Dear Parents,

What an amazing day we had in our school on Friday! The Mother's Day Mass was such a special occasion and I thank Natalie Dullard, our faith leader, and the wonderful 3/4 team for their excellent preparation.

The morning tea was such a special event with so many mums, nans, aunties and community members all gathered in the hall. It was a day full of positivity, connection and celebration for our mums and special people. A huge thanks to our Deputy Head of Organisation, Lisa Galvin, and all staff who assisted on the day.

A super team effort!

We highlighted the significant role of Mothers and we recognise every person in the role of caring, whether it be mum, grandparent, dad or special people, and all they do for the children in their care.

Children need environments around them to grow and flourish, to know and discover who they are and to build a sense of identity, allowing them to achieve amazing things in life.

Mothers and carers can have such a positive and significant influence on the life of a precious child. Mothers and mother figures are continuously giving, loving, sacrificing and providing much needed helping, nurturing hands to their loved ones.

Education week

This week is Education Week. The theme 'Active Learners: Move, Make, Motivate' celebrates the many ways students learn, through physical activity, hands on learning and student voice.

Education Week is an opportunity for our school to celebrate and share with you how we encourage our students to be active learners.

Our Deputy Head of Learning and Teaching, Sue Jackson, speaks about this in her section of the newsletter.

Our school is proud to encourage active learners and student voice through many different areas, ranging from our beach walks, to our living community work in the area of Indigenous perspectives, to our new garden and our sporting program, student leadership programs and our work in STEM and passion for sustainability and the environment.

This week we celebrate the theme of Move, Make and Motivate through our STEM and Inquiry learning activities along with Walk to School day on Friday morning and our District Cross Country this Thursday. Our new garden landscape, wetlands, labyrinth and community garden is a wonderful space where students can move, make and create and are motivated to achieve inspiring learning.

We look forward to celebrating all that we do in our school on Wednesday 7th June from 2pm - 4pm when we hold the official opening of our new garden, wetlands, labyrinth and natural play area for our students. The students will be involved in house spirit activities, along with a sausage sizzle, face painting, hair spray and show bags. It is set to be a wonderful afternoon for all!

Open Day

We have our Open Day coming up on Monday 22nd May from 9 am - 1pm. Please promote our wonderful school to any prospective parents and come along yourselves to do a tour and hear from our school leaders about their perspective of learning and being in our school. Our kids are such positive ambassadors in our school and are so capable of articulating their learning and speaking about all aspects of our wonderful school and I am so proud of our senior leaders.

Whole school theme

Our whole school faith and wellbeing theme this week is centred around learning through encounter and inquiry and ensuring we demonstrate resilience and responsibility for ourselves. At St Mary's, we teach daily resilience and the strategies to promote positive self-talk. Our school toolkit uses micro-moments as teachable moments to build our students' resilience strategies.

Resilient people have learned through adversities and setbacks, they seek out new and challenging experiences for growth (Reivich & Shatte, 2002). Resilient people do not see mistakes or failures as the endpoint, but as an opportunity for new learning.

Our school toolkit is based on current cognitive research that supports our students to develop positive thinking styles to grow and change.

Uniform

The school advisory council has approved some minor changes to our uniform. We will be introducing the following items in the coming months.

New soft shell jacket
New school beanie
Upgraded girls' school pants
Upgraded tracksuit pants

Next meeting we will be discussing the sports uniform.

Just a reminder all students must wear the school uniform. Please make sure your child has the correct socks and shoes on. We have funds to assist parents with uniforms including some vouchers from Bata and uniform vouchers, so please let me know if you are needing any support.

Book Fair

Just a reminder we have our Book Fair this week in the library. We invite families to enjoy being immersed in books and promoting reading in our school.

Monday 3:00pm - 3:45pm

Tuesday - Thursday 8:30am - 8:45am and 3:00pm - 3:45pm

Finally, we are going to be trialling a new process for Assembly and Family Fun Friday for this term. Our assemblies will now be held fortnightly and on the alternate week all classes from Prep to Year 6 will participate in Family Fun Fridays from 8.45 - 9.15am. More information will be sent out via Operoo.

This week, we invite all families to participate in the National Walk to School Day, leaving Hastings Coles car park at 8.10am. There will not be an assembly this week. Prep will still have their Family Fun Friday in their classroom after Walk to School Day.

Yours in Partnership,

Gab

Faith at St Mary's

with Miss Natalie Dullard