Newsletter Term 2, Week 6 2023

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to Term 2, Week 6!

Congratulations to our Cross Country runners who attended Fagan Park last week!

Our Stage 3 Soccer gala day will be held on Friday 23^rd June at Adcock Park.  Mr Banks is organising our teams for the gala day.  Good luck to our teams, play fairly and have fun!

Myself, Mrs Fletcher and Miss Foskett attended the Lions Club dinner last week.  I would like to thank them for their generous donation to our school.  This donation may assist with our garden project.

Our oval drainage rectification is larger than what was originally thought.  Hopefully when it dries out more it will be safe to play on, however in the meantime children are able to use the newly turfed surface just below our oval.  We have also managed to have works done to rectify some safety issues on our climbing playground therefore this should be open early next week ready for children to access this play space.  Fingers crossed, this will be replaced with new playground equipment in the future with new softfall installed also.

Year 6 Canberra excursion was fantastic.  I have let the children know they received many positive comments from various venues saying they were very well behaved and had lovely manners – great testament to themselves, school and their families.

Thank you for sending your children to school in their full winter school uniform which is mandatory starting this week.  I would like to thank our mums who work so hard in our pre-loved uniform shop, the time you spend organising orders and our pre-loved uniform shop is much appreciated.

All families are free to order any items from the pre-loved uniform shop (clothing pool) via email only until further notice. The email you need to use is clothingpool.sblm@gmail.com – we have limited stock and sizes available therefore if you have any uniforms at home you are not using, your donations are very welcome.  Please drop any donations to our office.

We have a new school counsellor!  I would like to thank Natalie Ross for supporting our school community in her role as our school counsellor and wish her well in her future endeavours.  Natalie will be organising a thorough handover to our new school counsellor, Ms Tabea Keske. Ms Keske will be onsite Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.  I would like to welcome Ms Keske to our SBLM school community.  Here is a short introduction written by Tabea:

Our school gates are there to keep us safe!  We are now locking our gates after hours which will impact our OOSH and our Early Learning Centre families.  If you need access after hours please call either your OOSH mobile or the Early Learning Centre for access.  If I am still onsite and I can see any cars waiting at the entry gate, I will open the gate however I am not always in the vicinity of the gate.  If needing access during school hours, please either press the button on the monitor (located on the side of the entry gate) or call our office number.  When exiting please drive toward the middle of the gate slowly and the gate will open.  If this does not function correctly, please call the office and we will assist you.

New enrolments – we are welcoming many new families this term (Year 1-6) and more to come!  I would like to encourage our class parents to engage with the new families and touch base.  As staff, we engage and welcome however it’s always nice to build relationships with the parent community also.  Please ask your classroom teacher for names of new families.

If you have children starting Kindergarten in 2024 please be sure to return your enrolment forms asap as we are sending out our letters of offer to our new Kindergarten enrolments in the coming weeks!  Our enrolments will stay open for some time, however, it would be nice for you to put in your diaries the dates of our Storytime sessions, our Orientation and transition to school dates.

We are currently introducing our MiniLit sessions among selected children in Years 1,2 and 3.  Minilit provides early intervention focused on reading, sounds, phonemic awareness in small groups.  We are identifying children’s strengths and areas of need in their learning.  If your child has been invited to attend these small groups a letter would have been sent home.  When the first groups of Minilit are complete, there may be further opportunities for more children to be involved in the sessions to come.

Congratulations to our debating team from Stage 3.  Our first debate was held this week with little time to prepare after Canberra!  Our team line was “If you want to be healthy and safe the internet is not the right place” – they had very strong arguments however just missed out on the win by only a few points!!!  Well done team!  Our next debate will be in Week 9, 22^nd June at Toukley!

Mr Murphy organised a local chess competition yesterday involving many other local schools in the area.  The concentration and perseverance I saw on the faces of our chess team was very impressive.  Well done to our chess team.  I don’t have any results just yet!

I look forward to playing cricket with you all tomorrow (Saturday, 3 June) at 3pm at St Brendan’s with Father Baby, Father Tomy and maybe even Father Joshy! 

Just a reminder we have a public holiday on Monday, 12^th June (Week 8)!

We also have a PJ day in Week 8, Thursday 15^th June and Year 2 have their excursion on Friday, 16^th June! See more in our updates section about Wellbeing Week in week 8!

Congratulations to all the children celebrating their First Eucharist on either 17^th & 18^th June.

Your child’s Semester One report will be available on Compass on Friday 23^rd June (Week 9) after school and you are invited to book in for an interview with your child’s teacher in Week 10!

God bless,

Charlene Reid

Principal