29 August 2019

Newsletter Articles

Dates to Remember

Principal’s Messages

OUTSTANDING DEBATERS

What a fantastic effort from our Debating team this week. Our team won both their debates …. They were victorious against St Peter’s, Stockton, and St Columban’s, Mayfield. They will meet St Michael’s, Nelson Bay, in the Regional Finals in the near future.

ST PIUS X SPORTS DAY

The children attending St Pius X in 2020 have been invited to participate in the St Pius X Sports day as part of their transition process. The children will be teaming up with the children from St Patrick’s to participate in the day on Thursday next week It is a good opportunity for these children to make connections with others that will be in their classes next year. Please see the separate note and permission for these children.

Summer Uniform

The official date for changing into the summer uniform is from the beginning of Term 4. As usual, we ask that parents use their discretion if they feel the need to change earlier due to the weather. However, I would not expect to see any summer uniforms until at least Week 9.

Mountains of Mulch

Mrs Johnson and her helpers have been doing a lot of work in the gardens. Our reflection river is almost complete and many other areas are being tidied up. You will have noticed two large piles of mulch near the hall. These need to be spread onto the cleared areas. I invite all parents and friends to come along on Saturday morning next week (7 September) and help spread the mulch into the gardens. Of course, if you have some spare time before then, feel free to come up and get a head start. THANK YOU.

Special Needs Mass

The Diocese is celebrating the special gift we have in the children that come to our schools. St Dominic’, Mayfield, are hosting the annual Special Needs Mass. Please note the change of date. It will be held at the Sacred Heart Cathedral on SUNDAY 8 SEPTEMBER at 2:30PM. All are welcome.

Pet Safety

Owning pets can be a lot of fun, and pets can provide us with company, stress relief and unconditional love. Pet ownership also teaches children responsibility, and helps them develop their social and nurturing skills.

Did you know that the average lifespan of a small dog is 11 years, and 12 years for a cat? Responsible pet ownership involves choosing the right pet for your lifestyle, complying with the law, caring for your pet’s health, and ensuring your pet doesn’t cause problems in the community.

We must also remember that they are not little humans and that they do not think or naturally behave like us. It is important for children to recognise the warning signs given by dogs, the correct way to approach a dog and what to do if approached by an aggressive dog to help prevent the instance of dog-related accidents and injury.

Our infant classes will be visited by the Office of Local Government on Thursday 12 September to present a program which focuses on:

• Teaching Children how to be safe around dogs
• Responsible Pet Ownership.

RE News

Father’s Breakfast and Liturgy

All the dads, granddads, uncles and other significant men in your children’s lives are invited to share a breakfast on Friday morning from 7am. We will be serving bacon and egg rolls, juice and tea/coffee.

I hope you have all polished up on your paper plane constructions. On Friday we will be able to find the person who can design the plane that can fly the longest distance. Followed Our Father’s Day Liturgy, will be led by Year 5 at 9am. Following the Liturgy we will hold our plane flying competition.

P & F News

PIE DRIVE

Thank you to all those who purchased pies and sweets through the Thompson’s pie drive and thank you to the parents that helped with packing the orders. Our combined effort raised over $500. Happy pie eating everyone!

CANTEEN NEWS’

We are always looking for volunteers to help out with the activities of the P&F. If you might be available for the canteen in Term 4, please access the following:

Term 3

Pastoral Care News

Our little gardeners have been busy planting vegetable and fruit seeds in punnets. We are now waiting patiently for them to grow so they can be planted in our larger garden beds.

We will be making hanging garden craft next week.

Does anyone have any hanging plants they would be willing to donate? Our craft group would love to have some to put in their craft items.

Without rain nothing grows. Learn to embrace the storms in your life.

Take Care and God Bless.

Class News

Year 1

Year 1 are excited to be leading the mission fundraiser this week, selling chips to the rest of the school at lunch. Your support has been greatly appreciated!

Everyone has enjoyed listening to the modern version of Cinderella! We have been comparing the traditional version and the modern version. Year 1 have listened closely to both stories, listening for key elements that make up a fairy tale. These include: a ‘good’ character, a ‘bad’ character, magic and royalty.

Last week we used equal arm balances to sort objects according the lightest mass to the heaviest. We also used equal arm balances to find the mass of objects using informal units. This week we have been sharing collections into a given number of groups.

In Religion, we have been learning about the difference between personal prayer and communal prayer. Personal prayer allows us to have quiet time to talk to God alone in our choice of space. Communal prayer is joined in with a group and we do this daily at school.

In Health, we have been learning about our bodies. Year 1 had fun putting together their own skeletons. We have learnt about how our bodies are composed of muscles and bones and also what their important roles are in our body.

In Creative Arts, Year 1 have enjoyed drawing their own self-portrait using Picasso techniques. This week we have outlined our drawings with black texta and have begun using oil pastel to make them stand out with beautiful bright colours. In Drama, everyone has enjoyed expressing themselves showing different emotions.

Year 2

This week Year 2 complete their unit of work on Liturgy in Religion. We will begin our next unit of work called Christian Scriptures where we will investigate significant events and places of the Early Church. I am very impressed with the amount of knowledge the children have gained about the churches liturgical seasons. Please ask your child about what they have learnt over the past few weeks.

Year 2 would like to thank Year 5 and Miss Gallagher for taking the time to help them create straw powered rockets. Year 2 really enjoyed creating these rockets.

In Mathematics this week we are learning how to measure items using centimetres. So if you see a Year 2 student measuring things around the school you will know why. Last week we worked on multiplication and division even learning what to do what when we have remainders in division.

Mission Fund Raiser: On Thursday 12th September Year 2 will sell Zooper Doopers. I would ask each Year 2 student to please bring in a bag of Zooper Doopers to sell by Monday 9th September so we could freeze them ready for Thursday. Thank you in advance.

Monday Liturgy: On Monday 9th September we would like to invite everyone to join us for Monday Liturgy our theme is Thank you.

Year 3/4

During the last two weeks in Religion, we have been learning more about ‘Liturgy’. Liturgy is “the work of the people” and there are many people who help make a liturgy happen. Some liturgical roles are greeter, usher, lector, gift bearer, altar server, sacristan, cantor and musician. In Maths, our focus has been multiplication and division. Yr 4 has learnt some new strategies to multiply 2-digit numbers by 1-digit. Some of these strategies have been doubling (to multiply by 2,4 and 8), the area model and factorising. Yr 4 has also practiced using halving to divide numbers by 2, 4 and 8. Yr 3 has played some multiplication games to consolidate their knowledge of multiplication tables. Two of the games played were the trading game (using base 10 and dice) and salute (using packs of cards). In English, we continue to enjoy reading the book “FernGully” by Diana Young. We have completed some story maps and summaries of chapters and are now working on writing a script for Chapter 19, The Ceremony. In Geography, we have been researching Australia’s natural resources and Japan’s natural resources and making comparisons between the two countries. To date, we have done research on pearls, diamonds, opals, coal and uranium, all of which are located naturally in Australia.

Year 5

In Maths, we have moved onto chance and probability. We have looked at the possible outcomes for various chance experiments, and represented these using both fractions and decimals. We have been using tree diagrams to solve probability questions and from this, we have been able to recognise that the sum of probabilities for any chance experiment is always equal to 1.

In Geography, we have continued with our geographical investigation relating to the influences of the environment on people and places around the world. We have begun our individual research of up to 10 houses from diverse environments around the world. We are including photographs and answering a variety of questions on each of the homes.

In Science, we have been analysing and classifying animals using branching and algorithms. We are catagorising various animals according to their different characteristics, and using branching to display the classifications.

We are looking forward to our liturgy this Friday, focussing on our fathers and other significant males in our lives, for Father’s Day on Sunday.

Year 6

In Religion, we completed our unit on ‘Liturgy’ and have shown a good understanding of the purpose and structure of Liturgy in our Catholic community. Our next unit is called ‘Christian Scriptures’ and we will look at stories from the Scriptures and analyse their features.

Over the last few weeks, we have all had a go at debating in class and, on Tuesday, our selected team of debaters represented OLV in the Regional Debating at St Columban's, Mayfield. Mrs McCallum accompanied Eloise, Jodie, Chloe and Oscar who had a win in their first debate. The team proceeded to the second round of the competition and was, once again, victorious. They will now meet the team from St Michael’s, Nelsons Bay, in the Final on a date to be decided. We are very proud of our team and congratulate them on their success. In English, we are currently enjoying our novel, "Dragonkeeper" by Carole Wilkinson. It is fascinating to learn about aspects of Ancient China!

In Maths, we have been working on multiplication and division and completing activities involving the Order of Operations. We had fun practising our skills to solve order of operations algorithms by playing an online game, “Who Wants to be a Hundredaire?” It was challenging but it was a lot of fun!

In Geography we have been learning about latitude and longitude and we identified the coordinates of some of the capital cities of Australia and Asia. We are continuing our research on various Asian countries.

In Science we are researching the various types of earthquakes and the instruments and scales used to measure them. Did you know there are four types of earthquakes?

Gymnastics was a lot of fun again this week.

Library News

Class Awards

OOSH

One issue that may arise is the need for Casual Care on occasions. If you think that you might need this, it will be necessary to be enrolled in the service prior to making a booking. Remember that you need to contact St Nicholas OOSH to book your child in, as we can’t do it through the school.

Their contact details are, Christine 0447 288 040 or tracey.sweetman@stnicholasoosh.org.au

If you intend to use the OOSH either before or after school, you might like to download the application forms, fill them out and send them into school to pass on for processing.

Check out this link for more information on St Nicholas OOSH.