Dear Parents, Guardians & Carers,

This Thursday (tomorrow) is the last day of Term One, school finishes at 2:10pm and our Easter raffle will be drawn during the course of the day.

As we move from Palm Sunday to Easter this week, the Grade 5 and 6’s will share with the school an ‘Easter Play’ focusing on the events of Holy Week. This helps children understand the true meaning of Easter and as a Catholic community, helps us recognise God’s deep love for us, and the foundations of our faith.

We hope families have time to take part in the Easter ceremonies in our local area and enjoy some restful time together sharing joyful family moments over the Easter break. 

Easter Prayer

Jesus Risen Saviour, we rejoice with You over this coming Easter period.

With You we celebrate new life, new beginnings, new hope and new joy.

May Your risen glory shine through us in all that we do and say.

We praise God for raising You up and for giving us the gift of Your eternal presence.

Amen 

The St Vinnie's Assist a Student Program gives families the opportunity to provide funding to support the education of a student in one of their partner countries for a year.  Last year, the program supported 2,400 students in Cambodia, Indonesia, Kiribati, Myanmar, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand.  What a lovely way to show your children the importance of giving to those less fortunate. If this is something you would consider please visit their website.

https://donate.vinnies.org.au/assist-a-student

Start of Term 2:  A reminder that Term 2 starts for all students on Tuesday 20th April. Staff will be undertaking Professional Development on Monday 19th April. 

School Photos Tuesday 20 April - order forms have been sent home today and general information in relation to the day has been emailed to all families and is available on Skoolbag. If your child is absent today and tomorrow your order information will be emailed to you. 

Regards

Chris Dortmans, Principal

The Foundation students have continued their author study and narrative knowledge looking at the beginning, middle and end of books by Erica Carle and Nick Bland. They have practised naming the front cover, back cover, spine, author and illustrator of books and used hands on activities to identify syllables in words they read. In maths, the Foundation students have been using informal measures to compare the lengths of objects and classifying them as long and short. Some suggestions for learning at home over the holidays include:

-       Practise writing your name, you can do this with rainbow colours, chalk or whiteboards.

-       Identifying upper and lowercase letters, make flash cards or board games to practise these.

-       Number cognition to 10, by looking at numbers, naming them, and ordering them.

-       Practise counting forwards by 1's to 30 and backwards from 10, 20 or 30. 

Over the last two weeks, the Grade 1/2 students have been practising narrative writing skills, with a focus on story mapping. In spelling, students have worked with blends fl, bl and cl and words containing contractions (e.g. don’t, won’t, wouldn’t, you’re). In maths, Grade ½ students have used various strategies and hands on materials to explore addition and subtraction. They have practised comparing and ordering the length of objects using vocabulary such as longest and shortest. Some suggestions for learning at home over the holidays include:

-       Continuing to practise reading to an adult every day and have an adult ask questions about the text.

-       Practise writing about things you do on the holidays, helping to write shopping lists for your family or writing imaginative stories.

-       Play games with your family to practice addition and subtraction skills such as board games, snakes and ladders, card games or games sent home from school.

-       Practise your maths at home by helping your family make food and cook in the kitchen.

-       Practise your counting forwards and backwards to and from 100 by 1s, 2s, 5, and 10s from different starting points.

As Term One draws to a close we can reflect on all of our achievements and just how wonderful it has been to be back together again.

The senior students have been working very hard writing some amazingly creative and descriptive narrative texts. We continue to focus on Soundwaves and we’re getting really good at segmenting words and finding the phonemes and graphemes!

In Maths, we have been working on Multiplication and Division, as well as Chance and Place Value. We have also worked really hard on making sure we can apply our number strategies to worded problems.

The Easter Play will be performed this week and we’re so excited that we can welcome an audience back to the Church to share this experience.

We wish you all a wonderful, restful and safe holiday break and look forward to an equally eventful Term Two.

Including the communities of:  St Joseph’s Iona,  St James Nar Nar Goon,  Holy Family Maryknoll,  St John’s Koo Wee Rup and St Mary’s, Lang Lang

Administrator:  Fr. Peter Kooloos  Ph: 03 5997 1510   Fax: 03 5997 2220 Mob: 0438 622 766

Baptism Enquiries: Carmelina De Cesari   Mob: 0401 911 092   carmelinadecesari@gmail.com

WEEKEND MASS TIMES: