Holy Spirit Infants School Abermain eNewsletter

Principals News

Saints Anne and Joachim, thank you for your example of faith.

Thank you for your wonderful daughter, our spiritual mother Mary.

Thank you for the love of God and the faith you inspire in us.

Grandparents of Jesus, pray for us.

Amen.

Dear Parents and Carers,

On July 26 the Roman Catholic Church commemorates the parents of the Virgin Mary, Saints Joachim and Anne. The couple's faith and perseverance brought them through the sorrow of childlessness, to the joy of conceiving and raising the immaculate and sinless woman who would give birth to Christ.

The New Testament contains no specific information about the lives of the Virgin Mary's parents, but other documents outside of the Biblical canon do provide some details. Although these writings are not considered authoritative in the same manner as the Bible, they outline some of the Church's traditional beliefs about Joachim, Anne and their daughter.

Today we celebrate Grandparent's Day as the special feast day of St Joachim and St Anne is significant for they were Jesus' grandparents. Grandparents Day celebrates grandparents, great-grandparents, step-grandparents or any other adults in the older generation that play an important role in children’s lives. As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child, and grandparents are a big part of that. Whether it’s making meals in those early days after their adult children become new parents, picking the grandkids up from school, or creating special memories at the holidays, there are many ways that grandparents can make a difference in their children’s and grandchildren’s lives. Today, on this feast day, we want to express our love and appreciation to all those special older people in our students' lives. We thank you for joining us for a liturgy to honour you and hope you enjoyed your time in our classrooms observing and participating in all the various technologies your grandchildren use everyday! May God bless you!

Welcome back to a new term

Welcome to a new term of learning. Its been an exciting week with Year 2 and Year 1 heading off on their excursions. Please see later in the newsletter how much they enjoyed attending and learning in an outdoor environment. On both occasions I was a very proud principal to hear such positive feedback about our students' good manners; great bus behaviour and terrific participation. Well done Stage One! Kindergarten are planning their excursion to Oakvale Farm in a few weeks time.

Student Led Conferences in Week 4

As we have started the second semester of the year, its time for all our students to review their goals and reset new learning goals for the remainder of the year. This is a very important process and a valuable one for every child. As the children work through this process with their teachers in the next couple of weeks, we invite parents to again come to your child's Student Led Conference in the week of 19th-23rd August. Parents will be able to book your conference time and day via Compass from Tuesday next week. Your child and their teacher puts so much effort into preparing for the Student Led Conferences and there is an expectation that every parent will attend. If there are circumstances that make attending in that week difficult, please contact your child'ss teacher to reschedule. Thank you for your ongoing support!

Save the date - School Showcase Evening at Weston Civic Centre September 19th

This year our school invites you to come along to our 2024 Showcase. The performance is drama and music based and we are so fortunate to be working with Anna Kerrigan the Artistic Director of Aspire and Jessica Lopez the Musical Director of Aspire who are both exceptionally talented. Anna has been working with the students and each class has written their own original script! Jess is coming to work with our students on original lyrics as each class will have their own original song to share. We are yet to have a title for the showcase - that will come from our students as well. The time of the evening performance will be shared next newsletter. Lock the date in now!

Public Speaking

This term our students K-2 will be learning the skills of public speaking in their english lessons. Public Speaking develops life skills of assertiveness; persuasion and the ability to convey a point of view confidently. The children will practice drawing pictures/writing their speeches and will build their skills and confidence over many weeks. Public Speaking can cause some anxiety, and nervousness however, every child will participate and teachers will make adjustments for individual students just as they would any other subject. Each class and then each grade will conduct a competition to determine who will be the stage representatives in the school public speaking competition. The parents of those children will be notified and invited to come along to support on the day. The successful students from our school competition will then have the option of representing our school at the Lower Hunter Regional Public Speaking Competition at St Aloysius Chisholm on Thursday 19th September (during the day). Then, if successful, they can enter the Diocesan Public Speaking event at the CSO. So watch out parents, your children are about to learn even more "persuasive skills"!

School Maintenance

Finally our cola is fully bird proof and we can once again utilise the valuable space it offers us. There is no where that birds can roost now and our thanks to the CSO for their support to find a workable solution. The canteen has had new kickboards installed to ensure our canteen is complaint with Cessnock Council regulations. Over the break we have also undertaken maintenance to one of our water storage tanks; replaced the hooks on the play equipment; cemented the "garden" space where only weeds would go and we will be adding some artificial turf in coming weeks and our gutters which were cleaned in January have been cleaned once more. We also had several tree branches lopped and tidied. Parents and Carers are encouraged that if you see something that you believe may need to be looked at, to kindly notify our school office. Our plan is to upgrade the cubby house this term with the help of Rotary. Our thanks to Peter Cox for his work during the break. In the next holidays we are looking to upgrade the autex (carpet on the walls) in our Kinder classrooms and the carpet in 1W will be replaced.

Staffing Changes

At the end of term 2 we farewelled Mr Trevor Shakespeare. Trevor had been the cleaner and maintenance person here at Holy Spirit Infants for over nine years. We are very appreciative of the dedication Trevor demonstrated every day when cleaning our facilities with great care. We wish Trevor all the very best for the future. Our school is now cleaned by Ventia as are many of our Catholic Schools.

We welcome Mrs Natasha Clements to our teaching staff for the remainder of the year as our Aboriginal education teacher. Mrs Clements comes with a Speech Therapist background and is keen to support our Aboriginal students in both literacy and numeracy. She will reach out to families to introduce herself in the coming weeks ahead. Mrs Clements was able to accompany Year 2 students on their excursion to the Awabakal Education Centre at Dudley on Thursday.

Newsletter Survey

Do you read the newsletter? What parts are of interest to you? How could we improve it? What matters to you?

These are just some of the questions we will be seeking your response to in an upcoming quick survey that we will share with you via Compass. Whilst our staff work hard and everyone contributes to our newsletter at some stage across the terms, we are very keen to hear from you, the parents/carers of our beautiful students, just what it is you'd like to see in the newsletter. I really hope you can share this feedback with us so that if changes are needed, we can implement them. We know we cant make everyone happy...but we would like to know what you value in your school's newsletter. Stay tuned!

Wishing all our families a terrific fortnight as you get back into sporting, dancing, swimming commitments and family life gets busy.

Go gently and May all our grandparents be blessed!

Diane Murphy
Principal

Assistant Principal News

Positive Behaviour for Learning

Our next PBL focus is from the domain “I am safe”:

“I use my ABC.”

For the first two weeks of term 3, we will be focusing on the actions students should take when conflict or a problem arises. There are times in the classroom as well as on the playground where students may find themselves having a different opinion, feeling left out or treated unfairly by another student, this focus allows them to take action to solve this problem or conflict.

ABC is an acronym:

A – Avoid the situation

B- Be assertive

C – Call for help

We teach our students that when they are faced with a social problem, they should first AVOID THE SITUATION by ignoring, walking away or playing another game. Often this can help as it appears we aren’t bothered by another’s comments.

Sometimes it’s not possible to ignore another's comment or go and play another game. If this is not possible or the other student continues, they can BE ASSERTIVE and ask the other person to STOP and try to find a solution.

If the problem continues, it’s now time to CALL FOR HELP by telling an adult or teacher and asking for some help.

This process empowers our students to try to first solve the problem rather than immediately asking for the help or an adult but still acknowledges that young children may need some assistance in solving social problems.

Ask your child/ren if they can think of a time, they have used their ABC!

Rebecca Kearns – Assistant Principal

Sharing our Faith

Lord God almighty, bless our grandparents with long life, happiness, and health. May they remain constant in your love and be living signs of your presence to their children and grandchildren. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Social Justice

Thank you to our very generous community Holy Spirit Infants raised over $270. Everyone was toasty warm all day and it was a fantastic way to end a busy term.

Staff Faith Formation

Last Tuesday our staff engaged in Faith Formation to prepare for teaching the term 3 RE units. Through this formation experience they explored: The Mystery of God for Kindergarten teachers; The Body of Christ for Year 1 teachers and The Christian Community in Year 2. In the coming newsletters we will feature some highlighted work samples from each grade as the children respond though encounter.

Feast of St Mary Mackillop

Please join us to celebrate and learn more about St Mary Mackillop on Thursday 8^th August 2024. Year 1 will be leading the Liturgy at 9.30 am at St Francis Xavier Church.

Celebrating Grandparents Day

It was wonderful to have such a tremendous response to our Grandparents Day Liturgy! Today is the feast day of St Joachim and St Anne, the grandparents of Jesus. The church was bursting at the seams. Kindergarten led the liturgy by setting a scared space; reading the prayers of intercession and carrying the gospel in the gospel procession. The singing lifted the roof off the church and following the liturgy each grade sang a very special song to the grandparents.

This was followed by afternoon tea in the sunshine, visits to classrooms where children were able to use technology and share what learning looks like in a 2024 classroom. Kinder impressed us with their musical talent; Year 1 used Seesaw and ipads to take photos and ask questions of their grandparents and Year 2 engaged in Kahoot! It was lots of fun!

Thank you to all our grandparents for being part of our school community and know you are always welcome!

Compass

Just a reminder that all of our communication is through Compass. If you have difficulty logging in, or with the app in general, please contact the office and we will get it sorted for you.

School Fees

Fee statements are sent out monthly from the Diocese to all fee payers. Thank you to those families who have paid their fees for 2024. Please note that all excursions and incursions are included in your school fee account.

If paying by instalments, your payments need to be finalised by 30 November 2024. Our preferred method of payment is BPAY.

PLEASE DO NOT PAY BY COMPASS PAY AS HEFTY ADMINISTRATION COSTS ARE INCURRED FOR THE SCHOOL.

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.

If you have set up a periodic payment arrangement, 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 the principal as soon as possible please.

Change of Details

If you change your address, mobile number or email address, could you please let us know so we can update your details.

100 Days of Kinder Celebrations

We are celebrating Kindergarten's 100 days of Kindergarten on Monday 29th July. Miss Pryor and Miss Laczkowski are so excited to celebrate with you! We have lots of fun activities planned for the day. We would like to invite our Kindergarten students to dress up like they are 100 years old. Get creative with some glasses, grey hair and outfits! Enclosed shoes suitable for school will still need to be worn on this day. We look forward to seeing you all dressed up!

Year 1's Excursion to Tocal Homestead

In Year 1, our class went to Tocal Homestead yesterday, delving deep into history to compare it to the present day. The excursion involved a tour of the farm, where we saw the butcher and blacksmith. At the farm, we encountered pigs, sheep, and Harry the horse.

We got to dress up in olden day clothes, carried water using water carriers and buckets, learnt about kitchen and house manners, washed clothes and played olden day games. This experience broadened our understanding of the past and allowed us to appreciate the technology we have in the present day.

Mia Dow: “Seeing the big spotty pigs was my favourite part”

Riley Feeney: “I liked playing the games like hula hoops and tug of war.

Zoe Percival: “I liked the house tour and dressing up in olden day clothes”

Jack Dodd: “I liked the tug of war”

Alexandra McMahon: “Hearing the stories about Captain Thunderbolt”

Year 2’s Amazing and Adventurous Excursion to the Awabakal Education Centre

On Wednesday the 23rd of July 2024, Year 2 White and Year 2 Blue went on an excursion to the Awabakal Education Centre at Dudley. We caught a big, blue, heavy bus. It took us about 40 minutes to get there. We did lots of very interesting activities ;earning about the natural environment and Aboriginal culture.

Jack M- “I liked to meditate near the swamp.”

Matilda- “I liked to build shelters because it was a fun thing to do in a group.”

Charlotte- “I liked going on a bush walk because I could hear the beautiful birds.”

Myla- “I loved meditating in the beautiful sun.”

Brayton- “I liked the archaeological dig, we found bones and shells in the bush!”

Rory - “I liked the bush walk.”

Arlo- “I liked meditating in the swamp.”

Levi- “I liked lunch and recess because I was super hungry.”

Harper C- “I liked building stick houses because I like building teepees.”

Cooper- “I liked being outside.”

Vivian- “I liked when we were making the houses.”

Lexi- “I liked how we were digging for bones, fossils and coal”

Milly and Kade- “I liked how we got to build a shelter”

Amelia- “I thought the excursion was really fun!”

Bella S- “We learnt about what they use to do in the mines.”

Rycca- “The lake was very peaceful.”

It was a great day of discovery!

2 White, 2 Blue, Mrs. Kreutzer, Mr. Flynn, Mrs. Clements and Mrs. Shakespeare

On Monday we were treated to an incursion talk and demonstration given by Ranger Jesse from National Parks and Wildlife Services. Jesse is a proud Aboriginal man who enjoys sharing his culture with others. The children were able to touch various shaped boomerangs used for different purposes and every child had their handprint sprayed onto a long piece of material which we have proudly had on show. The children were fully engaged and we are appreciative of the visit from Ranger Jesse.

2025_Playgroup_Session_Poster_1_1_.pdf

Canteen News

Canteen will resume for Term 3 today. We will continue to operate on Monday and Friday during this term. Thank you to our volunteers who make this happen.

Please be sure to get your lunch orders in before the cut off time of 8:30 am on canteen days.

Awards

Term 3, Week 1 Awards

Dates for your Diary

Dates_for_your_Diary_2024_26th_July.pdf

Community News

Unless otherwise stated, the advertisements placed in this newsletter are placed by independent third parties who have no legal relationship with the Diocese. The activities or services of the advertisers are not supervised or controlled in any way by the Diocese. The Diocese is not in a position to endorse the advertisers, or the services provided and makes no representation about those matters. Accordingly, the Diocese cannot accept any responsibility for the advertisers or the activities or services that are the subject of these advertisements.

This weekend, Saturday 27 July, a Formal Clothes Swap is happening at Gillieston Heights Community Hub.

CSO_ASPIRE_PERFOMANCE_Disconnected.pdf

Clothes Swap

You may have already heard, but we wanted to share that across the weekend of the 17 – 18 August, a new winter festival will be held in Kurri Kurri’s upgraded town centre à the Kurri Curry & Arts Festival!

It’s a family friendly, alcohol-free, community event which will transform Col Brown Rotary Park and Barton Street into a bustling hub of culinary delights, artistic expression and community spirit!

As the name suggests, it will showcase delicious curry dishes crafted by local and regional culinary artists, as well as show-stopping street art and captivating live performances. There’ll be something for everyone to enjoy 😊

If this is something you’d like to share with students and their families, please see our calendar of events below. For more information, you can also head to: www.cessnock.nsw.gov.au/Things-to-do/Events/Kurri-Curry-Arts-Festival

PDF Details

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25th July 2024