Term 1 Issue 2 31st March 2023

Principal's News

Dear Families,

It is hard to believe that we are already at the end of our first term for 2023. This term has been a very positive term for St Patrick's School. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our staff, students and families for their continued ongoing support throughout the term. 

We now have our new front perimeter fence and our colour bond fence behind our Peace Garden and playground. Our next project is continuing to work on grant applications to fund our Yarning Circle in honour of Aunty Irene and the purchase of equipment to install shot put and discus facilities for our students. I extend our thanks to the community for supporting our fundraisers and our PPF and families for supporting the fence project and the upcoming Yarning Circle project.

Our students have settled in well to the new term and have enjoyed their new classroom spaces and teachers. Students are to be commended for their enthusiastic approach to their learning this term. It has been fantastic visiting classrooms and observing the amazing work students are completing. I would like to extend a special well done to our students in Year 3 and Year 5. Our students recently completed the Naplan testing, and they all worked incredibly hard in each test. Well done!

If your child begins Prep in 2024 and you are looking at enrolling at St Patrick's School please complete an online enrolment form as soon as possible (link below). Enrolment interviews will begin  in Term 2.

Enrol - St Patrick's School, Mitchell

On behalf of our St Pat's family, I would like to wish everyone a safe holiday break. We look forward to seeing you all next term.

Warm regards,

Kylie

Term Dates for 2023

Term One - Friday, 27th January to Friday, 31st March

Term Two - Tuesday, 18th April to Friday, 23rd June

Term Three - Tuesday, 11th July to Friday, 15th September 

Term Four - Tuesday, 3rd October to Friday, 1st December

Pupil Free Day

Pupil Free Day on Monday, 17th April.

School resumes on Tuesday, 18th April. 

PPF Meeting

The next meeting of the PPF Assn will be held on Monday, 24th April at 3.15pm.

Guess the Easter Eggs

The PPF ran a Guess the Easter Eggs competion during lent.  They raised $108.00 half of which will be donated to Caritas for the missions and half to the PPF.

Miss Sonya was the lucky winner who guessed there was 120 eggs in one bottle and                              Archie Thomas guessed  the eggs in the other bottle. Congratulation to both winners.

St Columba's Parish Easter Mass Times

Easter  Sunday Mass will be celebrated on Sunday, 9th April at 8.30 a.m.

Class News : Years 3 to 6

Our Year 3-6 class have been working hard on their writing skills this term.

We began to write poems to be translated into Gunggari.

The following poem, written by McKenzie Mitchell, talks of the importance of the Yumba:

Here we stay,

Old riverbank,

Magic here,

Ever more.

Yesterday,

Understand the,

Magic here forever stands,

Black wombs,

At last, we stand.

Wyatt Butler shares his Book Review of Wonder. You decide for yourself whether you might want to read the novel or not!

When I read Wonder, I was humbled by the rich inspiring story. When I finished reading Wonder I couldn’t stop thinking about all the little precepts and messages. I feel like it would make any reader feel better.

The story starts with a boy named August he does normal things like eat delicious ice cream and ride a bike but despite that he doesn’t look normal, and sadly he isn’t treated normal.

Late in the book we see August’s parents arguing about August going to school, August had been home-schooled all his life.

Most of the book is focussed on August but the other part’s focus on August settling into middle school. The other parts are all about August effecting others. The person August affects the most is his sister, Via. Via feels neglected because everyone always gives August attention.

This book gives us the harsh reality that not many books take a look at. This book help with self-shame that’s abundant these days, with almost every kid having social media and people feeling ashamed of their body.

If someone told me about this book sooner, it would’ve helped a lot of people. I would recommend this book to seven up. I would give this book a 4.5 out of 5.

We have also excelled in group work tasks to explain types of seed dispersals in science.

Recently our school celebrated St Patrick's Day with everyone wearing green and our school leader's participating in a school Mass.

Class News: Prep/1/2

It’s been a busy term with lots of new learning for our Preps, consolidation for our Year One students and extension for our Year Two students.

Literacy: 

We have been continuing our learning of taught letters including, o,c,k,u,h,f,b,r,d,l,p,v.

You can help your child with their new learning by asking- can you say the letter name, sound and think of a word beginning with that sound? 

Numeracy: 

Our number focus has been on forming digits 4-8. Our concepts have focused on positional language (underneath, on top of, beside, to the left/right, next to, inside) patterns, 2D shapes, 100 grid formations and simple addition sums.

You can help your child by asking- can you identify a number in different forms? (numeral, word, picture), show the number and write the numeral? Do you know the number before/after? 

Save the date:

This year, we invite our Prep/1/2 Mothers to a MOP Morning on Friday 12^th May from 8:45am-9:45am. A formal invitation is on its way!

Don’t throw it away!

If you have any boxes (any size) or glass jars (preferably small), could you please send them to school with your child. We would love to be able to use them for craft next term. 

Thank you for your ongoing support. We hope you have a wonderful Easter holiday and look forward to seeing you again in Term 2! We are hoping to have a visit from the Easter bunny during the holidays – let’s hope they have seen all our great learning.

Important Dates for 2023