T1, Week 1, 2024

Dear Families,

Welcome to the 2024 school year. I hope that you have had a great break and have enjoyed spending the extra time with your children. As children entered the gate on day one it was obvious many were excited to be back at school (and many parents seemed happy too!) We look forward to sharing in this important journey with you of educating your children, helping them to build positive relationships and having some fun along the way. 

We welcome our new staff, teachers Becky Hill (Reception), Leah Dickson (Year 4/5), Angela Rose (Year 4/5), Sarah Storrie (STEM), Rosemarie Villano (Performing Arts) and CoEducators Denise Sawyer and Max Monaghan. We especially welcome our new students:

Reception: Achan, Achilles, Austin, Awak, Emily, Freya, Garang, Ilya, Ivy, Kosi, Lily, Lucy, Luka, Mikaylah, Phoenix, Scarlett, Selina, Sophie, Temilouluwa, Thea, Vadhanak.

Year 1:     Elika, Ettore

Year 2:     Ayan-Ali, Chiagoziem, Kamsi, Reign

Year 3:     Nelson, Summer

Year 4:     Kamsi

Year 5:     Angelina, Kaelan, Mason

May your time with us be full of learning, friendships and fun. We warmly welcome you and your families to our school community.

During the holiday we had some renovations done in the Library building, with the open spaces being converted into classrooms in order to accommodate an increase in numbers. At the moment our enrolments are 168 children from Reception through to Year 6. Thank you to those in our community who obviously speak positively about our school to others. Most of our enrolments come due to the effect of ‘word of mouth’. With the renovations now complete we have moved our senior students across into the Library building. I want to thank our staff for their patience in waiting for these rooms to be complete before they could move in. I also want to thank them for the great deal of work they had to do in the move, relocating furniture and other items.

On Tuesday 13th February (Shrove Tuesday) we will hold a ‘Meet the Teacher’ evening. This is the opportunity for our teachers to outline their expectations, routines and plans for the year ahead. They will run two sessions and you can choose which one you go to, enabling those families with two children to get to at least two classes. The first session will be from 6:30pm to 7pm and the second session will be from 7:10pm to 7:40pm. We will provide creche facilities in the Yarning Place for those who require it. Please complete the return slip below to enable us to provide sufficient staffing to cater for the number of children attending. Remember that this is an information session only, it is not the time for a one to one discussion or interview with the classroom teacher.

Please note that we have the following dates set aside as Pupil Free Days for the staff to undertake professional development, staff reflection, complete hand over activities, etc. There are still two more dates to be set for later in the year: Fri 8 March, Fri 23 August, Thu 12 December and Fri 13 December. Please mark them in your diary.

Shrove Tuesday is just over a week away. It is the last day before the season of Lent in our Church year and is traditionally the day when people used up their eggs and milk and made pancakes. We will have fun sharing pancakes with your children again on that day. Please let your child’s teacher know if there are any dietary requirements!

I look forward to working with you and your children again this year.

Kind regards

Peter Mercer

Head of School

CATHOLIC IDENTITY

A very big welcome to our new families, new staff and all families who have returned to our school community for 2024. This week we joined across our two schools (St. Thomas More and St Mary Magdalene’s) for our Community Teams Prayer. We will continue to do this each week throughout the year with a different staff member leading us in prayer each week. It was lovely to see so many smiling faces on the screen this morning.

Today we focused on the gifts each of us brings to our school community. Students and staff have been challenged to recognise the gifts they have within them and share them with us throughout the year. As part of our prayer, we took some time to pray for people in our world, in our families and in our school communities.

We look forward to sharing snippets of our prayer with you as we move through the term.

LITURGICAL CALENDAR INFORMATION

A Liturgical Calendar shows the cycle of seasons in the Catholic Church. The Church year consists of six liturgical seasons: Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time after Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Ordinary Time after Pentecost. In each newsletter we aim to highlight different events in the Liturgical Calendar that we might be focusing on or celebrating in our school.

Special celebrations that we focus on during classroom and whole school prayer throughout term 1 and those that come up in our liturgical calendar include:

Week 3

13/2 Shrove Tuesday

14/2 Ash Wednesday

14/2 Feast of St. Valentine

17/2 Random Acts of Kindness Day

Week 6

9/3 Ramadan begins.

Week 7

17/3 Feast of St. Patrick

Week 8

19/3 Feast of St. Joseph

21/3 Harmony Day

Week 9

24/3 Palm Sunday

28/3 Holy Thursday

29/3 Good Friday

Week 10

31/3 Easter Sunday

SHROVE TUESDAY, ASH WEDNESDAY & LENT

In week 3 we enter a new liturgical season in the Catholic Church, the season of Lent. This season lasts for forty days and forty nights. We begin with Shrove Tuesday. This day is celebrated by Catholics around the world in different ways. Some refer to it as Pancake Day, Mardi Gras or Carnevale. In preparation for Lent, Catholics would use up foods which they were not permitted to consume during Lent. This included eggs, fat, and rich foods.

This year, we will celebrate Shrove Tuesday with pancakes. More information will be sent to families via Seesaw in the coming weeks.

ASH WEDNESDAY

We then celebrate Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday begins the Season of Lent. The marking of ashes on Ash Wednesday is a reminder for us all to walk with Jesus during the season of Lent, to say sorry for the times we have hurt others and aim to become more loving as we work to put others needs before our own. It is a special time when we stop and think about how we can play our part in God’s hope for a world that is fair, just, and peaceful. We will celebrate Ash Wednesday with a liturgy. More information will be sent to families via Seesaw in the coming weeks.

ELIZABETH CATHOLIC PARISH SACRAMENT PROGRAM

The Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist form the Sacraments of Christian Initiation. If your child is 7 years of age (or older) and would like to be involved in the program for 2024, you might like to come along to an Information Session on Friday 9^th February at 6:00pm in St Thomas More Church, 19 Laverstock Rd, Elizabeth North. 

Please contact Melissa Musolino for more information.

Phone: 82556144

Email: mmusolino@smm.catholic.edu.au

Year 5/6 Class News!

The Year 5/6’s have been exploring, ‘What it means to have a great learning community’. We have begun to discuss what elements help our learning community to be successful through the lens of our learning vision:

       “Shaping our Future Together”               

We are also beginning to look towards the Mercy Values as a way to guide us in our conduct in the classroom. In conjunction with this, we have begun our journey with the Mind Up Curriculum. This looks at setting the foundation for success by looking at how our brain works, our triggers, and what strategies we can utilise to help calm our brains, which helps with our self-control and self-regulation skills.

Why is this important?

These learning opportunities provide students with the keys for a successful year in 2024 and later in life, teaching them personal awareness and relationship skills which increases our students’ personal, social, and emotional competence. This gives us a strong foundation that permeates the rest of the year.

OSHC Newsletter Week 1 Term 1

Welcome to OSHC 2024!

I’m very excited to be back at OSHC this year and looking forward to working alongside you all after welcoming baby Brooklyn into the world and enjoying some much-needed time full of family, rest, and relaxation. Term 1 is such a busy time as we adjust to big changes, get into routines, and welcome our new and returning children and families in our community. I thank you in advance for you continued cooperation, patience, and kindness as we all settle back into things, and I know that it's going to be a great term!

With my return you may notice some staffing changes in OSHC this Term. These changes mean that there will be more regularity and predictability in staffing OSHC each week with OSHC staff primarily consisting of myself (Jenn Firth) and Sally Winters. You may also see from time to time any of our other wonderful Co-Educators in the OSHC space.

A few quick notices from OSHC:

• If you need to contact OSHC or OSHC staff regarding bookings or enrolments, please contact the OSHC mobile. This goes direct to OSHC and can be reached on 0437 609 630.
• Please be sure to return your enrolment updates and booking confirmations by the 9^th of February to secure your bookings.
• If you require an enrolment form for OSHC please speak to either me or Front Office staff.
• This year we will once again be utilising the Seesaw platform. At this stage the class is not yet active, and we are in the process of getting that back up and running for 2024.

Thank you!

Jenn Firth

OSHC Director