From The Principal

Dear Families,

Welcome to August. Did you know that August 1st is recognised as the birthday of all the horses in the Southern Hemisphere? My Dad shared that fact with me when I was a youngster and it has stuck with me ever since! Isn’t it funny the things from childhood that you can remember without any effort because they somehow resonated with you at the time? As staff at St Anne’s, it is our wish for our students that they remember more than just facts and figures from their schooling. It is our teaching of the Catholic faith, and Jesus’ message of “Love one another as I have loved you”, that we hope stays with our students long after they have left our school grounds for the final time, and is in fact lived out by them each and every day.

Eucharist

This weekend and next we acknowledge our Year Four students who will be receiving the Sacrament of Eucharist for the first time. Eucharist is one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, and is the second of three “Sacraments of Initiation”, preceded by Baptism and followed by Confirmation. At the Family Faith Nights back in June, facilitated by Samantha O’Dwyer, children and their parents were engaged in discussions around the following key points

• Eucharist comes from the Greek word for Thanksgiving, which is what we do at the Mass.
• Eucharist helps us to be in Communion (community) with others.
• The retelling of the Last Supper in Scripture provides us with many of the words, actions and symbols used in the celebration of Eucharist at Mass.

Tomorrow the Year 4 students will be participating in a Eucharist Reflection Day, which will be the culmination of their preparation for the Sacrament. They have been prepared wonderfully by their classroom teachers Jules, Simone, Jo, Caitlin, Bern and Sam, and supported ably by our RE Leader Cath.

We ask that you continue to keep our Year 4 students in your prayers as they step more fully into the Catholic faith tradition.

Grandparents Morning

Please note that at St Anne’s, we typically celebrate Grandparents Morning later in the year rather than last week as many schools did, which is on the Feast of St Anne and St Joachim. This allows us to separately focus on our Feast Day and Grandparents Day, rather than trying to combine the two. This also gives us the added bonus of inviting Grandparents to come along to school when the weather is a bit nicer! This year, the event will take place on the morning of Friday November 1st. We encourage all grandparents to add this date to their calendar.

Special Events

I hope you were able to catch the St Anne’s News that was sent out on Monday. It provided a fantastic summary of the sense of fun and community that permeated the school across the Mega Mathletes Day and St Anne’s Feast Day. Thanks to all staff for your behind the scenes organisation that made the days such a success, and to Sarah Magro and Fiona Icely for helping coordinate the distribution of sausages..

Other News and Notes

Congratulations to our Year 6 Football and Soccer Teams who competed in the Woodlands Division Round Robin in the past week. The Football team made the final against St Carlo in Greenvale before finally meeting their match, while the Soccer Team competed admirably in their round robin matches.

• Italian Day will take place next Friday 9th August. Students are invited to dress in something representing Italy or Italian culture.
• We have been hit with staff illnesses across the last week. While we endeavour to keep the classroom program running as normal, at times students may have different teachers across the day or need to be split across other classrooms. Casual relief teachers are in short supply across our region. If you know of anyone looking for CRT work, please encourage them to reach out to me.

Warm regards,

Stephen