St Joseph's Catholic Primary School Wandal Newsletter

Lenten Check

I was recently invited by the Federal Government to do a ‘65 year’ life check. Yes, I am that old. Basically, this was an online questionnaire covering four categories: Finance, Work, Health, Social Life. The aim was to identify any problems, give advice and, hopefully, initiate positive changes before one gets too old.

Lent begins next week, and that too is an invitation to do a ‘life check’. Traditionally the three areas we are invited to consider are prayer, fasting and almsgiving. So how could we check these is our lives?

Prayer: How is my relationship with God going? As with, all relationships there is always room for improvement. Do I give God a chance to guide me in daily events? Do I take time to ‘be’ in God’s presence? Do I consider the ‘bigger picture’ of my life?

Fasting: What do I need to do to improve my life? Where have I allowed self-indulgence to undermine the person that God wants me to be? What disciplines do I need to grow as a loving person?

Almsgiving: This is compassion is practice. How do I show practical love to the people with whom I live? How do I show compassion within my community? What is my social life like? Do I only mix with like-minded people or do I mix with people who might challenge me?

I did well on the Government’s life check. How well on the Lenten check? I don’t know, but the 40 days of Lent will be an opportunity to allow God to transform my life.

Loving God, let me enter into the Spirit of Lent and use these days to grow in love of you, my family and community and myself. I ask this in Jesus’ name confident that you will hear me.

Sr Kym Harris osb

Rockhampton and District Catholic schools will be closed this Friday to enable staff to attend the annual Bishop’s In-service Day. This is a faith development day for all Catholic school staff. Our school office will also be closed on this day. Our Outside School Hours Care Service will be operating from 7am-6pm. For bookings, please contact the OSHC staff on 0429 316 543.

For those school families who regularly require disabled parking access, there are now two additional marked parking spots in the church carpark, close to the school entrance gate. These are in addition to the existing space outside the tuck-shop, along Rundle Street.

Congratulations  to our Year Six students who participated in a day of leadership skills building at the Capricorn Caves last week. Fears were conquered and challenges accepted! Thank you to Mrs Starr, Mrs Riley, Mrs Lidster, Mrs Barry and Mrs Kennedy who accompanied our explorers.

A reminder to Year Six parents that communication was distributed earlier in the week regarding orders and payment for the (optional) senior shirts. We look forward to presenting our Year Six leaders with their leadership badges at a special assembly Friday, 6 March at 8.35am.

At times, staff will be released from their normal duties to attend training and professional development sessions. We do try to limit the amount of these disruptions to classes and are fortunate to have a wonderful bank of relief staff on whom to call. Over the term, our teachers will be released from class to have a collaborative planning and learning day with their teaching partners. In addition to this, there are a number of other professional development opportunities that our staff will be accessing. Our teachers will endeavour to keep you informed of any planned absences in their weekly email updates.

These opportunities include:

·         A Learning Support In-service for some of our Teacher Assistants held at the Kevin Castles Centre today.

·         A Management of Actual or Potential Aggression Training course for key school staff

·         An Autism Australia course for some teachers and Teacher Assistants in Week 6

·         Cluster and regional meetings for Principals, Assistant Principals and Learning Support Teachers throughout the term

·         Classroom Profiling Training for our Prep teachers in Week 7

·         Future Schools Conference in Melbourne for a couple of teaching staff Week 8

·         Library and Workplace Health and Safety meetings for designated staff

I thank you for your flexibility and understanding. Our staff are wonderful role models of the importance of life-long learning!

God wants us by every means in our power to lead others to life.

 Saint Mary MacKillop 1899

Last week Year Four led prayer which focussed on the scripture reading, 'Love one another as I have loved you'. Year 4 then created a recipe for love which is worthy of sharing. 

This week's Gospel reading Matthew 5:17-37 focused on God's rules for life.  Students reflected on the Gospel message after assembly on Monday and made connections to their own lives about the importance of being responsible, trying our best and remembering that happiness comes from doing the right thing.  

To celebrate Shrove Tuesday next week, all students will be participating in a “Pancake Bake-off”. Our Year Six House Captains will be baking pancakes in front of the rest of the school. Pancakes will be judged by a special Guest Pancake Judge.

 All of the children will then partake in some pancake tasting of their own. If your child has dietary concerns, or you do not wish for them to participate, please speak to your class teacher/s. We ask that on Shrove Tuesday, each child brings a gold coin to assist with raising funds for the Project Compassion Lenten Campaign. 

We are also looking for some parent helpers to cook some pancakes in preparation for this day. Pancakes can be made at home and then brought to school on Tuesday morning. Please complete the Eform to indicate if you are able to donate some pancakes.

 Thank you in advance for your help and donations. If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact the school office or myself.

A reminder that Children’s Liturgy is held most Sundays at St Joseph’s Cathedral at 9.30am during the school term. It is wonderful to see our students attend. All students (particularly those preparing for sacraments) are encouraged to attend. Thank you to our dedicated teachers who assist with this important ministry. 

The school has a small number of older model iPads that are unable to connect to our school management system.  These devices will possibly work with your own internet.  These devices may not include a charger.  If you are interested in purchasing one of these devices at a cost of $25, please see our friendly office staff.  These will be sold on a 'first in first served' basis, with no holds.  

Information Evening The College will be hosting an Information Evening in Our Lady’s Hall on Monday 2 March 2020 at 5.30pm. All intending Year 7 2021 families should attend as important information will be presented. ENROLMENTS CLOSE WEDNESDAY 1 APRIL 2020 ***Enrolment packs can be collected from the offices of The Cathedral College, St Peter’s, St Paul’s and St Joseph’s (Wandal) Catholic Primary Schools or downloaded from the College website www.tccr.com.au **

St Joseph’s Wandal is excited to offer the Commonwealth Bank School Banking program to all students.

School Banking is a fun, interactive and engaging way for young Australians to learn about money and develop good savings habits.  Children who deposit money into their Youthsaver account through School Banking earn Dollarmites tokens, which they can save up and redeem for exciting rewards.

 School Banking is also a great fundraiser for our school. Our school receives a Regular Savers Contribution of $5 for every 10 deposits processed per student as well as an Annual Contribution which is based on the number of students who made at least one School Banking deposit in the prior year.

Getting involved in School Banking is easy!

 All you need to get involved in the School Banking program is a Commonwealth Bank Youthsaver account. You can open an account for your child in one of two ways: 

 1. Online

Visit commbank.com.au/schoolbanking and click on the link to open a Youthsaver account.

2. In branch

Visit a Commonwealth Bank branch with identification for yourself and your child, like a driver’s licence and birth certificate.

 If your child has an existing Commonwealth Bank Youthsaver account they can start banking straight away. They just need to bring their deposit in every week on School Banking day using their Dollarmites deposit wallet. School banking day is Thursday.

 If you would like to know more about School Banking, please ask for a 2019 School Banking program information pack from the school office or visit commbank.com.au/schoolbanking.

Congratulations to our Student Award Achievements!  Please click on link for all the details

Welcome to all our new St Joseph’s Wandal families and our returning families for 2020. We had our first P&F meeting on the 6th February at 5.00pm. It was lovely to see some new faces at our first meeting and we always encourage our parents/carers/grandparents to get involved. Meetings care the best way to learn about what is happening at the school and to have a voice in the activities we run at the school. During this meeting we spoke about the development of the new playspace, soon you should be able to see some works being carried out in preparation for its installation. The P&F have fundraised $70,000 to put towards this wonderful structure for our lower grade classes. We are looking at purchasing some more Shade tents/gazebos as with our growing number of students our previous gazebos will not shade all our children. We will be getting quotes and deciding on a design for the tents to possibly include house colours and names in our next meeting. Our new P&F start times will be in place as of our next meeting. We have moved from starting at 5pm to 5.15pm. We are hoping this will enable more people to attend the meetings after work. In a discussion from an enquiry raised by a parent last year to supply the program READING EGGS to all our Prep students for at home access, the P&F has purchased this for all of  our Prep families. We also discussed the vacancy of the role of Secretary for our P&F. We are looking for a volunteer to take on this role. This role includes taking minutes, preparing agendas for meetings and then submitting a small blurb to the school for the newsletter. If you think this role might interest you, please do not hesitate to contact me or the principal. Please come along to our next meeting on Thursday the 30th April, at 5.15pm in the School Office Building. Discussion items will include Year 6 camp donation, our Annual High Tea date and committee member volunteers, Motorbike raffle from Murphy Motors, Shade tent quotes and designs and future school family activities to encourage parent engagement.

Thanks, Emma Singleton

P&F President

emmasin.28@optusnet.com.au

0423402767

Dear Parents,

 I am sure you would appreciate the importance of good hearing for learning generally and for speech and language development. Consequently, it is recommended that children complete a hearing test when they begin schooling.

 Central Queensland Hearing is providing free hearing tests for all Prep students this year. To arrange a test, please call their reception on 4922 4623.

 The address for the clinic is as follows:

Central Queensland Hearing

Suite 3, 49-51 Bolsover Street,

Rockhampton, Qld 4700