CALENDAR

Detailed calendar can be viewed at www.spnhill.catholic.edu.au or on the FlexiBuzz app

MARCH Mo 25 School Closure for Staff

Professional Learning We 27 ‘By a Thread’ Excursion, Horsham 7pm—SAC meeting APRIL Fr 5 Last Day Term 1—dismissal at 2:15pm Mo 22 Easter Monday Public Holiday Tu 23 First Day Term 2 Th 25 ANZAC Day Public Holiday

Dear Parents and Members of St. Patrick’s School Community,

SUNDAY 17 MARCH—SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT, YEAR C—One of the prayers from our Mass asks God to ‘nourish us inwardly with your word.’ The transformation of our lives; the times we will ‘see God’ will occur if we are open to hearing God’s word in our lives, not just with our ears but also with our hearts. The disciples had first to climb the mountain with Jesus in order to encounter God’s presence. What mountains are we invited to climb? Our learning and growing towards better relationships, patience with ourselves and with others can become our Lenten observance. In this way we too will come to ‘see God’ in our daily lives. Today our community extends beyond those from our local town. We are urged to reach out to all people and today we remember especially the people of all developing countries who need us to walk with them to enable all in their countries to live with dignity and respect. These too are our sisters and brothers in Christ whom we remember especially this week.

ST. PATRICK’S DAY / NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION AGAINST BULLYING—On Friday students and staff were invited to dress in green in honour of our patron saint, Saint Patrick. Saint Patrick was the patron saint of Ireland. It is believed he was born in about 387 and died around 461 CE. He was enslaved as a very young man and he developed his love for God during this time. Upon escaping from his captors about the age of 20 he returned to his family and studied for the priesthood. He preached throughout Ireland for 40 years. Plot

As partners in Catholic Education and open to God’s presence, we pursue the fullness of life for all. St. Patrick’s School is a Child-safe school.

Our Vision

SCHOOL

Advisory

Council

Members

Parent Representatives Lisa Braybrook Helen Cannell (Chairperson) Michelle Dickinson Jamie Donnell Zanny McEldrew Melissa Polkinghorne Ex Officio Fr. Peter Hudson Kathryn Bendall Ann Munro Karen Rintoule

St. Patrick’s Church Times

24 March - LLA - 10.00 a.m.

St Patrick’s School

is a child safe school St. Patrick’s School

29 Leahy Street, PO Box 113, Nhill 3418

Phone 03 5391 1575

Mobile 0419 929 271

Fax 03 5391 1506

Email principal@spnhill.catholic.edu.au

Web www.spnhill.catholic.edu.au

Term Dates Class Times Administration Office Hours

Term 1 30 Jan* to 5 Apr 8:55am Class time

Term 2 23 Apr to 28 Jun 11am Recess Monday 9am-3:30pm

Term 3 15 Jul to 20 Sep 11:30am Class time Tuesday 9am

3:50pm Term 4 7 Oct to 20 Dec 1:00pm Lunch Wednesday

1:45pm Class time Thursday

3:15pm Dismissal Friday 9am1pm

Newsletter No. 2019/07 Thursday, 14 March 2019

This week’s winner is Sophie who

was caught using our school rules by being respectful.

Nominated by Sienna

JUNIOR CLASS We had a fantastic afternoon of activities on Friday for a combined St Patricks’ Day and National Day of Action against Bullying. Our junior students really enjoyed spending time with the seniors and participating in so many activities with them. A real highlight was the tangle of knots that the kids had to get themselves out of by working together, along with cutting up and eating chocolate with a knife and fork! It was great to participate and have fun outside for an afternoon!

This week we are learning about measurement. We have measured different objects using unifix blocks, comparing which is longer and shorter. Today we measured the length of our classroom using our foot span. Ask us to measure the hallway or our bedrooms walking heel to toe to compare lengths.

SENIOR CLASS The senior class have been creating narratives during writing. As a class we have really focused this week on setting the scene for our story by adding lots of details through the use of adjectives. Below is Jobe’s paragraph describing a photo of his choice.

This is a beautiful picture and I am going to describe it to you. Deep in the Pacific lies an amazing coral with all sorts of diverse plants and one enormous turtle gliding around in the water. The water is a beautiful light blue, the plants are stunning colours, swishing in the water are perfect purples, soft, touching yellows, graceful greens, organic oranges and some amazing browns it is truly incredible. The turtle finishes off this stunning photograph, placed in the centre of the action it really adds beauty to the scene. When you go under the water there are some amazing things that you can find!

RELIGOUS EDUATION Project Compassion is our entry into understanding the needs of others this Lent. 'Lives Change when we give 100%' is the 2019 reflective statement. The Senior Class listened to the video about Thandolwayo from Zimbabwe, and experienced what it was like to carry 5 litres of water, something the village children do before starting school. Now, through Caritas, the community has a supply of fresh water. The Junior Class has learnt songs, stories and prayers for this Season of Lent.

On Friday afternoon we also took the opportunity on to engage in activities with the theme of inclusiveness as our response to the National Day of Action Against Bullying. Students were involved in a number of different activities that required cooperation and collaboration. They untangled themselves from ‘human knots’, created short skits to highlight the negative impact of bullying and then used a number of clues to find and then recreate a slogan against bullying. The photos elsewhere in the newsletter show the fun that was involved, but the message here at St. Pat’s is clear: we DO NOT CONDONE BULLYING and we are working hard to make sure that every member of our school is RESPECTFUL and INCLUSIVE. Our jigsaw puzzle with the four slogans just about says it all.

ST PATRICK’S SCHOOL QUIZ NIGHT—St. Patrick’s School Advisory Council held our fifth annual Quiz night on Saturday. Numbers were down this year due to weddings and other occasions, however it didn’t stop the 50 of us who attended from having a great night! The quiz masters decided to have a variety of questions this year from History, Sport, Movies, Irish Trivia and Music! We also had some entertainment playing “Heads or Tails” which was won by Daniel Gladdis, Rodney Bound and Deb Fearnley and Celebrity Heads which had Lauren Warner taking home the prize! The best dressed prize went to Janine Grover - who I’m sure loves her toilet golf kit! A big thankyou to IGA, Home Hardware, Mulhallens and Zanny McEldrew Wine Club for donating our raffle prizes! We raised over $600 for the night and I hope everyone had as much fun as we did! See you all again next year!

LUNCH ORDERS TOMORROW—Lunch orders will be available tomorrow from the ‘new’ Oliver’s Café. An updated menu was sent home earlier this week. It is basically the same as the previous menu, except gluten free pies are not

Full colour version of newsletter is on our website spnhill.catholic.edu.au/newsletters-2018.html and FlexiBuzz

available. You can access the menu from our website www.spnhill.catholic.edu.au/documents.html and FlexiBuzz (Canteen button). A reminder to include correct money with your orders, and orders must be delivered to the office first thing Friday mornings.

UPCOMING EVENTS

SCHOOL CLOSURE DAY—Monday 25 March is a school closure day for St Patrick’s students as teachers attend a ‘Fundamentals of Writing’ workshop in Halls Gap. Students will need to attend school from Tuesday 26 March next week.

SCHOOL ADVISORY COUNCIL—Our next SAC meeting is scheduled for Wednesday 27 March. If you have any items of business for SAC then please contact myself at school or any SAC member. Names of current SAC members are on the first page of the newsletter.

ENHANCING CATHOLIC SCHOOL IDENTITY (ECSI) SURVEYS—There are only three weeks of term left for parents to complete the ECSI surveys. Our completion rate at this stage is not very high. The collated data will help inform our next school review which is scheduled for 2021. Preparation for this review will occur next year and involves reviewing all relevant data; including the results of this year’s ECSI survey. Therefore I invite all parents to complete these surveys before Friday 5 April. You will need to log onto the website at www.schoolidentity.net and enter this code Ghj654 and click on login. Then click on TO THE SURVEYS button. If it is the first time that you have gone to the website click on the NEW USER button and use the Entry Code K49w59. You are now logged in but you will need to keep a record of your unique user code and password in case you need to stop the survey and resume it at a later time. Please ring the school if you require assistance with this process.

UNIFORM – Parents are reminded that our uniform is an important part of our school culture and identity. It shows that all our students belong to the same school and that by wearing the same clothes they are equal with one another. We currently have a number of students who are not wearing black school shoes. We ask that you please organise for the purchase of appropriate school shoes for your child and if you are finding this difficult to achieve then please contact me at school to see if we can assist. If your child is out of uniform on a given day then we ask that you write a note in your child’s diary or send a message via Flexibuzz explaining the circumstances and the length of time before your child will again be in school uniform. We appreciate your support with this. You can read the school’s Uniform Policy on the website http://www.spnhill.catholic.edu.au/policy.html.

CROSSING – Recently a couple of students have been observed crossing Leahy Street to the east or west of the school. The safest and most convenient place for our students to cross Leahy Street is via the school crossing at the front of the school. We ask that you remind your children of the importance of using the crossing which is manned by a teacher at the end of each day.

REMINDERS—

FORMS DUE BACK AT SCHOOL—The green permission notes for the “By a Thread” excursion next Wednesday were due back at school today. If you haven't already done so please sign the note and return it to school as soon as possible.

STUDENT/FAMILY INFORMATION VERIFICATION—A reminder to return the Verification Reports which were sent home to families at the beginning of February so that the information we hold about your child/ren is up to date. Please remember to provide our school with any updated information as soon as your circumstances change—telephone the office or send the information using the Contact button in the FlexiBuzz app.

SCHOOL FEES/FEE PAYMENT ELECTION—Thank you to those families who have returned the green Fee Payment Election Forms and committed to regular payment of school fees. We ask that all green forms are returned to the office as soon as possible so that instalments can be started and fees paid in full by the end of the year. Please contact me as soon as possible if you wish to discuss other payment arrangements or if you wish to apply for additional assistance.

STOMP DANCE USB—Don’t forget that all dances learnt by our students when Stomp Dance Company was here a couple of weeks ago were recorded and are now available for parents to view via a USB which can be borrowed from the school. Please contact the office if you wish to see the videos of these amazing performances.

As always, please contact the school if you have any questions about what is happening at St. Patrick’s School.

Kathryn Bendall, Principal.

Pizza Lady Bug and Cat Noir

Donkeys, cats, dogs, ducks and chooks. BEST NEWS!! We had a baby donkey born very early Tuesday morning.—He is called Jet.

Best

ever

What can you share about

yourself that no-one or not

many people know?

Gymnastics What do you want

to do when you

grow up?

Go home to see the baby donkey!

If you could go anywhere

or do anything right now,

what would you do?

Who are they and what do you

enjoy doing with them?

Best thing about St. Patrick’s School

Mum, Dad and Heath.

Playing card games. A Vet

Playing outside with pets. Red

Art

Sydney

The Baby Sitters Club