St Joseph's Newsletter

Dear families,

There are so many vibrant learning activities and community building events that make up the everyday life of the St Joseph’s School community.  Last week I was very privileged to attend the Wakakirri performance at the Entertainment Centre where our Year 5 and 6 students performed in the event for the first time.  Their performance was absolutely outstanding, and I commend all of our wonderful students for their commitment, collaboration, incredible stage presence and dance moves!  As the judges commented at the conclusion of their story dance – wow, wow, wow!  Thank you in particular to our Yr 5/6 teaching team and Maria A for all of their work.

I commend also our cross country running team who competed in the SACPSSA Cross Country Carnival on Thursday.  In a very large field of runners, several of our students finished in the top ten which is an excellent achievement.  Thanks to our sports coordinator, Matthew Baird, for training the team and ensuring their participation in the event.

This week is National Science Week and our Year 1-6 learners had the opportunity to engage in a virtual world of learning using Virtual Reality headsets.  They entered ancient worlds, outer space and many worlds in between.

👇 Read more about how we celebrated Science Week in the School Highlights section below 

At our liturgy last week to celebrate the feast day of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop, we reflected on the ways in which we each can be like Mary MacKillop. At St Joseph’s School, we embrace every opportunity for each child to Imagine, Discover, Create and Achieve. We looked at the life of Mary MacKillop through this lens and realised that Mary too embraced these opportunities.  She:

• Imagined the world could be a better place if all children had the opportunity to go to school
• Discovered that others also believed education could change the world when she met Fr Julian Tenison Woods
• Created a way to help as many children as possible to go to school by starting the Sisters of St Joseph and training them as teachers
• Achieved the opening of many schools where many thousands of children now have every opportunity to learn.

Every year two children from each class are recognised for demonstrating similar values to Mary MacKillop and are presented with the Mary MacKillop Award.  Recipients are chosen because they display the following qualities:

• Care and respect for others and our environment
• Respect and prayerful participation during Masses and times of prayer
• Seeing a need and doing something about it without being asked
• Putting the needs of others before their own

We congratulate the following students who were awarded the 2022 Mary MacKillop Award –

Today (Wednesday 17th August) as a whole school we celebrated the feast called The Assumption of Mary into heaven. This is a day that we remember when Mary, the mother of Jesus, was taken into heaven, body and soul, after she died. Mary’s life and death are a wonderful example of praise and thanksgiving to God.

As a part of Catholic Schools Open Week, we invite Grandparents and Grandfriends to join us at school on Tuesday 23 August for a gathering, morning tea and opportunity to visit the children in the classrooms. Thank you to the Parents and Friends who will provide a lovely morning tea for all. 

👉 Please RSVP for this event by following this link

We will also celebrate Book Week next week with some fun events across the week to encourage our students to developing a love of books and reading. Families are invited to join us for our annual Book Week Parade on Friday 26 August at 9:15am. 

👇 Read more about the celebrations in the 'Upcoming Events' section below

Thank you to all parents and caregivers who have taken the time to provide feedback on the performance of St Joseph’s School Hindmarsh via the Living Learning Leading Survey.  If you haven’t yet done so, I ask that you find three to five minutes to complete this as your response will provide valuable information to help us reflect on our school and plan forward to make St Joseph’s School the best it can be.

👉 Follow this link and, when prompted, enter the code SJWLLLP. The survey closes on Friday 26 August.

📅 Tuesday 23rd August
📍 Gathering in the Sacred Heart Hall
🕘 9.15 am to 10.45 am

Including an:
👤 Opportunity to visit classrooms
☕ Morning Tea for our special guests

🗳 Please RSVP for catering purposes
👇 Follow this link to RSVP you and your families attendance.

On Grandparents & Grandfriends Day (Tuesday 23rd August) we will be hosting a morning tea for our very important guests. We're asking families to help contribute to our first shared morning tea since COVID began by bringing a small plate of food ready to be served.

ℹ️ Here’s everything you need to know about what to bring for our Morning Tea:

🥪 What to bring?
Families can choose to bring 🍓 a fruit plate or 🧀 savoury plate.We ask that families do not bring a sweets plate because the P&F will be providing 🥯 homemade scones on the day

🤔 Who is the food for?
The morning tea is for our special guests. After our gathering, the students will return to class and the grandparents/friends will be invited to stay for our morning tea. Students to bring recess as usual.

🧒 Who can bring a plate of food?
The eldest child of each family from Preschool to Year 6.

📦 How to transport your food?
To avoid losing Tupperware containers, we encourage families to use ♻️ 🍽 environmentally friendly disposable plates.

📍 Where to drop off your plates of food?
Plates can be dropped off into the Hall and placed on prepared tables upon arrival.

❗Things to remember

• We will not be preparing/cutting/heating any food on the day
• Food needs to be ready to serve
• No nut products
• No heating required for savoury foods

📅 Friday 26th August
📍 Parade on the School Oval (weather permitting)
🕘 9.15 am

Looking forward to seeing you and your family there!

In Week 5 ST JOSEPH’S SCHOOL will be celebrating BOOK WEEK.

This year’s theme is DREAMING with EYES OPEN…

Day 1: Short-listed Book Activity
Our week will start with classes spending time with their BUDDY CLASS and responding to one of the SHORT-LISTED books and completing an activity together on Monday.

Day 3: Reading with our buddies
On Wednesday we will spend some time READING and SHARING books with our BUDDY CLASS.  We have many budding authors/illustrators who are looking forward to sharing their own books.

Day 5: Dress up as your favourite book character
On Friday we will conclude BOOKWEEK with a BOOK PARADE.

When:  9:15 am on the OVAL/GRASSED AREA* (weather permitting).  Come and join us and share in the excitement of “dressing up” and sharing in the “dream” of entering another “world”.

🕵️‍♀️ 👨‍🚀 🦹‍♂️ WEAR A COSTUME THAT REPRESENTS A CHARACTER FROM A BOOK THAT YOU HAVE READ or TIES IN WITH THIS YEAR’S THEME. 🧚‍♀️ 👩‍🎨 👮

Parents are invited to join in the fun and come in character as well!

*Parade will transfer to the Sacred Heart Hall if weather is unsuitable.

For the first time in St Joseph’s School History, the Year 5/6 students participated in and excelled in the ‘National Story-Dance Festival, ‘Wakakirri.’

The Aboriginal word ‘Wakakirri’ means ‘to dance’. It was chosen to give the festival a uniquely Australian feel. Created in 1992, ‘Wakakirri’ is Australia’s largest national ‘Performing Arts’ event for schools.

Following months, weeks, days, & hours of planning, preparing, designing and rehearsing, it all came down to one evening, on Wednesday, the 10th August at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.

The Year 5/6 students absolutely did our school proud, to say the least. Not only did they perform with extreme energy, commitment and confidence under lights, they also worked brilliantly as a team, eventually being recognised, from one of numerous awards, as best ‘teamwork’ award for the night.  

To acknowledge National Science Week, we had the opportunity to experience 

a virtual reality adventure through Ignite Vr. The world of Virtual Reality (VR) opens endless possibilities and can transport you anywhere you can imagine.

The students were provided with a level of interaction and immersion like no other. Exploring ancient worlds, flying high above New York City, traveling through Mars, swimming under the sea and much, much more! Science and technology sure are changing at a rapid pace!! The students had a wonderful time exploring what the world has to offer. 

This year 16 students in years 3-6 competed in the SACPSSA Cross Country Carnival - Phoenix C, Lotye P, Italica F, Clara T, Peter K, Sahib S, Savva V, Jake V, Archie W, Jada A, Livingstone O, Harleen S, Mistir A, Chace W, Nathan A, Adele A and Sebastian M.

They trained once a week between 8.15am - 8.30am for 6 weeks to prepare themselves for the 2km run at Park 15.

Although it was beautiful day the track was quite wet and slippery on the day. This made the start of races very interesting with lots of students slipping over.

All students who participated enjoyed the experience and gained an insight into endurance training and competition.

Several of our students finished in the top 10 and even more in the top 20 of their age group. It was an impressive feat for all students as their dedication to train and compete is a great showing of discipline no matter where they finished in the race.

The school is very proud of all students who participated.

After experiencing a fantastic vacation care, we are now almost ready to send out the October  program. You will receive it at the end of week 6.

OSHC is looking for parents who would like to join our Advisory Committee. We meet once a term to discuss any topics of interest or concern. At the moment, we are meeting on a Tuesday at 5:00 pm. Please let Maria C know if you would like to be a part of this amazing committee.

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