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Newsletter No. 13 | Term 3 Week 1 | Friday 19th July 2024

Prayer

Dear God, I am grateful for Your presence in my life. You are always with me, providing comfort, strength, and guidance.
Thank You for the times You have been my companion in moments of loneliness and my source of peace in times of turmoil.
Help me to seek Your presence daily and to find joy in Your company. Thank You for being my ever-present help in times of need.
Amen.

Principal's Message

Leanne is currently on Long Service Leave. She will be returning on the 31st July.

A message from Mandy

Welcome everyone to Term 3!

We all enjoyed a wonderful St. Brendan’s Feast Day on the last day of term.

The children participated beautifully in all activities and finished off the term in a positive manner. I would like to thank the staff who all contributed to making the day such a lovely experience for the school. We are blessed to have such a dedicated and proactive team.

Miss Eden Robb, produced a stellar performance as Principal of the Day. She was calm and collected and showed great initiative throughout her reign! You were fantastic Eden!!!

Winter Sports begins this week and we hope the senior class enjoy the opportunity to mix with our local schools, and represent St. Brendan’s with pride and great sportsmanship.

Book Week is approaching fast and we will be having our book Parade on 23rd August. We warmly welcome you to come along and watch our annual event.

Next week, we welcome Samantha Monaghetti into the Prep/One room. Samantha is a third year student from Swinburne. We hope she has a wonderful time in our school.

Warm wishes,
Mandy

School Attendance and Absentee Notifications

A reminder that is a requirement that parents/carers notify the school if your child is absent. As a school, we are required to collate accurate data with respect to reasons for school absences. It also helps us to ensure that all children who have left home have arrived at school safely.
Thank you for your support with this matter.

Class Awards
Congratulations to Aden, Millicent, Jess and Greta for receiving the class awards last week.

Caring for our School Pets

Thank you to Kristy and the rest of the Robb family for taking such great care of Coco and Oreo. Due to the cold weather, Kristy has offered to extend their holiday. We appreciate your thoughtfulness Kristy.

Thanks also to Lynda, Jeff and family for looking after our two silkies Angel and Gem. We really appreciate your time and generosity.

New Housing for our Pets

Thank you Hayley for the time, effort and care you have put into finding the right home for Gem and Angel. We truly appreciate your effort and it looks amazing!

River Detectives

The Year 6 students will be heading out to Gellibrand to collect water samples as part of the River Detective program next Wednesday the 24th June. Alice and Hayley will take the children in the school bus and they will leave at 9.15am and return to school before lunch.

The children are asked to wear old clothes to school including a raincoat, beanie and rubber boots. They can have their sports uniform in their bag to change into for the rest of the day.

A permission note will be sent out via PAM.

Friday Fun Groups - Can you help?

For part of this Term, we are looking to introduce "Fun Friday" afternoon activity groups. We are unsure of the finer details until we know what activities we will be doing. We are calling out to see if any families or friends would like to join us for these groups, teaching children new skills along the way.
Ideas include: crocheting, knitting, sewing, woodwork, water-colour painting, drawing, writing workshops, yoga, embroidery, cooking, basketball or general sport sessions.

*You may have other ideas. If so, please let us know.

Toasties on Friday
Toasties will be happening again this term and we thank Mel for coordinating this for the children.

Catholic Culture

St Brendan's Coragulac & St Joseph's Pirron Yallock Mass Times

St Brendan’s Coragulac: 9.30am Sunday Lay-led / Mass 5pm 4th Sunday of each month
St Joseph’s Pirron Yallock: 10:30am Mass 1st Sunday of each month

Sacraments

The Catholic Church has 7 Sacraments. The Sacraments are a way for us to become closer to God. The first Sacrament you receive is Baptism.

What is Baptism?

Baptism is a sacrament of initiation, cleansing, strengthening, and welcoming. Baptism welcomes us into the community of Christian believers. It offers us a new life in which we become the adopted children of God, followers of Christ, and people filled with the Holy Spirit.

On Thursday 15th August Ayla, Aden and Issy will be welcomed into St Brendan’s Catholic community through Baptism. Everyone is welcome to come and celebrate this special occasion. Mass will celebrated by Fr Michael at St Brendan’s at 12.05pm.

Prep/1 Classroom

Welcome to Term 3! It has been lovely to see all of the kids back and hear about their holiday adventures. I'm confident we're going to have another great term of learning.

In week 2, we have a Student Teacher starting in the Prep/1 room. Her name is Sammi. Sammi is in her third year of studying teaching however this will be her first placement. We look forward to welcoming Sammi next week.

Word Work: The Foundation students are continuing their work with words containing four sounds eg. snap, pond, frog and list. The Grade 1’s are working on the sound /igh/ like in bright. There are five common spellings: <i> like in child, <ie> like in pie, <i-e> like in five, <igh> like in light and <y> like in sky.

Writing: This Term we are learning about procedural writing or “How To” texts. After listening to the story, “How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth,” students had a go at writing the steps involved.

Maths: We have started our unit on fractions in Maths. Students have learnt about ‘wholes’ and ‘parts.’ They have also discovered that a half is one of two equal parts. Students have been practising chopping shapes in half along a line of symmetry.

RE: Our theme is “kindness.” This week we watched a couple of very interesting videos all about kindness and have been reflecting on the different ways we might show or observe kindness in the world around us.

100 days of Prep: From the beginning of the year, we have been counting the number of days we have been at school. 100 days is quickly approaching - we will be celebrating this special occasion on Tuesday August 6th. I have sent out an email with more details about this day.

Allira Kluver
akluver@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

2/3/4 Classroom News

Welcome to Week 1 of Term 3!
We are welcoming a new student to our class in a few weeks, Finlay Pigdon. Finlay is in Year
3 and our class are excited to welcome him into our school.

Religious Education: Our new concept in R.E. is ‘Respect’. We watched a clip that demonstrated this in an interesting way. We had a lot of rich dialogue around this and
about showing respect to those who are less fortunate than ourselves.
Please feel free to watch it.
A short film on respect - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Vx71lR7qI&ab_channel=VideoDotNet

Literacy: Our phonics focus this week is ‘ee’ more spellings for Year 2’s (be, seed, cheat, monkey, shriek, taxi, every) and the ‘z’ sound as in amaze, buzzer, dessert, crazy, lose, and surprising for the Year 3 and 4’s. We are building the words and identifying the sounds represented in each of the words.

Numeracy: In Maths, we have completed our post-tests for Division and our pre-tests for Fractions. We will start our unit on Fractions next week.

Homework: Homework went out this week and we are revising a range of basic mathematical concepts. Revision of tables and nightly reading is encouraged to be worked on regularly.

The Star of the Week award goes to Declan Ellen. Congratulations on your excellent effort!

Kind regards,
Mandy

Mandy Sutherland
msutherland@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

4/5/6 Classroom News

Welcome to Week 1 of Term 3! I hope everyone enjoyed a much needed break. We are excited to be back at school doing lots of learning.

Homework: Spelling and Maths homework was sent home at the start of this week. This is due back to school on Friday 26th July. A reminder that students are also expected to be reading daily and filling this into their diary.

The Olympics: With the Olympics coming up quickly, we have been learning all about the ancient and modern olympics and this week we are competing in a Potato Olympics. Each student has created an olympian (potato) and will compete in a number of events including; Roll - the longest roll, Dive - the smallest splash, Spin - the longest spin and Gymnastics - balancing the longest. We are looking forward to these fun games and can’t wait to see who wins Gold, Silver and Bronze. Over the next couple of weeks we are also going to be doing an Information Report, where students will be researching a country and two athletes and representing this information on a poster.

Phonics: In Phonics we’ve been focusing on the sound /z/ and exploring the different spellings of this sound. Year 4 students have been working on words such as; amaze, dessert and realise and Year 5/6 students have been working on words such as; paparazzi, disease and eczema.

Maths: In Maths we have started our Division unit. Year 4 students have been using their times table knowledge to solve basic division sums, Year 5 students have been solving 3-digit by 1-digit division sums and writing the remainder as a fraction and Year 6 students have been solving 4-digit by 1-digit division sums and writing the remainder as a decimal.

Religion: In Religion we have begun our unit on Promise. We have started by reflecting on the importance of making and keeping promises and were engaged in a Bluey episode supporting this.

Integrated Curriculum: In Integrated Curriculum we have started our unit on Discovery. In this unit we are going to be learning about the scale of the solar system, light refraction, electrical circuits, states of matter and will finish our unit by learning how to code using the app, Scratch.

Tahlia

Tahlia Whytcross
twhytcross@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

WELLBEING AT ST BRENDAN'S

We have had 2 groups complete the Peaceful Kids Program in term 2 and will be commencing another group this term.

The Resilience Project…

THE LATEST FROM THE IMPERFECTS
We saw some big names and some great conversations over at the Imperfects Podcast this month.

Hear NRL Legend and current QLD Maroons Coach, Billy Slater, discuss his approach to leadership, and how playing to your strengths can actually be more beneficial than lingering on weaknesses. Or tune in to our resident Psychologist Dr Em as she unpacks why understanding, implementing and protecting heathy boundaries is good for all of us…even if it does feel a little awkward.

What is Mindfulness?

“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgementally.” Jon Kabat-Zinn

Mindfulness is practiced by focusing on the body and breath and can also be practiced in everyday activities, like walking or eating. By focusing on the present experience of our body and breath, we teach ourselves to become aware of thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations, acknowledge them, and stay with them as they arise and pass.

Further Reading at…. Anyone for Mindfulness?

Smiling Minds App

Another application that is popular for children as young as seven is the Smiling Mind app. This app is available through the Apple app store as well as the Google Play store. It is free to download and use.

This app offers similar features to the Mindfulness for Children app, including a body scan activity. There are dozens of modules with hundreds of sessions available, each customized for wellbeing, education, and the workplace (for adults).

Still Quiet Place

If you’d like to use a video to help your kids learn how to practice mindfulness, the “Mindfulness Exercises for Kids: Still Quiet Place Video” is a great resource. This animated video can help students learn how to go to a “still quiet place.” Still Quiet Place