Dear Families

It feels as though the King’s Birthday weekend was only a few days ago and now, we finish the end of Term Two tomorrow at 1pm. We congratulate our Prep families for their first semester at school and celebrate the amazing learning they have done, in particular their Design Expo.

Today also marks the Winter solstice and our last week of Term has been testament to this, with being the coldest of the year thus far. Thank you to those families who braved the cold to meet for our Parent Teacher Interviews and to the staff for giving feedback on semester one and and sharing learning goals for semester two.

Our Expos have been very popular with families providing a welcome audience for our creative designs. We look forward to continuing this celebration of learning.

This evening we pray for our Year 4 students making their Sacrament of First Eucharist. Together with their families they have been well prepared and we can’t wait to share this evening with them. Thank you to Father Jerome for his guidance, wisdom and support of our community. He is very proud of our students and is looking forward to presiding this evening. We also thank Jes Earle, our Education in Faith Leader for her leadership and organisation of this Sacrament. Jes also met with our Year 6 Social Justice Leaders and Sr Barbara and Margaret from the St Kilda St Vincent de Paul Conference to discuss social justice initiatives for Terms 3 and 4. Our Leaders have many ideas that they will lead us in.

I have had the pleasure of sharing learning with our Year One students. They have been learning about narrative texts through reading fiction stories, fables and fairy tales. They explored what a character is and the different traits they portray. Then created their very own imaginary 3 Dimensional character and setting display.

This week we have welcomed our work experience students Tom and Patricia, from St Mary's College Year 10. They have worked in several year levels throughout the week and we have loved having them. We wish them all the best with their studies and know that should they choose teaching they would be a wonderful addition to our sector.

Introducing Lotty, our famous Rhythmic Gymnast

My name is Charlotta (everyone calls me Lotty), I'm in year 5 and I do Rhythmic Gymnastics. Last year I competed at the English, Welsh and British Championships and got medals. I will try my very best this year at the Australian Championship and hopefully get more medals.

Not long ago I did the State trials which was a qualification for the Australian Championships. On Sunday 2nd of April I did another trial. In both trials I got enough scores for my routines and so that means I'm officially going to the Gymnastics Australian Championship! At the Nationals I will represent Victoria and I will compete against all of Australia, not just Victoria.

After this Lotty, competed in International Competitions in Singapore and the Philippines. A few weeks ago she took out silver at the Australian Championship team event. We congratulate Lotty and her family, and are very proud of her achievements.

You may have seen some metal clips outside the Top Gate. These are a trial to ‘park our pooches’ whilst we visit school or join in for Stay, Chat & Play on a Wednesday. Please give them a go and let us know if we need more, they are in the right spots or any other ideas you can add. Thank you to our parent Heinz for the inspiration!

Last Thursday we had our annual DISCO and so much fun was had. We thank the P & F and everyone involved. We also thank the P & F for funding two new St Mary’s Primary School tents for sporting and school events and four teardrop banners representing our houses; Yellow, Blue, Red and Green. We look forward to using them at our many events.

We warmly welcome Miss Paula and Miss Anastasia Romios to Year 3 and know that our students are going to have a highly engaging semester. We thank Miss Grace Accetta for semester one and wish her all the best. We also thank Paula for teaching Year 5 whilst Mr and Mrs Mason have travelled to many places on their Long Service Leave. We welcome Angela back in Term 3 and can’t wait to hear her laughter around the place and hear about her travels.

Finally we are happy to announce that our refurbishment from 2021-2022 is now complete and that the water damage works have also been completed. We are now full steam ahead to start landscaping the shade sail area and other areas around the school. Please keep Saturday 18th November free for our fete and our upcoming Trivia Night on Saturday 29th July, to help fund our landscaping plans.

We all have much to be proud of this semester. We wish everyone a well deserved holiday and hope everyone stays warm, including our hard working staff. We look forward to seeing you all refreshed and ready to go on Monday 10th July, for what promises to be an exciting Term 3. Thank you for your support, positive attitude and enthusiasm for all that we do at our beautiful SMPS community.

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

Mrs Cathy Ferrari

St Mary's Production

Ms Jessica Earle