Head of Junior School 

It was an early morning start to the day on Tuesday when our Year 6s commenced their school trip to Canberra. Arriving at the airport at 4.30 am were some bleary-eyed but excited boys. The good news is that everyone had arrived by check-in time and were able to depart on time. The boys have been to the War Memorial, National Electoral Education Centre, Australian Institute of Sport, the National Gallery, and the Canberra Reptile Zoo, just to name a few. Our last newsletter of the year will have a full account of their adventures. Some of our Year 6s were unable to make the trip to Canberra. Instead, they have had an action-packed week here. Some of the activities they have been doing are BOUNCE trampolining, Zone 3, a tour of Parliament House as well as ‘zooming’ into the same session at the Museum of Australian Democracy with all the other Years 6s. Thank you, Miss Daun, for organising all of these activities for both groups.

Year 5s also headed off on their annual three-day camp to Port Arthur on Wednesday this week. Mr Beard and Miss Reardon have planned walks to Crescent Bay, where the boys can run up and down the sand dunes, a visit to Remarkable Cave, the Port Arthur Historic site, and more. We look forward to hearing more about their camping adventures on their return.

Orientation Morning: Kindergarten 2023

Today we have had the opportunity to welcome our newest students into St Virgil’s, our Kindergarten boys. These boys, their mums, dads, and many grandparents have already spent the last few weeks familiarising themselves with the Early Years learning environment in their pre-kinder sessions. We look forward to them officially becoming Virgilians next year.

Orientation Day: Monday November 28

Orientation Day at St Virgil’s College is next Monday. We are looking forward to welcoming and meeting new students and their parents on Monday morning. All boys will be spending the day becoming acquainted with their new teacher, classmates, and classroom for 2023. All boys are required to wear their full sports uniform including their house shirt. A sausage sizzle is provided for lunch. Our current Year 6 boys will be spending the day at the secondary campus for their Year 7 Orientation Day.

Music

Last Wednesday the Year 4s were treated to a concert by the Year 6 Band to introduce them to the instruments they will be learning next year. Edward Turnbull and Thomas Wilson did a fantastic job as MCs. There was a lot of audience participation including an air-guitar competition and inflatable dinosaur costumes. One member of each instrument section stood up to do a solo so that the Year 4s could hear what each instrument sounded like. Congratulations to our Year 6 Band for working hard to make that the concert was such a success.

This week the Year 4s were excited to get their hands on the instruments. It was delightful to watch them experience blowing into a brass instrument for the first time, or having fun with the trombone slide, or seeing their eyes light up when they decided what their favourite instrument was. A big thank you to all our music tutors and teachers for their time and expertise in providing our young men with such a special Music Programme. 

Caritas Just Leadership Day

Last week, Mr Tom Beard accompanied Charlie Booth, Jack Lemm, William Lowe, Jesse Mackey, Ben Pigden and Talyn Pringle to the annual Caritas Just Leadership Day at Holy Rosary with 75 other students from eight different schools. 

Caritas Australia runs Just Leadership Days to engage students with social justice issues, and to encourage them to be just leaders, in their schools and in their communities, for both local and global change. Throughout the day, the students eagerly participated in several activities run by Caritas, Vinnies and Catholic Mission while getting to know peers from other schools. The day finished with some brainstorming of ways that we, as a school, can better support these amazing organisations.

SRC Initiative: Fair Food Week

We had a lot of fun in ‘Fair Food Week’. The SRC were wonderful salesmen, accountants, milkshake makers and chefs. With expenses taken out, we have raised $1 589. Thank you to all the families who supported this initiative. These funds will go to the purchase of games for the classrooms and libraries for rainy days and inside play. If your son has an I.O.U, it would be appreciated if this money was sent along to the office by Friday December 2.

P&F Christmas Raffle

Raffle tickets are selling like hotcakes. Thank you to those who have sent along their raffle tickets with money enclosed. The barrel of tickets is filling up quickly. Additional tickets are available from the office. This will be drawn at the End of Year Assembly on Wednesday December 7. Thank you to Tara Barton and Elaine Marshall for coming in one evening last week to help dismantle raffle books and re-staple booklets to go home. 

We have had some fabulous prizes donated. A 12 month Anytime Fitness voucher, $500 voucher for Tracy Vagg Photography, toy hamper (valued at $400), $100 voucher for Syra Restaurant, three $100 Bunnings vouchers, two $50 Davey St Pharmacy vouchers, a TCL Sound Bar, $30 voucher from These Pretty Ones, $30 State Cinema Voucher, Junior Flyer Pack, voucher for a Signature Facial, (valued at $139) from Escape Beauty Lounge, gift pack from Elizabeth St Guardian Pharmacy, $50 gift voucher from Stella Arden, $50 voucher from Acai and a donation from Toyworld!

Tickets are $5.00 each, 3 for $10.00 or $30 for the book of 10 tickets. 

P&F Wrap Up

We held our final P&F meeting for the year this week. I would like to pass on my sincere gratitude to Tara Barton for leading the way as President of the P&F. In what was another COVID-19 affected year, we were still able to host our community-building events. The highlights for me were the Mother's Day and Father's Day Breakfasts. I would also like to say thank you to our Treasurer, Carissa Briggs who has been our Treasurer for the past seven years. Thank you, Carissa, for being such a wonderful and efficient Treasurer. Both Tara and Carissa are stepping down from their roles, as their sons move on to the Senior School next year. I would also like to thank Julie Pepperrell in her role as secretary for the past two years. Julie is also stepping down from her role. I have enjoyed the year of working with such a wonderful, hard-working, group of busy parents, often multi-tasking during meetings. We look forward to welcoming new parents onto the P&F next year. We are currently recruiting new members, so if you like to become involved, please let me know. 

Miss Lack’s Spelling Group

Miss Lack’s spelling group worked hard all year, finishing their programme a little earlier than other groups. As a reward, she taught them how to sew heat packs, using a sewing machine. The skill of pinning fabric was more of a struggle than anticipated. The boys did a fabulous job and reports are, there were even some naturals there. Perhaps we will be producing the next big designer!

Junior School Captain and Vice-Captain 2023

The much-anticipated announcement of the Junior School Captain and Vice-Captain will be made in Week 8. We know that many of our Year 5 boys and their parents are awaiting this announcement. Thank you for your understanding and patience. 

End Of Year Assembly

A reminder that our annual End of Year Assembly is Wednesday December 7 in the Nagle Centre at SMC between 9.30 am and 11.00 am for students in Kindergarten, Prep and Years 3 to 6.

Upcoming Calendar Events

Kindergarten

We are having a very busy last few weeks in Kindergarten. After wondering, exploring, and investigating the concepts of Connection to Country, we were able to engage in co-constructed learning about what Country means and how we can convey our connection to Country to our family and the wider community. We engaged in research and investigated how we are connected to nature and discovered the colours of the bush reflected our connection. During circle discussion we developed ideas about how we could use our understanding of colour and paint mixing techniques to create and artwork which would connect everyone to Country. Once everyone had visited the bush again, looking closely at its’ colours and collecting samples the students mixed their own bush colours using powder paints. The next sharing circle discussion led to how we could use our colour samples in an artwork. We again reflected on the art of Andy Goldsworthy, whose circle and spiral sculptures made in nature captured the boy’s imaginations.  Together we experimented with our colours then the students began making coloured circles and patterns.  As a group we finally decided we had it! Then Harvey said, “But it needs to be camouflaged”. Which started a whole new conversation.  We had to solve lots of problems to make the artwork and felt a sense of achievement when we were finally able display it in the Early Years reception.

Last week we visited Richmond, exploring, feeding the duck and most importantly investigating a real lolly shop. We wondered if it would be like the Kinder lolly shop.  In small groups we were able to see how the shop keeper measured our choice of lollies  and calculated their price.  It was very exciting.

We have also been preparing for our Nativity Performance which will be in St Joseph’s Church next week. This week Fr Justin welcomed us into St Joseph’s Church for a practice.  The boys lovely the windows, painting and sculptures, which 'all told a story of Jesus'.

This week we were also very excited to when the publication of our picture book arrived. We developed the story and designed the illustrations in response to our inquiry into the city and the connection we had built with it throughout our inquiry project.

Today we welcome our 2023 Kindergarten students and their families to St Virgil’s College for their orientation day.  We are looking forward to learning, wondering and investigating with them next year.