A message from Emily

Dear parents and carers

Each year on April 25th, we commemorate Anzac Day, marking the anniversary of the Australian and New Zealand soldiers' landing at Gallipoli in 1915 during the Allies invasion. Anzac Day serves as a time for all Australians to honour the 1.5 million service men and women who served in conflicts, wars, and peacekeeping missions, and to remember the more than 103,000 Australians who gave their lives for our country. Tomorrow you may wish to set aside a moment to pray the below prayer of remembrance:

Lord God, 

Help us to remember the sacrifice of the first ANZACs, Australian and New Zealander, and the generations of men, women and children who have died in the cause of liberty and peace. 

Help us to remember those who still bear the physical and mental scars of their service. 

Help us to remember the widows, partners, parents, children and all those who waited in vain for the return of a loved one. 

Help us to remember the mateship, agony, courage and compassion of war service, and save us from tragedy and pain of war. 

Lord God, help us to remember. Amen.

REMINDER: No school for children tomorrow or Friday, 25th and 26th April.

This year we have been exploring ways to increase parent engagement. With the hall out of bounds for the foreseeable future, wet and cold weather will mean assembly and prayer gatherings will be hosted within the hubs. Families are invited to join their child's hub for these events and then gathering in the staffroom for a tea or coffee.

For all the families who visit and access the farm space, you may have noticed that there are some areas of the farm that have things placed or developed through our specialist lessons, Engaging with Place. The farm is first and foremost a learning space and the children have been building a 'Bug Hotel'. Sadly, yesterday when Erin and Eileen arrived at the farm the pots and twigs had been taken from the bug hotel and plaster used as chalk to write on the stage. It is really important if you are accessing this space that you are actively supervising your child/children/toddlers, so that the items within the farm are not used or accessed as this impacts the learning for all children, not to mention their disappointment when things are damaged or destroyed. We encourage families to enjoy this space and use it as an opportunity to educate young ones how we care and look after our environment, having fun smelling and looking at what's growing. Please don't pick or take any produce without speaking to Erin first as most of what the children are growing is going be used for cooking and learning in future lessons. This is a fabulous space we want the whole community to enjoy but most importantly, an engaging and evolving learning space.

Prep 2025 enrolment interviews are about to begin so if you have a child due to start school next year, please make sure you have an application form submitted online otherwise we won't know to send you the information. 

Please check out our enrolment page of our school website for more information - https://www.sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au/enrolments

Open days for secondary schools are starting. If you have a child in Year 4 or 5 now is the time to start looking at where you plan to send your child for secondary school. All children in Year 6 should already be enrolled, especially if you are looking at a local Catholic Secondary school. We are hearing the spots for Year 7 2025 are filled and now all future applications will be on a waiting list so please don't leave this process to the last minute. You are also not guaranteed a place just because your already have a child at the school if they have already made offers to other families. Please see the Noticeboard page for all the local open days coming up. 

On the Tuesday 30th April will are hosting a parent session on 3-6 Discovery and Community Projects. We invite families to come join and hear what this looks like for your child's learning as well as an opportunity to answer your questions. 

RSVP Link - https://forms.gle/rJzg7soYSxNfzxyd7

We will also offer other parent sessions across the year around other learning so families can feel connected to your child's experience at St John's. Our next planned parent session is a repeat of the Writing session that we ran last year. So if you didn't get a chance to attend or you are a new family to the school, we invite you to save the date - Wednesday 4th May. An link to rsvp will be sent out next week.

Change of Uniform Retailer: Recently our uniform supplier, RHUniforms, has be bought by Spartan. The final trading day for RHUniforms will be Friday the 26th of April. Spartan will commence operating from Monday April 29th.  The Niddrie store will be closed for trading on the 29th and 30th and reopen on Wednesday May 1st. Online ordering will be available from Monday 29th April. I met with Andrew, the General Manager of Spartan, this week to discuss what this means for the St John's community, and at this stage the will be no change other than the name of the company we ordering from. They have taken on all the current stock and will continue to provide items of similar or better quality at the same or less cost. Please see the School Uniforms Page for information from Spartan with all the new details for order.

Make sure you check out our Instagram or Facebook pages to see all the fantastic photos from the children's recent experiences on excursions that have already happened this term - Links: Instagram or Facebook. You don't need to have an account to see these pages with these links.

Wishing you a safe long weekend,

Emily