From the Principal 

At St Mary's we hold the care, safety and wellbeing of children and young people as a central and fundamental responsibility of our school. 

We acknowledge the Yaluk-ut Weelam clan of the Boonwurrung – as the Traditional Owners of Port Phillip, the land where St Mary’s is situated, and we pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their Elders, both past, present and future.

A very warm 2022 welcome, to everyone at St Mary’s Primary School, especially those families who are new to our community. The heartbeat of a school is always the children and it was with great joy and excitement that we saw the return of our beautiful students on Monday.  I loved hearing about their holidays, chatting at the gates and seeing their beaming smiles.  We thank you for your patience and understanding in our current times. We can’t wait to open up the school building and invite you all in to see, hear and experience learning in our new spaces. Please see the photos below. Already we have had to postpone some events and we look forward to being able to gather as our St Mary’s family and have numerous events and celebrations later this Term. 

As always our hard working staff have worked hard in the last few weeks preparing for the students. Moving into new spaces and creating learning spaces and administration areas takes time and we thank everyone for supporting us. This year we hope to create a few teams to work together with our community to further develop areas of the school and create outdoor learning spaces for the children. In particular I would like to thank Anthony Speranza, Erica Nastopoulos and our Leadership Team for their energy, enthusiasm and productivity, to ensure that we were ready to start the year smoothly and that we could all ‘find things’ after the big move. 

I would like to acknowledge how brave each of you are as we navigate these unknown times. We are thrilled to have the children at school and are working hard to ensure that we have our COVID safety plans in action. Anthony has done a great deal of work on this and will elaborate further in the newsletter. Miss Jacquie shared a little story with me that sums up our current times perfectly. 

Miss Jacquie, Miss Jacquie I passed the test. 

That's great, what test is that? asked Miss Jacquie

You know Miss Jacquie, The Up Your Nose Test! 

Our Prep students are really settled and looking very comfortable in their new environment. I walked into my office this morning to find a little green sheep having a sleep. I quietly got on with my work. Later that morning I had the privilege of being visited by Prep J looking for their sleeping green sheep.  

We wish everyone a very Happy Chinese New Year starting on the 1st February, the year of the tiger. We thank Andrew in Year 3C for sharing this with our community. 

In 3C we are learning about the Lunar New Year. My family celebrates Lunar New Year by having dinner with our friends.  I taught the class about the special red envelopes we get with money inside them. I also told the class the story about the race and order of the animals and why we celebrate a different animal each year.  This year is the Year of the Tiger.  Here is a photo of me with the tigers that we created. 

Year 6’s celebrated the occasion with all the students receiving a red envelope, a coin and a fortune cookie from Miss Paula.

Our School calendar

We are developing a family google calendar that will be shared with the community and updated in real time for our school events. Our next newsletter will have more information about this. 

2022 St Mary’s Staff 

Assembly 

Assembly for the next few weeks will be outside on the basketball court (Main Campus) on Fridays from 10:30-10:50am. Entry will be via the Top Gate, toddlers and babies are most welcome.  Please feel free to join us outside tomorrow.

One of my favourite parts of the week is working with our Year 6 leaders as we prepare for our weekly assembly. Tomorrow Ivy and Jake will MC our assembly.  We know we are in good hands tomorrow and look forward to their leadership. 

Building photos 

Our Condolences to the  Manic family

Our prayers and thoughts are with Vesna, Aca, Milica and Marko, who sadly lost Vesna’s father Miloljub (Mile for short) over the holiday break. He was the best father and grandfather and is very missed by them all. Sadly the family have not seen him for a few years and had to attend the funeral via phone and speak to their family via skype. I know they are being well looked after by the community. We also send our love to Marko who had an accident in the park before Christmas and broke his leg. 2B are really missing him and look forward to his return.  

Take care and wishing God's blessings and peace upon each of you. 

Mrs Cathy Ferrari