reign and very often the adults are working long hours, while the children have many busy activities filling their time, we are finding a huge increase in mental health issues - and especially an enormous rise in mental health issues for children. If you are interested, you can find more information below about the Place 2Be resources we use in school to support children’s mental health through PSHE.
We have become aware in school this week that there are a number of children using the Tik-Tok App outside of school and this has caused some issues around creating and viewing video clips including inappropriate behaviour. While it is always at the discretion of parents to decide the appropriate limits for their child, please be aware that the guidance is 13 years and older for Tik Tok, so no child at Cardinal Newman is considered old enough under the guidance. If you are interested in looking at further guidance for this, there is information here
Thank you to the PA who have put an enormous amount of effort into organising the Valentine’s Disco this evening and we are sure the children will have a wonderful time. As well as fundraising for equipment for our new hall, the PA also funds ongoing activities such as Science Day, panto and Book Week, so we are very grateful for your support for all the PA events.
Have a wonderful weekend.
All best wishes
Catherine Burnham
