Dear Parents and Carers

Welcome to Week 4! The weeks continue to disappear quickly as the term unfolds.

Stage 3 Ballarat Excursion: Early this morning, I saw off our very excited Stage 3 students as they headed off on a fabulous 4 day/3 night adventure to Ballarat. We look forward to hearing about their new discoveries and learnings on their return on Friday. Thank you to Mrs Wilson, Mr Makeham and Ms Bartlett for accompanying the students and taking care of them.

2024 Kindergarten Transition Program: This Friday we welcome our 2024 Kindergarten children to St Patrick’s as they start to experience life at ‘big’ school. The program will run across the next 3 Fridays. This is always an exciting time for our newest students and helps make the transition to Kindergarten next year a little easier.

2024 Staffing: We have been delighted to receive the news that we will retain five teaching staff in 2024. Our grateful thanks go to Mr Tim Smith (CE PIL) and Mr Ross Fox (CE Director) who were very supportive of maintaining our small class sizes and listened to our concerns with class groupings. Class teachers and class structures for 2024 will be announced in a few weeks. There are lots of discussions and planning happening behind the scenes, to decide on the best way to group our students to support the learning needs of all our students.

VEGEMITE’S 100^th birthday: The well-known tasty Aussie spread called Vegemite, celebrated it’s 100^th birthday last Wednesday 25^th October. Most of us have tasted a vegemite sandwich or toast at some point in our lives and can sing or hum the little Vegemite jingle. While it may not be a taste everyone enjoys, Vegemite is an iconic part of our Australian history. Our students have entered a ‘Happy Little Vegemite’ drawing competition, currently being promoted by Steph Cooke MP (Member for Cootamundra), for Primary School students across the Cootamundra electorate.

CATALYST: Staff at St Patrick’s are continuing to implement Direct Instructional programs together with High Impact Teaching Strategies across our teaching and learning programs, as part of our commitment to the CECG CATALYST program. Over the next few weeks, CECG staff will visit our school to observe and coach staff, to enable them to continue to deliver the best learning opportunities for our students.

I will be away from Thursday to Monday this week on personal leave. Please direct any enquiries to Mrs Howe this week and Mrs Wilson on Monday, if needed.

Enjoy the week ahead. Back to cooler weather again!

Christine Baron

Principal

St Patrick, Pray for Us

November Mases

This week the Church celebrates two very significant days in the Liturgical Calendar. On Wednesday the Church celebrates All Saints Day, which is a Holy Day of Obligation. All Souls Day is celebrated on Thursday, when we remember all those souls who have gone before us. Mass will be celebrated in St Patrick’s Church at 9:30 am. Everyone is most welcome to attend with Year 3/4 leading us in the Mass.

First Holy Communion

We ask you to continue to pray for our children of the parish who will make their First Holy Communion on Saturday 11^th November at 6 pm. These children Rouge Calub, Leila Gaskin, Jack Fifield, Reuben Smart along with their families have been busy in their preparation to receive this wonderful Sacrament. They will enter a lifelong relationship with Jesus and with the Christian community that centres itself on the celebration of the Eucharist.

Socktober – Mission Month

Last Tuesday we celebrated Mission Day. Our day began with our Peer Support Groups making their sockball from recycled materials. We then celebrated a whole school Liturgy. Next each class created a coin line. There was great excitement as classes competed to make the longest line of coins. Kinder and Year 1 were this year’s winners. Congratulations on a huge effort.

For lunch the children were served a bowl of rice and a cup of water. This represented the main meal eaten by children from less developed countries around the world each day.

Our afternoon activities commenced with our sockball kickoff. There was great anticipation from each group as they watched Mr Makeham boot each ball to see which would travel the furthest, and also, which was the prettiest. Mr Makeham used all his might and power. The children in Group 10 cheered loudly as they were judged the winners of the ball which travelled the most metres. Group 4 had the best looking sockball.

Lots of fun activities followed, with the children enjoying games displaying their skills and prowess.

An amazing amount of $513.00 was raised to assist Catholic Mission and the people of Timor Leste. Well done St Patrick’s, you are truly a most generous and giving community.

St Patrick’s Parish Monster Christmas Raffle

The Parish is holding a monster Christmas raffle to help raise funds to assist in the upkeep of the Church. Tickets will go on sale next week and will be available from the Church and the Front Office. An amazing array of prizes have been donated to make up this super raffle. Keep your eyes out for more information and get ready to purchase your tickets.

Kate Howe

REC

Awesome - Curious - Terrific
Finally the day we have all been looking forward to, an exciting day, the best day of our lives. On the 18th of October Year 3/4 from St Patrick's Primary school had an exciting trip to Canberra. They visited the National Portrait Gallery, Geo Science and Parliament House. The National Portrait Gallery: The National Portrait Gallery was a very exciting place. We went on a tour through the gallery and wrote an acrostic poem, a drawing of an animal we love and a blind drawing and saw lots of famous people in the portraits.

Geo Science: Geo Science was amazing. It had crystals, gold, rocks and fossils. It really rocked. (Get it?!) We got to go to the education centre and make a mini earthquake that was tiny and got to see glow in the dark rocks and heaps more amazing things but unfortunately we had to leave. Bye Geo Science. Parliament House: Parliament house was awesome and fancy. After walking up a whole lot of stairs we got to see Micheal McCormack. Then we went to the Senate and we saw lots of important people. Then we went to the House of Representatives where we saw Anthony Albanese. After that our time was up so we had to go. Out of the whole day it was all amazing but we all agree I'm pretty sure that seeing the Prime Minister was the best experience of our life. The day had ended and we were all exhausted and ready to go home and sleep.
By Molly Lott

ACT-ion Adventure

The day starts off getting to the school at 7.05am to catch the bus to Canberra for the year three and four excursion. First we went to the amazing National Portrait Gallery and if you like art then you will love it there. We did a lot of fun drawing activities, including drawing things that make you happy, and blind drawing where you can't take the pencil off the paper. We saw a lot of famous people. Everybody that had a portrait had something to do with Australia.

Geoscience Australia is a place with rocks and minerals and some fossils. And there we went and saw a lot of rocks and minerals. There were so many things that we could see and even touch. There was even a moon rock that was 3.8 billion years old - that's older than the Earth! There were many things including a perfect cube of pyrite and RV poured the layer of little rocks and sand into a tube of water.

And to finish a fun packed excursion off we went to Parliament House. While we were waiting we saw Michael McCormack again! And we got to talk and get a picture with him. Then we went into the Red Room also known as the Senate and we learned a bit about it. We could also hear them talking in Question Time. Then we went to the House of Representatives and we saw a lot of cool things like the Mace and the books but the thing that stood out the most was Anthony Albanese. Year three/four saw the active Prime Minister and I don't know what's better than seeing the PM! And then we took another two hours on a bus and we were home. It was an amazing and exciting excursion!
By Lachlan Hargreaves

ThinkUKnow: Thank you to the parents who were able to join our online Internet Safety, parent program called ‘ThinkUKnow’. The program covered many aspects of ways to keep your child safe while using online portals and programs. The presentation was pro-technology and addressed topics including self-generated child abuse material, online grooming, image-based abuse, sexual extortion, and importantly encouraged help seeking behaviour.

Below is some feedback from parents on the ThinkUKnow program:

This was a very detailed presentation and from it I learnt to strengthen the security settings on my FB profile which I actioned immediately. I was shocked that the average age for a gamer was 36! I was thinking more along the lines of 15-17 year olds. It is always useful to be across the latest platforms and chat functions. It is a very frightening world out there, not only for us but for our children too, the more information we have to be able to protect them online the better - Claire

1. Hashtags are public regardless of the security settings you have on your social media accounts.
2. There are various agencies that can help you if your child has been exploited, noted above.
3. Kids under 16 taking and sending risky photos of themselves are considered to be in possession of child abuse material and it is a sex offence
4. That a lot of social media accounts allow the use to have a vault or secret location to save and store images and conversations and contacts - Lisa

Year 5 students are currently preparing their 2024 School Captain speeches. Year 5 will deliver these speeches to the rest of the school during Week 6 (Monday 13 November to Friday 17 November). Parents are welcome to come along and watch their child present their leadership speech. Voting for the 2024 School Captains will take place on Friday 17 November. We wish all our Year 5 students the very best!

Many of our Year 6 students are now involved in Transition programs to help prepare for Year 7. Parents are asked to organise transport for their child to attend these individual school transition programs. Parents are asked to please let Mrs Wilson know, if your child is attending a transition program and to mark attendance in COMPASS accordingly. Thank you for your support.

This week we will focus on improving our food choices for our body. This week we take a look at Le Snak. 

Step 1:

Step 2: Count the number of ingrediants on the back. The more ingrediants there are, the less likely it is to help our body.  If there are more than 6, its best to pop it back on the shelf and find a better choice.

What's in Le Snak? 30 ingredients.  This simple swap significantly reduces the number of ingredients, for a small change in price but you have plenty of cheese left over for other uses.   It doesn't always have to be a lot more expensive to eat better for your body. 

Here's a super simple recipe you can make. It's a little more expensive but you have loads of left
over ingredients for other uses.

This is a great introduction recipe for your kids to
make. Pair it with some plain water crackers.

This snack is better for your One Body for Life
and our One Planet Earth.

Access The Recipe From Your Free Gold Family
Membership - Go here:
https://quest.therootcause.com.au/recipes/hom
e-made-cheese-spread-recipe/   

Our Kindergarten Transition Program begins in Term 4: We look forward to welcoming our 2024 Kindergarten students to ‘big’ school! A great opportunity to experience school staff, students and activities.

Friday 3 November: 9.00-1.30pm

Friday 10 November: 9.00-1.30pm

Friday 17 November: 9.00-3.15pm

Any Kindergarten 2024 student can order recess and lunch via the School24 App under the sibling name if you have a student already at school otherwise please pack recess and lunch for your children. 

Congratulations to our Week 2 and Week 3 class awards

Week 2 - Friday 20th October 

Kindergarten : Sophia Fenton for sounding out and recognition of words when reading

Yr 1 : Ryan Robinson for fluent and expressive reading and excellent comprehension 

Yr 2 : Harrison Barton for being a positive role model to his peers and always showing kindness 

Yr 3 : Jimmy Robinson for his engagement and interest on the excursion 

Yr 4 : Lachlan Hargreaves for his engagement asking questions and being responsible during the excursion 

Yr 5 : Nick Quine for increased stamina and engagement in learning tasks (absent for photo) 

Yr 6 : Amy Cotterill for always giving 100% and sharing her Literacy responses 

Week 3 - Friday 27th October

Kindergarten : Angus Hufton for his accuracy with numbers

Yr 1 : Josie Lott for her improvement in her reading and for creative story writing 

Yr 2 : Sarah Gailey for showing kindness to her peers and being a positive role model in the classroom 

Yr 3 : Leila Gaskin for her consistent application to her learning 

Yr 4 : Molly Lott for writing detailed extended sentences and completing all class work with quality

Yr 5 : Andrew Cole for making better learning choices (absent for photo) 

Yr 6 : Abigail Bock for initiating thought provoking discussions and genuine interest in all peer learning 

Congratulations to our Week 2 and Week 3 WildCat Awards

RESPONSIBLE - Imogen Graham, Kingsley McDonnell, Archie Peterson, Remi Taylor, Sarah Gailey, Joey Gailey, Denver Blundell, Skye Somerville

RESPECTFUL - Lilly Ferguson, Lachlan Barton, Lane Johnson, Imogen Graham, Harrison Campbell, Chase Robinson, Archie McDonnell, Joey Gailey, Dylan Ryder, Billy Eccleston 

SAFE - Lilly Ferguson, Chase Robinson 

Stage 3 Ballarat Excursion: Tuesday 31 October to Friday 3 November (Week 4)

2024 Kindergarten Transition Program: Friday 3 November 9.00-1.30pm

Melbourne Cup Activities: Tuesday 7 November

2024 Kindergarten Transition Program: Friday 10 November 9.00-1.30pm

Week 5 Award Assembly: Friday 10 November 2.30pm

First Holy Communion: Saturday 11 November

Year 5 2024 School Captain Speeches: Monday 13 Nov to Friday 17 November (Week 6)

K-6 Swimming Program begins: Thursday 16 November

2024 Kindergarten Transition Program: Friday 3 November 9.00-3.15pm

2023 Award Day: Friday 8 December (Week 9)

Semester 2 Reports posted on COMPASS: Wednesday 6 December

Year 6 Graduation Mass: Friday 8 December 12pm

Parent/Teacher Meetings: Monday 11 and Tuesday 12 December

Term 4 Concludes: Friday 15 December

Wishing Ollie Crowe a birthday wish for his birthday on 22nd October.  We hope you had a wonderful day