Week 8- A Busy Week Indeed!

I suspect we will have many tired students (and staff) this weekend, having enjoyed a pretty full week, which included:

Camp Rumbug for our Grade 5 and 6 students- 3 days of fun and laughter, with a few hours sleep thrown in!
Mel and her fantastic yoga incursions for our juniors
Our prep classes visiting our Church to find out about our faith community- thank you Fr Alan!
Annual Deloitte's Financial audit, passed with flying colours! Thank you Joanne and Sally Todd (our BM) for your very professional and thorough preparation for audit
St Joseph's Feast Day liturgy and art/ craft activities; thank you to our Year 4s and Miss Dawes for the beautiful liturgy and to Jordan Janssen (parishioner) for composing a beautiful hymn about St Joseph, which he sang at assembly and at the liturgy. Thank you also to Mrs Cummings for coming in to work with our students on St Joseph art/ craft activities.
Many school tours for prospective families- I can't keep up!
Principal and Deputy Principal network for myself and Martin
Confirmation Parent Information night; thank you to Amanda Jackson, Fr Alan, Therese, our parish associate and our Year 6 parents for a very successful session
Lawn Bowls Beachside competition; we came second and we have a team heading to the next level- future state champions maybe? Thanks Ms Huebner and our wonderful bowling teams in Grade 5 and 6.
Well done to our Year 1s for a fantastic Friday morning assembly and thank you to Mrs Davies and Mrs Murphy for your care and preparation with this
HOT LUNCHES!!

Of course, this is just a small snapshot of the week and doesn't include the outstanding work in the classrooms. On Tuesday, I was very proud to take Mr Tony Levett, our regional consultant from MACs (Melbourne Archdiocese of Catholic Schools) on a tour and meet and greet with our prep students. He was 'blown away' by the literacy skills already evident in our youngest of students. After less than 40 days in prep, they are learning their sounds, are progressing beautifully with their reading and are impressing us all with their writing. Well done to our preps, their teachers and of course, our wonderfully supportive parents, for the super efforts in just a few weeks. Below are some photographs of our proud preps and their writing:

I'm SO proud!!!

Camp Rumbug

The Preps were sad to see their buddies head away for a few days and I don't think I have ever know prep students to miss the Year 6s so much! (See photos).

Needless to say, the preps were thrilled to hear the 5s and 6s had a FANTASTIC time at Camp Rumbug!

There may not have been a whole lot of sleep, but the students loved the opportunity to finally be away on camp together, enjoying the selection of activities on offer.

Thank you once again to our staff for making this possible. How blessed they were with the weather this week!

I think Gaby N summed it up beautifully:

Lawn Bowls Beachside Division

Congratulations to all of our lawn bowlers, who have been training for the Beachside bowls competition, which happened yesterday. On the back of a three day camp, our 5 and 6 bowlers did an outstanding job and came second on the day and will be heading off to Regionals next week. Go the Joeys! Thanks to Ms Huebner for her expert training!

Assembly and St Joseph's Feast Day

Our Friday began with a lovely assembly from our very capable Year 1 students, who shared their classwork with us: how to develop a growth mindset, Maths and data analysis and the learnings from this term's 'Community' topic. It was a delight!

We ended the day with our Year 4s presenting their St Joseph's Feast Day Liturgy and our students certainly learnt a great deal about the person of St Joseph, our patron saint.

Thank you, Ms Daws and Year 4. A beautiful way to end our week:

St Mary's College Open Day

I have received lots of enquiries from the parents of current students regarding the new Catholic Co-Ed School, St Mary's College. It is such a relief to finally have this co-ed option for our students and a reminder to all families that St Joseph's is an official feeder school for St Mary's; this means our students take priority in the enrolment process.

From St Mary's:

We welcome your school community to our Open Day on Sunday 21 March, 12pm to 3pm.

St Mary’s College is inner-city Melbourne’s only co-educational Catholic College. We are located in two adjacent campuses at:

Edmund Rice Campus - 11 Westbury St, St Kilda East and Presentation Campus - 187 Dandenong Rd, Windsor.

We would love to see your school community on the day. There has been a huge interest in our first Open Day, pre-registrations are recommended https://www.stmaryscollege.vic.edu.au/enrolments/open-day

Farewell

Next week we farewell David (Y2) and his family as they head back to Brisbane. It has been lovely having the Stevens family in our community and we wish David, Michael and Elena all the best as they make the journey interstate. Good Luck and keep in touch!

Reminders and Save the Date

Next week we have school photographs. Please see the note later in this newsletter.
Tenille and Karen are currently organising the much-loved Mother's Day Lunch. The date is Friday 7th May. Venue and time tbc.
Watch this space for information about our new tennis program, to begin in Term 2. Also look out for information regarding our school-based Mother's Day celebrations.
I look forward to meeting with our Education Advisory Board in person on Tuesday. Our first face to face meeting in over a year!
Please watch out for the loose railings in the front fence. We are currently investigating a more robust repair to the fence. ASAP hopefully!

Wishing you all a wonderful sunny weekend ahead and happy St Joseph's Day. Here is Jordan singing for our students this morning:

See you all next week for week 9!

Michelle

St Mary's CollegeOpen Day

ST MARY'S COLLEGE OPEN DAY

SUNDAY 21ST MARCH

St Mary's College

Open Day