28th June 2019

Dear Parents and Carers

Today is Sacred Heart Feast Day. We have had a beautiful mass led by Year 4 and games at school led by Year 6. Our mass was very special as we introduced our new school song “Faith, Generosity and Courage” to the community. Thank you to Miss Conroy and her brother Tim who wrote the words and music for us. We also thanked our students and families for their generosity and our volunteers (especially Jackie McCarthy and MJ Whitson) for preparing the baskets for the St Vincent de Paul Winter Appeal. 

Can you please save the date for our next whole school mass on Thursday August 8th at 9.15am. We would love to see many parents at this mass. This will be the first school mass that Deacon Joe will say as an ordained priest. 

Many thanks to all our teachers for all their hard work and preparation that went into the parent teacher interviews. 

Our last student day will be next Thursday the 4th of July. Our staff development day on Friday will be on Mathematics particularly multiplication and division. This will be led by Mrs Kelly and Miss Mclarn. 

This week the Sports Club held their Term 4 meeting. I am often amazed at how much our volunteer leaders do for our sports club and our children. Their reports detailed the work of so many of you who support our coaches, manage our teams and manage communication. Our soccer club is having great success this season with their new coaching arrangement. Accelerate, the new soccer coaching group, is leading “coach the coach” training sessions with our coaches gaining many skills as leaders and our players benefiting enormously. The summer basketball season will kick off next term and our teams have been chosen to represent the school in Albury in October.  The Kinder basketball skills after school program will be run again this year later in Term 3 by Mr De Villiers. Netball is running smoothly with over 100 girls representing our sports club on the weekends. Many thanks to Andrea Agar and Cathy Davis who have managed netball for a number of years. They will be handing over the reins to Susie Rich and Susanne O’Neill at the end of the season. Thank you to the parents who organised a trip last weekend to the Swifts game.

A huge thank you to Fiona Dynon who manages our 100 soccer players by herself (any volunteers to help her would be very welcome I’m sure) .Thank you to Irene Grebe, Katie O’Brien and Annie Zukerman who manage the 200 plus basketball registrations and teams. All codes have moved to having paid coaches this year and this has been a very successful model. Thank you to Chris Chard (President)  Emma Lund (Secretary) and Brad McCarthy (Treasurer) who support the many volunteers in our Sports Club.

Next Thursday the children can wear sports mufti for a gold coin donation. Their favourite sports team jersey or favourite sport outfit would be appropriate. The money raised will be for our second senior basketball player who has made the NSW team for basketball. A record for a school to have two players in NSW teams. On Thursday Mr Tony Farley will visit the school. Tony is the new Director of Schools for Sydney Catholic Schools.

Car line - We have recently been working with the children on our dismissal areas. The school crossing, Kameruka, Kindergarten dismissal and bus lines have all improved and are going smoothly. We are currently working on our car line with the children. Keeping them quiet and orderly helps the street process move much quicker. Parents can help by:

• Ensuring surnames names are displayed in large black print on the passenger side of the car. Order yours via the QKR app.
• Making sure children are able to clip themselves into seat belts (don’t get out of the car)
• Cars not all arriving at 3pm, if parents with older children (Yrs 3-6) can arrive after 3.10-3.20 that would help relieve congestion in the road
• When dropping off or picking up, do not reverse  out but wait for the car in front to leave. 

Next Monday our students will experience the Big Science Show in the hall. There will be a K-2 session and a Yr 3-6 session. The children have learnt a lot from the Fizzics group that have visited each grade this term.

Regards

Julie Caldwell