Holy Spirit Infants School Abermain eNewsletter

Principal News

Hail Mary Full of Grace

The Lord is with thee,

Blessed art thou amongst women and Blessed is the Fruit of Thy Womb Jesus.

Holy Mary Mother of God, Pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

15th August Feast of the Assumption of Mary

Dear Families,

On Monday our staff gathered for a Professional Development Day here at the school. We were to attend a Faith Formation Day with many other schools across the Diocese but this was cancelled due to the risk of covid 19. We gathered in prayer and then our curriculum focus was on assessment data - how we collect data about student learning; how we analyse writing samples as data to see trends in what teachers must focus on; how we track success and growth in students' writing; how we challenge students to "bump up" their writing to achieve greater success. Staff then participated in moderating work samples across the grades and identified trends in what students are doing well and what teachers need to help them improve. We also held Case Management Meetings whereby teachers and Learning Support Staff gather in a small stage groups to discuss the results of a particular students' work and through shared wisdom, develop a plan around ways to further support this student to achieve greater outcomes. It was a very successful and collaborative day. We hope families were able to enjoy a long weekend.

BOOK WEEK CELEBRATIONS

We all enjoyed a wonderful Book Character Parade on Tuesday and our school was buzzing with excitement! The students enjoyed being dressed up for the day and delighted to see their terrific teachers and our wonderful support staff transformed into colourful book characters. Thank you to every family for the effort and planning that went into the dress up day as the children will always remember the fun they had on these special days. It was great to see so many parents and grandparents able to join us, with many staying to enjoy a snack with the children or to watch them play! We also enjoyed having our friends from Aspect School and watching our adorable preschoolers parade was very cute! My thanks to Miss Covita for her efforts with the Book Fair and the parade! Our Book Fair has raised enough funds to enable us to buy so many more books for the library which the children will soon be able to enjoy reading at home. Your generosity is amazing. Thank you for supporting our beautiful school. I was very fortunate to meet Moira on Tuesday. She was a former student of our school back when it was a K-6 school, quite some time ago now. Moira had some very fond memories of our school and she marvelled at how it had changed. As the Principal I felt so fortunate to be chatting with Moira and I felt proud of all that has been achieved in the Catholic education of generations of children in our local area at Holy Spirit Infants. We look excitedly to the future and for more great things to come!

NATIONAL CHILD PROTECTION WEEK 4th-10th SEPTEMBER

Our school will be participating in a competition to decorate our school fence for National Child Protection Week 4th-10th September 2022. The theme is "Every child, in every community, needs a fair go!". We would like to invite our parents to be a part of this initiative and together as a community we can share our creative ideas! The winner of the competition will receive a Mural painted at their school by Mitch Revs...a fabulous prize that would look terrific on our hall don't you think!

Please get in touch by emailing or contacting the school by Thursday 25th August and we can have a meeting to see what amazing ideas we can come up with.

Let's do this together - Students, Parents and Staff! Child Protection is paramount in our school and every school in our diocese.

FEE CLEARANCE FOR STUDENTS MOVING ON TO PRIMARY SCHOOL 2023

Fee Clearance (for Year 3) - As students in Year 2 complete their schooling here at Holy Spirit Infants, they will require a Fee Clearance prior to being accepted for enrolment into Holy Spirit Primary at Kurri. This is bringing both schools in line with the Diocesan Policy that requires students who transition to another Catholic School eg Year 2 to Year 3; Yr 6 to Yr 7; Yr 10 to Yr 11 to have a fee clearance. We appreciate all that families do to honour their fee responsibilities. We are sending fee clearance reminders to families of Year 2 students who may need a reminder to ensure their fees are paid in full by 30th November 2022. If you are on a direct debit system of payments, we are appreciative of your ongoing commitment and ask that you please check the amount remaining and adjust your payments as needed. As always, families who are having difficulty with meeting their fee responsibilities are encouraged to make an appointment with Diane as soon as possible please.

STAFFING UPDATE

We warmly welcome Mrs Rebecca Knox to our teaching team on 2B. Mrs Knox is appointed until the end of the year and is an experienced teacher who has been teaching casual days at our school. She will replace Mrs Kearns as she has higher duties two days each week. Mrs Knox was dressed as B1 in our Staff BookWeek Parade. Miss Jacqui Cook will continue as the classroom teacxher for 2W class as Mrs Collingwood is not yet back to fulltime work. We also have Mrs Beukes working in 1B and KB replacing Mrs Porter-Kay who is our Pedagogical mentor each Wednesday and Miss L who is our REC each Friday.

TELL THEM FROM ME SURVEY

In the coming weeks, we will once again be asking parents and staff to complete the Tell Them From Me survey. This survey provides the school with valuable information that is used for ongoing school improvement. The survey will open on the 5th September 2022 and gives parents and teachers a voice in sharing important feedback with your school. A special Compass alert will be sent next week outlining the feedback from the past 12 months and the ways as a school we have worked to either continue best practice or make an improvement. We value your feedback.

CHILDREN'S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS AT SCHOOL

A gentle reminder to all families that at Holy Spirit Infants school we do not allow children to bring in cupcakes or birthday cakes or lollies to celebrate their birthdays. There are many reasons for this including the issues of food intolerances and allergies; a parents right to know what their child has eaten each day at school and the fact that sugary food items are not something we would encourage children to be eating. Each child at school does have a birthday and we also do no want parents feeling the pressure to supply cakes etc for a whole class. So please do not give in to your child if they request a cake or lollies to give to their friends as we will not be distributing these items at school.

We would certainly prefer it if celebrations were to occur outside of school time.

If you must send something, we accept water iceblocks in a tube to share. Thank you for your understanding.

Assistant Principal News

Positive Behaviour for Learning

This week we begin our new Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) focus:

“I wear our uniform with pride.”

“I wear our uniform with pride” means that students are proud to wear the Holy Spirit Infants Abermain uniform; they feel a sense of belonging when they wear our uniform and want to look neat and tidy. This means wearing:

the correct shirt, tie and pants or shirt and dress with navy stockings,
black school shoes or white joggers (Wednesdays only),
school hat, and
long hair tied back neatly with hair accessories in blue or white only.

Students will get a GOTCHA when a teacher notices them taking pride when wearing the school uniform.

Rebecca Kearns, Assistant Principal.

Sharing Our Faith

Mary Mackillop Liturgy

On Monday 8th August, we held our Liturgy for Saint Mary of the Cross Mackillop’s Feast Day. It was a beautiful celebration where the students learnt about and reflected on the life of Mary Mackillop. Thank you to our school leaders for leading us in this liturgy and for the amazing singing from all students.

Kindergarten Religion Learning

This Term, Kindergarten have been learning about God the Holy Spirit. They have learnt that we have one God in three parts - the Holy Trinity - that being God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. They have learnt about God the Father and God the Son earlier in the year.
During their unit on the Holy Spirit this Term, they have explored what the Holy Spirit is and how it helps us in our day to day lives. The understand that the Holy Spirit is a gift from God that helps us in many ways. For example, giving us the urge to help people who are hurt, as well as the many Fruits of the Spirit that we focus on here at Holy Spirit. They are now starting to explore how we receive the Holy Spirit during the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation.

Here is a bit about what Kinder Blue have been doing in Religion about the Holy Spirit:

Vineyards Region Mass Times

Saturday

9:00am – Holy Spirit, Kurri Kurri

6:00pm – St Joseph’s, Cessnock

Sunday

8:30am – Holy Spirit, Kurri Kurri

10:30am – St Joseph’s, Cessnock

4:30pm – St Francis Xavier’s, Abermain

Fathers Day Celebrations 2nd September

Dear Families, thank you to those who responded to our survey about the most suitable way to celebrate all our dads. It was an overwhelming vote in favour of a Father's Day Breakfast and Liturgy in the morning.

Our Father's Day Breakfast and Liturgy will be celebrated on Friday 2nd September. Dads/father figures will eat for free. The breakfast includes a sausage, onions and sauce on a bun, a muffin and a popper drink or tea/coffee. Other family members who will be attending the breakfast will need to pay $4 for their breakfast. Orders for the breakfast will be via QKR app and are open from today. Orders close at midnight on Tuesday August 30, 2022.

We do need volunteers to assist us with our Father's Day celebrations. We need gifts wrapped with ribbon next week; we will need helpers with BBQ and serving on the day and if you would like to have a special part in the liturgy, please let us know. Contact Dot or Bonney in the office.

Father's Day gift vouchers $5 are also still available for purchase via QKR and these too close at midnight on Tuesday August 30th.

Book Parade

Dear Parents,

It was so wonderful after the past few years of lockdown to see the students dress up and participate in our amazing book parade. Thank you for supporting them and for taking the time to come in and contribute to the day. I know this is something your child will remember for a long time.

Thank you for supporting our Scholastic Book Fair. Our school receives a commission from the sale of the books, and we look forward to filling the shelves with a lot of new literature.

We would also love to give a big shoutout to all the generous donations made by:

The Doyle Family

The Brooks Family

The Pedersen Family

Mrs Porter-Kay

The Chapple Family

Mrs Bolam

The Sampson Family

The Hawkins Family

The Ostermann Family

The Davey Family

The Cowling Family

All the students will reap the benefits of such generosity.

Regards,

Evelyn Covita

Teacher Librarian

Kinder White Book Week

Audrey: I liked that we got to dress up as charactersLevi: I liked buying the booksArlo: I liked when we got to dress up.Harper Rudd: I liked that we got to get books

Kinder White

What an exciting, engaging and fun filled day. Students from 1W came dressed in an assortment of costumes; super heroes, teachers, army men, dinosaurs and witches. 1W happily shared with costume ideas with the class during a speaking activity, then recorded their reasons for choosing their costume on a writing template. After lunch, 1W excitedly paraded in front of the school and visiting parents. Well done Year 1, it was so much fun sharing your creativity for Book Week.

Mrs Porter-Kay

1 White

2 White

Book Week Visit from Cessnock City Library

On Thursday 18th August, Meagan and Sandy from Cessnock City Libraries came to talk to the students about the shortlisted books for this years Book Week. They brought to life some of these books through acting and some of our students were a part of this too. It was a great morning where these stories came to life!

Showcase Update/Costumes

Preparations for our school showcase "JOY" are well underway. Montana Doyle our dance teacher who works with the Diocesan Production of Aspire has been putting the students through their dance moves and this week we began to learn the finale. Remember to keep Tuesday evening 20th September in your diary as we will be performing at Kurri Parish Hall.

Costumes will be kept simple. We ask each child to wear a white tshirt and black tights/jeans/long pants please and black or white joggers (if possible otherwise usual joggers).

Each class will then be asked to accessorise with a specific focus colour: A scarf, a tie, sunglasses, a belt, gloves, ribbons, a hat, a cummerbund, a tutu, a sash....but only in the colour of that class. At various shops there is often a section of the shop dedicated to accessories of a specific colour and the items are generally not expensive. We would like to ask that each child has their costume with accessories ready by September 16th please.

Colours

Kinder B - Red

Kinder W- Yellow

Year 1 B - Green

Year 1 W - Purple

Year 2 B - Orange

Year 2 W - Blue

Staff - Pink

What to wear

Shoes - Runners (Black or White)

Bottoms - Black - (Tights/leggings, jeans, or short)

Top - Plain White T-Shirt

Hair

Girls - High slick ponytail with a hair elastic to match their hair colour.

Boys - Neat/styled

No Make Up

Coloured Accessories

You can purchase these from any local cheap shop, Kmart or Big W.

Head bands, bows, ribbon, hair clip, coloured tutu, hat, sunglasses, necklaces and bracelets.

Kindergarten News

100 Days of Kindergarten

Last week our Kindergarten students celebrated 100 days of Kindergarten. It was a great day where the students dressed up as if they were 100 years old (there were some amazing outfits!), they explored the number 100 and ways that we can represent it and reflected on what they have learnt in the first 100 days of school. To finish off the day, they had a grade party outside on our lovely new grandstand area.

Kindergarten Excursion

Next week Kindergarten will be attending their excursion to Oakvale Wildlife Park in Salt Ash. The students are very excited for the day, as are our teachers!

Reminder to Kinder families that the bus will be leaving at 9am sharp and that students will need to wear their sports uniform (so for Tuesday and also the normal sports day on Wednesday next week). As well as bring their fruit, lunch and a refillable water bottle for the day.

We look forward to updating you in our next newsletter on how our day went!

Health

Dental Care

Science Week

On Monday the 29th of August we will be celebrating National Science Week at Holy Spirit. On the day, each class will be participating in three experiments that relate to this year's Science Week theme "Glass: More than meets the Eye". Come to school with your thinking caps on and get ready for some science fun!

Playgroup for Kinder 2023

Our Playgroups are about to take place where we will have an informal gathering for all our preschool friends coming to Holy Spirit Kinder in 2023. These Playgroups are an opportunity to get to know each other. We look forward to seeing you then.

Canteen News

On the last day of the term, Friday 23rd September, we will be having a hot dog meal deal day. All orders are to be done through the QKR app. No other lunch items will be available to order on this day. Be sure to get your order in on time for the Meal Deal.

There will be no canteen on Friday 2nd September due to the Father's Day celebrations.

Awards - Congratulations to....

Award Winners

St Nicholas OOSH Abermain

Community News

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18th August 2022