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Newsletter Term 2 Week 1

Principal's Message

Dear Parents and Families,

It is wonderful to see all our students, families, and staff return after the holiday break. It seems lots of students went camping or headed away and many have told me about catching up with friends and relatives. Whatever you did, I hope everyone had the opportunity to rest up and relax, in readiness for the new term.

A warm St Mary’s welcome to Jo Foot, who has joined our staff teaching 1W, Aleisha Pye who is undertaking some LSO work and Gabi Boers who commences a teaching placement with Mrs Jobling and 5H. We are looking forward to working with you all.

ANZAC Day
Tomorrow we pause to pay respect and honour to those who have given so much to the peace of our nation.

Students have been learning about the meaning of ANZAC Day and we hope that many students will join staff and our student leaders for the ANZAC march and service at the cenotaph. For those attending we meet by 10.30 at Beaurepaires corner (opposite The Big Cod) and march to the cenotaph for the 11 am service.

Open Day - Wednesday May 3rd
Next week on Wednesday May 3rd, we are holding the second of our Open Days for families with preschool aged children looking to enrol in Foundation in 2024. This is running from 4.45-5.45pm and provides a great opportunity for prospective parents to look around our beautiful school, particularly our vibrant junior classrooms and to gather information about St. Mary's. If you know of anyone considering St Mary’s as their school of choice for 2024, please encourage them to ring the office and register to attend.

The Great Race - Monday May 1st - Friday May 5th
I think this ranks as one of the blockbuster events of the school year! The ever popular Great Race begins next week as a lead up to the Senior and Junior Cross Country. Children can earn points for their House Team by doing laps of the oval at lunch time. The Great Race is a fun way of getting exercise not just for the children but for our teachers to get their steps up while chatting to students and colleagues on the way. It is a wonderful sight to see so many children involved in this activity and parents are very welcome to come and join us each day. Children are allowed to wear their PE uniform to school each day of the Great Race week so that they can participate fully at lunchtime.

Our P & F efforts this year are focussed on fundraising for our new Ninja Playground and on Friday May 5th as a way to conclude the Great Race we see the return of the extremely popular COLOUR RUN, a P&F fundraising initiative which will run from 12:00-1:00pm. You will receive more detailed information about the Colour Run via PAM this week. It certainly is a fundraiser that provides a lot of fun as well as promoting the benefits of physical activity. There is a rumour that there may also be Coloured Slime on some stands as an extra incentive to keep moving!

Enrolments for 2024
Enrolments are now open for children who start Foundation in 2024. Interviews for new and existing families will take place later in Term 2 and continue in Term 3. Parents of existing families who have a child to start in 2024 please ring the office so an enrolment form can be forwarded to you.

Casual Dress Day - Friday 28th April
Our last casual dress day was a great success with almost $500 raised for the Good Friday Appeal. This Friday is our next casual dress day - the theme is Little Free Library. We would like to place a little free library at our front gate where families from St Mary’s, OSHC and Shamrock Park Kinder can borrow a book and/or bring a book to leave. This month students can either bring a gold coin donation to assist in the cost of constructing the free library or donate a book from home to the cause.

Holiday Updates
If you pop inside our yard this week you will notice a few updates in the yard. Firstly with the arrival of some new seating, Pete Clarke has been busy putting the finishing touches on the new sensory garden, and we have freshened up our front entrance garden. The arrival of 2 beautiful buddy seats, courtesy of our wonderful P&F also provide a fabulous addition to our yard and are sure to prove popular with all ages.

Most exciting of all is the sound of Condely Construction working hard on our new junior hub. With the roof set to go on next week,it is really starting to take shape.

School Uniform
The beginning of Term 2 is a transition period from Summer to Winter uniform. At the moment, students can wear either Summer or Winter uniforms based on the weather for that day. Further notice will be given in the newsletter when the full transition to Winter uniform is required. Hats or beanies are both acceptable as we transition into Winter uniforms. To avoid a phone call home or a uniform notice, please ensure your child is only wearing their sports uniform on the day they have PE with Miss Clarke or their level sports day. Thank you for your support in ensuring your child is in the correct uniform each day.

Hope you all have a lovely week as you ease back into routine.

Kate

"Never See a Need Without Doing Something About It"
Mary MacKillop - Sisters of St Joseph Foundress

Message from Fr James

Parish Block Murlong Street
As you may know, the Parish owns the two vacant blocks either side of St Mary’s Primary School, Swan Hill.

The Parish Finance Committee could see that leaving these idle was becoming increasingly unfeasible. Significant chunk of our parish income is currently chewed up in rates for these blocks, and more broadly we needed to rethink how we could make best use of our assets to develop some alternative income streams to support our core Mission into the future. The Finance Committee decided therefore to investigate our options. The Diocese advised us to undertake a Feasibility Study, which then opened up an exciting opportunity for the future use of the Murlong St block in partnership with another Catholic agency.

The project is yet to be finalised, so we aren’t in a position to share all the details. It does mean however that we have agreed to sell the block, and that the Diocese is now managing the necessary planning applications in preparation for the next step. This process also includes works to free up the Karinie St Industrial block for sale. St Mary's school had been using some of the Murlong St block for staff car parking in an informal arrangement. They are now quite advanced in their plans to fence the boundary and build a new car park within the Parish Land marked and set aside for School-Operations. Kate has informed the school community of these changes. I would like to thank her and the school for their cooperation. Personally speaking, I know this type of thing is not necessarily my strength. The process has been far more complicated than I expected. I would like to thank the Finance Committee and Diocese for their great support. We are confident the end result will be something we can all be very proud of, and the sale will also help secure the financial position of the Parish into the future.

Key Dates

Monday April 24th
Start of Term 2
Tuesday April 25th
Public Holiday - ANZAC Day
Friday April 28th
Casual Dress Day
Assembly 12.25pm - 5J
Monday May 1st - Friday May 5th
Great Race Week
Wednesday May 3rd
Open Day - tours at 4.45pm
Thursday May 4th
Flying Bookworm Performance
Friday May 5th
Colour Run

Wellbeing with Mr Prockter

Something I love to do with my own kids is read them books. Books are a great way to connect with our kids and there is always a lesson to learn from most books we read, even the most basic ones! My little boy loves the Mr Men books in recent times, in particular the Mr Happy book written by Roger Hargreaves. In this story it follows the life of a character called, Mr Happy. In his journey he finds someone who is called Mr Miserable. Mr Happy goes out of his way and proceeds to help Mr Miserable by asking him to follow him and go for a walk to cheer up. Eventually after spending time with Mr Happy he begins to smile and eventually laugh with Mr Happy. I found this really interesting and connected to it. I believe that this story is showing us that we can all be happy and we can all be miserable at different times. The ability to be around people who are happy and willing to help us are people we must keep in our daily lives. It shows us we need people around us who care for us and are willing to help shape our moods. Anyways, I may be way off, but this is the cool thing about reading books is that we can always take lessons from it in a fun way if we are willing to. Try it with your kids!

Have a great first week back to school!
Mr Prockter

Curriculum with Mrs Hall

Museums in Motion - Year 5
Last term the Year 5 children designed and constructed dioramas to represent events or discoveries that shaped early Australia. This inquiry unit was about the concept of change through the lens of Australian history. Students learnt about the causes and the reasons why people migrated to Australia from Europe and Asia. Students learnt about the events and pioneers that have shaped our country

Digital Technology - Year 6
Our Year 6 children investigated how a Bee Bot works. They learnt to understand how to make them move and understand all the buttons involved with the Bee Bot. The students designed a maze for the Bee Bot to move through and then trialled each other's designs, following an algorithm they designed through a trial and error method. They had lots of fun with this and will be using scratch next to make a game.

RE with Mrs Davies

Sacraments - Eucharist Enrolment Sessions - 29th/30th May
This weekend begins the process of preparing our Year 4 children and their families to celebrate their First Holy Communion (Eucharist) over the coming weeks. Enrolment sessions will be held this weekend during Masses on 29th/30th May. Please make contact with Fr James at the Parish if you are unable to attend these sessions.

PE with Miss Clark

Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a great break over the Easter holidays and are ready to get back into an action packed term full of PE events!

Regional Tennis
Towards the end of last term we had two St Mary’s students represent our school in the Regional Tennis competition held at Swan Hill Lawn Tennis Club. The competition this year was a lot stronger than previous year. Well done to Oliver S and Hugh A for their efforts on the day.

State Swimming
Goodluck to Molly D, Indigo P, Noa Bella W and Bohden B who are part of the Medley Relay team off to Melbourne to participate in the State Level swimming at the end of the week. What an amazing achievement from these students, we know you will all do St Mary’s proud!

The Great Race
The much anticipated Great Race begins next week from Monday May 1st- Friday May 5th. Both staff and students are encouraged to participate at lunchtimes and run or walk laps of our school oval to gain points for their house. Students can wear their sports uniform for the week. Information will be sent home during the week about the event. Goodluck to all houses!

Great Race Finale!
On Friday May 5th from 12-1pm, we are celebrating the conclusion of the Great Race Week by students participating in a COLOUR RUN. There will be no laps counted on this day and is a chance for the students to be proud of their efforts in the Great Race for the week and have some fun with their classmates.

Senior Cross Country
The Senior Cross Country will be held on Tuesday the 9th of May for the Year 3 – 6 students at Riverside Park. The top students for their age group qualify to represent the school at the Division Cross Country on the 16th May. The 9 and 10 year olds will run 2km and the 11, 12 and 13 year olds will run 3km. The first race will be starting at 11:30am. Information regarding this event has been sent home via PAM and SIMON and please ensure permission has been given for your child/ren to attend this event.

The following is approximate times of each event;
10 year old girls: 11.30am
10 year old boys: 11:40am
8/9 year old girls: 11:50am
8/9 year old boys: 12pm
11 year old girls: 12.10pm
11 year old boys: 12:20pm
12/13 year old girls: 12:30pm
12/13 year old boys: 12.40pm

Sustainability with Mrs Ward

Waste not, want not!
Don’t we all end up with too much chocolate after Easter? Do you have a few packets of hot cross buns getting stale?

Melt down or integrate those leftover chocolates left behind by the Easter Bunny to give your Easter treats a new lease on life. Reinvigorate those hot cross buns into some creative meals- blitzing them into breadcrumbs from your chicken schnitzels. Check out Woolworths great Easter Leftover ideas!

https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/recipes/collections/holidays-and-entertaining/easter/easter-leftovers

@2 Murlong Before & After School Care

The Out of School Hours Care program, @ 2 Murlong, is operating out of the gym hub and provides before and after school care for school age children in the Swan Hill area. Please express your interest via the following link;

https://prodadmin.myxplor.com/enrollment/index/dHdBOThsSW9JeHUxYTEwaHNxZlMrdz0

News from the Office

How do I give permission for my child to attend a school excursion/activity on PAM
You will receive an email notification advising you have a new “school activity permission” available to view. There will be a link to access this through PAM.

Click on this link, this will take you to PAM, log in and in the top right hand corner on the “bell” will be a red dot with a number inside. These are your notifications. Click to view school activity permission details. Consent is given by scrolling to the bottom of the school activity details. The red numbered dot will disappear once the school activity permission has been opened.

You can view past Excursions & School Activity Permissions by clicking on the student, profile menu, “School Activities”. You can also use these steps to give consent if the notification has disappeared.

Rapid Antigen Tests
We have excess supply of Rapid Antigen Tests available for families. You can collect test kits from the office between 8.30am and 4pm.

News from the Canteen

Ordering from our canteen for recess or lunch is online via CDF Pay
https://smswanhill.cdfpay.org.au/
Orders are to be placed by 9.30am. We recommend ordering the night before.

If you are able to help in the canteen on any of the dates in yellow, please contact the office on 50332541 or email office@smswanhill.catholic.edu.au

We are after more parents/grandparents/special friends to help fill out canteen roster. All you need is your VIC WWCC.