Newsletter - 30th October 2024
Acknowledgement of Country
We respectfully acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Wadawurrung people. It is a privilege to be standing on Wadawurrung country.
We pay our respect to Elders past, present and emerging. We acknowledge the contributions of Indigenous Peoples from the past, present and future who contribute to this country in which we live.
May Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous Australians continue to work together to educate, unite and live in peace on this land we call home, Australia.
Upcoming Events
4th November: School Closure Day - Curriculum Day for Staff
5th November: Melbourne Cup Public Holiday
11th November: Remembrance Day; Lunch orders delivered
12th November: Transition for 2025 Foundation Students (9:30am-11:30am); Playgroup 9:00am-11:00am
19th November: Playgroup 9:00am-11:00am
25th November: Lunch orders delivered
26th November: Transition for 2025 Foundation Students (9:30am-11:30am); Playgroup 9:00am-11:00am
2nd December: Grandparents' Day, 8:50am-11:00am
3rd December: Playgroup 9:00am-11:00am; Going Up Day, new Foundation students to attend
6th December: Parents and Friends Meeting, 3:00pm. All welcome!
9th December: Lunch orders delivered
10th December: Playgroup 9:00am-11:00am
11th December: 5:30pm St Mary's End of Year Thanksgiving Mass & Graduation. 7:30pm Dinner at the Robin Hood. All welcome.
12th December: End of Year Excursion
17th December: Playgroup 9:00am-11:00am
18th December: Last day for students, finish at 1:30pm.
29th January 2025: Students return, Term 1 commences
Prayer for World Teacher's Day
Dear God,
On this special day, we thank You for our teachers who guide and inspire us every day. We appreciate their patience, dedication, and the love they show in their classrooms.
Bless them with strength and wisdom as they continue to shape the minds and hearts of their students. May they feel valued and supported in their important work.
Help us to show our gratitude through our actions and words, making sure they know how much they mean to us. Amen.
Messages from the Principal
WORLD TEACHERS DAY
Last Friday World Teacher’s Day was celebrated across Australia. World Teachers' Day is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the incredible work teachers do every day. By celebrating this day and showing our appreciation, we can help create a supportive and encouraging environment that allows teachers to thrive and continue making a positive impact on our children's lives. At St Mary’s the students made cards and wrote some lovely words for Sue, Jenny and Louise to let them know how much they are appreciated.
GRANDPARENTS' DAY
We are excited to announce that our school will be celebrating Grandparents’ Day on Monday 2nd December from 9-11 am. This special day is dedicated to honoring the invaluable role that grandparents play in our lives and in our community. An invitation will be sent home soon from the students but please mark this date on your calendar and let family members know it is on.
GOLF TOURNAMENT
Last Friday we had 4 students participating in a schools Golf Tournament at Mt Xavier Golf Club. For Alexis, Maeve, Pat and Will, this was their first time playing golf on an actual golf course so it was fantastic to see them all having fun and trying their best. A big thank you to Jenny for taking the students and to Ben Gage who gave up his time to assist on the day.
PREP STUDENTS FROM 2012
Last week the Courier published photos of Prep students from 2012. It is wonderful to look back on the smiles of Kasey Prendergast, Angus Tuohy, Kody Slater, Matthew Carlson and Mallory Toose who were in Grade Prep at St Mary’s 12 years ago.
FOUNDATION TRANSITION
Yesterday we welcomed 2025 Foundation students Boston and Mason to St Mary’s for their first transition day. These transition sessions allow for the children to begin to learn about school and to understand what they can expect next year. It is an exciting and challenging time for our newest students, and we wish them well as they learn all about ‘Big School!”
YOUTH CRIME PREVENTION COMPETITION
On Monday morning Senior Constable Brendan Everard attended our school to present five students with awards for their entries into a Youth Crime Prevention competition. The theme for the competition was Our City: Be Safe. Feel Safe.
Nineteen schools from across Ballarat entered the competition with over 200 entries. The winning posters have been enlarged to A3, laminated and displayed in local Police Stations. We were very excited to hear Brendan announce that five students from St Mary's had their work selected. Congratulations to Quinn, Evie, Maeve, Emilia and Vanessa. Well done!
SCHOOL CLOSURE DAY
A reminder that our final school closure day for the year will be held on Monday 4 November. Teachers will be working at school on our curriculum for 2025. No classes will be held at school on this day.
LITTLE FEET, BIG FOOTPRINTS
Throughout the year, Evie and Maeve have been participating in the Little Feet, Big Footprints program with Year 6 students from St Michael’s, Dayledford, St Brigid’s, Ballan, St Patrick’s, Gordon and St Augustine’s, Creswick.
The Little Feet, Big Footprints programs gives our Year Six students an opportunity to meet, socialise and build positive connections with fellow students in their final year of primary school. This program also aims to build leadership capacities within all our students so that they are both willing and able to take on new challenges.
On Monday Maeve and Evie presented a project on Dolly’s Dream to the students and staff from the other schools. They are to be congratulated on the way they worked together on this project and both Sue and I were very proud of the leadership qualities both girls demonstrated on the day. Well done Evie and Maeve!
AUSLAN
Today, we welcomed Renee d’Offay back to our school to conduct assessments on students in the area of Auslan (Australian Sign Language). Our students work with Renee every Monday morning via a Zoom meeting and then with the classroom teachers on the other days. We look forward to seeing the positive impact of these assessments on our students' learning journeys!
KINGSTON SHOW
The Kingston Show will be held on Saturday, 30th November and Sunday, 1st December, with the focus for Saturday 30th being a family day with activities for children. Our students have been very busy completing art pieces to enter into the Art and Crafts competitions. Students are also encouraged to submit work they complete at home. The categories are judged in three age groups, P/1/2, 3/4 and 5/6.
The categories are:
- Preschool drawing, painting, pastel or mixed medium
- 3D article of natural and/or recycled materials
- A posy of flowers and leaves standing in a jar. Can be held with a rubber band.
- Christmas card
- Painted rock
- Photography - theme ‘This is Where I Live’. Photographs to be the student’s own work, must be unframed not larger than 20 x 30 cm mounted on card with no larger than 3 cm border, black and white or coloured images
- Painting any subject
- Drawing any subject
- Pastel or other medium, any subject
- Lego. Article of hobby craft/Lego, made from kit displayed on a solid base no bigger than 30 x 30 cm
- Lego. Article of hobby craft/Lego, own design displayed on a solid base no bigger than 30 x 30 cm.
All entries must have the student's name, school and grade firmly attached to the back or side of entry. Children can enter any (or all) categories in their age group.
SOCIAL MEDIA
This term we are focusing on our social media and trying to get the word out about our wonderful school.
Please comment, like and share our posts on Facebook and Instagram - the more information we can push out to the wider community, the more interest we can generate for our school.
PRINCIPAL MEETING IN HORSHAM
This Thursday and Friday I will be in Horsham at a Principals' Meeting with other principals from the Diocese. Jenny will be in charge in my absence.
May God Bless you all and keep you safe,
Clare
South Room News
It’s hard to believe we are already up to week 4! What a busy start we have had to the term. It has been great to see Abbey settling into her new school and making new friends. This week we thought we’d find out a little bit more about Abbey along with what we’ve been doing in the classroom, and for some of us, out on the golf course.
ABOUT ME!
Name: Abbey Parkin
Age: 11 Year: 5
Birthday: February 16
Favourite colour: Blue
Favourite animals: Dogs and goats
Favourite place: Basketball and the beach
Sport: Basketball
Pets: 1 goat [Taco]
INQUIRY (Will and Kamden)
This term in Inquiry we are learning about technology and data. We have looked at the role of a zoologist and what sort of technology they use in their work. They use GPS trackers, drones, videos, photos and movement trackers. We have learnt about peripheral devices such as keyboards, printers, the computer mouse, speakers and headphones. They are all devices that either send data to or from a computer.
LITERACY (Quinn and Evie)
This term in the south room, we have started a new book called Storm Boy. We have only read three chapters but it has been very interesting to learn about the different lifestyles. We have met three different characters called Storm Boy, Finger Bone and Hideaway. They all have many different personalities and they live in a humpy on the beach. It is a very wild place and many of the town people don’t like that Hideaway, the dad of Storm Boy took him away after his mother's death.
PhOrMES (Kamden)
This year during literacy we have been doing PhOrMES - Phonology, Orthography, Morphology and Etymology and Semantics. This is helping us with our spelling, vocab and word work and also helps our reading. We start each session with a daily review which is a quick review of the work we have already done. Then we have new learning. This week our new learning is SFE which is ‘silent final e’. SFE has lots of jobs, the first one is giving the vowel a long vowel sound, for example cage, huge, immune, complete.
FRIDAY MATHS (Leah and Emilia)
On Friday in Maths, we are learning how to make and count different amounts of money. Some strategies we use when counting five cent pieces is to count by 5’s and when counting ten cent pieces we count by tens.
We have also started working out how much change we get when we might buy something.
GOLF DAY (Patrick)
On Friday, Will, Alexis, Maeve and I had been chosen by Tony (our Golf teacher) to go to a school Golf Competition at Mt Xavier Golf Course. We are really looking forward to it and hope we all would do our best and maybe hit a hole in one.....
Jenny: Well I’m happy to report that Friday’s golf event was a great day. It was wonderful to see the golf skills improve throughout the day. Unfortunately, no holes in one but I was very impressed that all 4 students were able to get their golf balls air borne. Something I just haven’t been able to achieve!
Lego League Challenge
The children have been given the opportunity to participate in the first Lego League Challenge where they engage in research, problem solving, coding and engineering as they build and code a Lego robot that navigates the missions of the robot game.
Pat, Will, Leo, Quinn and Emilia have all opted to take part in this challenge and have been working hard to build and learn more about the challenge. They will participate in the Lego challenge on 20th November at ACU in Ballarat.
This program has been supported and sponsored by ACU Ballarat, which has made it very affordable and possible for us to participate in. Everyone is very excited about seeing the models being made throughout this learning, of which the children have taken upon themselves to do a lot of it in their own time. They are learning about the ocean and marine life also.
News from the North Room
The Snake Cake by Pauline Cartwright
We read the book The Snake Cake during our Literacy Block of learning. It was all about a queen who loved to eat cake but she wanted a different cake for her birthday party.
All the villagers made her cakes but she wasn’t interested in them because they were not different enough.
The book was so much fun because the kids saved the queen's birthday party. They made her a cake that she had never had before. They made her a snake cake.
We even made a cake the same as theirs with Sarah. A snake cake. We were very proud of our cake and it was YUM!
We also learnt about rhyming words because this book had a rhyming chorus. Here are our attempts at rhyming:
Addy:
Will you make a cake with me?
So we can all have fun at tea.
Genevieve:
Can I have cake for tea?
No, you can not have cake for tea!
Ellie:
Can you make a snake cake for me so we can have tea?
If you make a cake you can come with me!
Skyler:
The queen had cake for tea.
She had tea with me.
Happy Birthday!
Happy birthday to Kaezia who turns 9 on Saturday, 2nd November. We hope you have a lovely day Kaezia and celebrate in style!
Melody Makers
School TV: The Cost of Living Crisis
In our ever-changing economic landscape, parents and caregivers are increasingly faced with the task of broaching the subject of growing expenses with their children. While the instinct may be to shield young people from life’s challenges, there's a growing belief that addressing real-world issues, including financial uncertainties, can actually foster resilience and understanding. Striking a balance between protection and education is crucial for those looking to empower their children.
To effectively introduce the topic of finances, we need to be mindful of the timing and setting of the conversation. Using straightforward, age-appropriate language helps maintain transparency, and openly discussing adjustments to the family budget can carry significant weight. By encouraging children to participate in finding creative ways to save and make thoughtful spending choices, parents can nurture a sense of responsibility.
This Special Report offers a valuable opportunity to enhance children's financial literacy, equipping them with the resilience needed to thrive in an increasingly complex world.
Here is the link to your Special Report: