St Joseph's Primary School Trafalgar eNewsletter

Dear Families

We would like to congratulate our 2022 Gr 6 Graduation Class: Alex Jacobs, Anton Istraty, Ava McCutcheon, Ella O'Connor, Ethan Paul, Jacob Morrison, Kaitlyn Pedemont, Lillian Gramlick, Maxwell Haines, Robert Arbrecht, Rubi Myrteza, Steph O'Neill and Summer Oldham.

We would also like to acknowledge and farewell Mrs Katie Balfour. We wish our graduating class and Katie all the very best for their futures. May God continue to bless and guide you all.

A Blessing Prayer for our Gr 6s and Mrs Katie Balfour

May the Lord bless you in the years ahead

and inspire you to be positive in your attitude,

faithful in loving and generous in the service of others.

May you learn from the difficulties that you will face,

and so grow in wisdom and understanding and in compassion for others.

May you be patient and forgiving in your relationships.

May you live in such a way that the words 'thanks' and 'sorry' come readily to you.

May you retain a sense of wonder and awe,

and may you grow as the person God calls you to be. Amen.

2023 Class Structure

After careful consideration the teachers have set the class structure for 2023. There will be an F/1 class, a Gr 1/2, Gr 3, Gr 4/5 and a Gr 5/6. This Tuesday 13th December is the Statewide Orientation, this means that students will go to their class for 2023. At 9.15 to 11am the students will be in their class group for 2023 with their new class teacher. On Tuesday we will send home a note that tells you which class group your child is in and who their teacher is.

School Reports

School Reports can be accessed through PAM this coming Monday 12th December. Taryn will send out instructions on how to see the reports.

On Thursday you will receive your child's Assessment Sheet for the Interest Based Learning (IBL) program for term 3 & term 4. We are very proud of this program and we hope you will enjoy reading your child's self reflection on their learning.

May God continue to bless and guide us, and keep us safe in our travels over the school holidays.

Trish Mulqueen

christmas_mass_flyer_2022.pdf

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'We had the best day at school ever', exclaimed the students in reference to our Color Run on Friday. Thank you so much Mia and Brad Paul for organising this event for us.

Here are some photos....

We are in the church season of Advent. The Church calendar begins with the Advent season. This is a time of preparation, not for Christmas gifts, lunches and holidays, but for the great feast of God's revelation through the birth of Jesus Christ. Like the Jews waiting for the Messiah, we look forward to the second coming of Christ at the end of time. Although we do not know the hour nor the day, each Advent we renew our failth in this great promise.

This Advent we are suggesting an Advent Family Activity...

REVERSE ADVENT CALENDAR

Advent is a time for giving so why not do something lovely as a family and create a Reverse Advent Calendar for those in need. Each day throughout December, instead of receiving a gift or small sweet treat, we invite you and your family to DONATE a non-perishable item and put it into a box, basket or bag. At the end of Advent, you will have a hamper (in a box, basket or bags) to donate. We have teamed up with our Parish St Vincent de Paul group for this project and they will distribute the hampers to families in need. I really like this idea because it helps little ones to understand that Advent is about preparing for something great, and in this way we are preparing and giving to others, which is great. Please see below the Reverse Advent Calendar that we will use at school. Each class will be making their own Reverse Advent Calendar Hamper, and the staff will also make one to model this activity to the students. The ideas on our Reverse Advent Calendar are only suggestions, you can of course, do whatever works for your family (or use whatever you have in your pantry). We will have a number of boxes at school that you could use if you would like to drop into school and get one. You can of course, just use a box you may have at home. You may even want to decorate your box. At the end of Advent, you are welcome to drop your Reverse Advent Calendar Hamper in at school for St Vincent de Paul to distribute, or you could donate it to a charity of your choice.

Let's start getting ready for Christmas...

This week the students in Gr 3 and Gr 4 travelled to Allambee for a School Camp. They participated in many activities including billy carts, archery, ropes course, giant swing (and boy is it GIANT), vertical challenge and many more. Everyone had a wonderful time and the students (and teachers) enjoyed pushing themselves out of their comfort zone. Thank you so much to the teachers who supervised the camp and to Imelda and Roman who run a particularly great school camp. Arrigato! Here are some terrific photos for you to see the fun we had....

Please make sure all 2022 School Fees are paid before the end of the school year. Thank you for your help in this space. Remember we are a 'not for profit organisation' and we charge fees to make up the shortfall in government funding, and this enables us to run the excellent educational program that we do.

Please see below the 2023 School Fees approved by DOSCEL (Diocese of Sale Catholic Education Ltd).

FEE_STRUCTURE_2023.pdf

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Colour Fun Run & Colour Slime Spectacular

What a hit this was! The students had an absolute ball tackling the fantastic obstacles whilst getting covered in slime and coloured powder! A huge thank you to Mia Scanlon for her efforts on making this a success. Thank you to all the parents and volunteers on the day as well, your help was very much appreciated. We have successfully raised just over $4,000! All money raised will be going towards our new playground.

Christmas Lucky Number Draw

GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!!!!

This year the P&F have organised a fantastic Christmas Lucky Number Draw. Energy Australia have donated a new iPad for the prize. We are tremendously grateful to Energy Australia for their support. The tickets are $10 and the tickets will be available on CDFpay. There are only 100 tickets available, so get in quick if you would like a ticket. This event will be open on Friday 2nd December and will close on Tuesday 13th December. You can ask family and friends to purchase a number.

To make this work you would not be able to pick your favourite number, you will be allocated a number by the P&F team via a random number generator when the event closes on CDF Pay. We will post the number allocation on the green school page so people can see their number.

We will draw the lucky number at school on 14th December where all the numbers will be in a hat and we will draw one number out.

Thank you!

Finally, we would like to thank all the parents, carers, and teachers who have volunteered with all our P&F events this year. We have had so much fun and have reached some new milestones in raising funds for our school. We hope that next year we have the same support and involvement to ensure our children enjoy our activities and we can keep raising money towards our new playground.

We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and safe New Year from all the team at Parents and Friends Committee.

Each year we get our book supplies from Trafalgar Newsagency. The 2023 Booklists are available now on Trafalgar Newsagency website

https://www.booklists.com.au/trafalgarnews/

The ordering period is open now, up until 10/12/2022.

Collection dates- 27/01/2023 and 28/01/2023

2023

March

Thurs 16th Reconciliation Parent & Child Workshop

Warragul 4pm or 7pm

Fri 17th AFL clinic (all classes)

3. Interest Based Learning

Mon 20th St Joseph's Feast Day Prayer Service church 3pm

Tues 21st School Athletics Carnival

Wed 22nd Storytime 9.15am

School Advisory Committee 5.30pm

Fri 24th AFL clinic (all classes)

4. Interest Based Learning Program

3pm Lenten Prayer Service in church

Mon 27th Gr 6 Young Leaders Day Melbourne

Tues 28th & Wed 29th Life Ed Program Healthy Harold

Wed 29th Sacrament of Reconciliation 6pm church

Fri 31st 5. Interest Based Learning Program

April

Mon 3rd Easter Carnival 3.30 to 5pm at school

Wed 5th Last day of Term 1.

Easter Dramatization in church 2.30pm

School finishes 3.30pm

Thurs 6th Pupil Free day. Staff Professional Learning

Fri 7th GOOD FRIDAY

Mon 24th HOLIDAY

Tues 25th ANZAC DAY holiday

Wed 26th First Day of Term 2

May

Mon 22 to 26 Catholic Education Week

June

Tues 6th Andrew Chinn (music composer) visit & concert

Mon 12th King's Birthday Holiday

Wed 21st Last day of term 2 for students

Thurs 22& Fri 23 Staff PD days in Melbourne (student free days)