Dear Parents and Carers,

It was delightful to welcome all our students back last Friday to begin Term 1. There were lots of smiles and happy faces to greet staff and everyone settled into classrooms quickly and with great eagerness, ready to begin a new school term. We were also delighted to welcome 13 new Kindergarten students to join our St Patrick’s school family. A special welcome is extended to our new families-Barton, Campbell-Jaeger, Melksham, O’Grady, Smith, and Taylor families.  You are a very welcome addition to our school community. We also welcome our new staff members, Mrs Anne Saunderson, Mrs Cal Reardon and Ms Nadia Ho (School Counsellor) to our school staff. It certainly has been a great start to our new school year.

Work on our new school administration area has also started. Tom Gaskin Constructions have been working hard over the school holiday period to get the ‘noisiest’ part of the work over and done with prior to the school year beginning. The works should take around 6 months to complete so until then the main entrance way to the school will remain as the lower gate on Homer Street. Thank you to everyone for adhering to safety notices and entering via our new school entrance way.

During the construction time our school library has moved down to the Learning Hub and Mrs Hughes is busy setting up the new space. Our school canteen is also inaccessible for the time being, so we will bring you updated canteen news asap.

We are so excited that restrictions have eased and that we can once again welcome our families onto our school grounds. Please use the following guideline:

1. ALL parents are welcome to do ‘drop in and drop out’ ie drop your child to the classroom and then leave (no longer than 5 mins). You do not need to register your visit for this purpose.
2. If you require a longer visit eg admin, teacher meeting, volunteer helper etc, please sign in using our NSW Services app and use the sanitizer provided please.
3. At all times please apply social distancing and follow hygiene regulations

We have two exciting events happening this week, to welcome in the new year and term. Our 2021 School Swimming Carnival this Thursday followed by our St Patrick’s Opening School Mass on Friday. Parents are welcome to attend both events by sitting together in family groups and observing distancing and hygiene regulations. At our school Mass our School Captains, Year 6 leaders and SRC representatives will be inducted as school leaders as well as a special welcome for our Kindergarten students.

We look forward to a wonderful term ahead and wish everyone a great week ahead.

Mrs Christine Baron

Welcome back to a new school year. I hope you were able to relax and enjoy a lovely Christmas and holiday time with your family. I hope that 2021 will be a positive year for all our school community.

Opening School Mass

On Friday we will celebrate our Opening School Mass at 12 noon. At this Mass we welcome our new Kindergarten students and our new Staff members – Mrs Saunderson and Mrs Cal Reardon. We will present our Captain’s badges, introduce our Year Six leaders and present badges to the newly elected SRC Representatives for 2021.

Due to COVID restrictions the children will need to remain in their class group and not sit with their families. Families are welcome at the Mass but must remain socially distanced with each other.

Altar Serving

Thank you to our Altar Servers and their families for continuing their duties throughout the holidays. I know sometimes it can be challenging when people are away on vacation to uphold their commitments, but we are very grateful that Father was supported at weekend Mass. Thank you to those who just stepped in when there was a need. Your efforts do not go unnoticed.

We are in the process of organising a training day for all our Altar Servers. We will announce this date as soon as possible. If there is anyone who is not on the roster but would like to become an Altar Server, please let me know. A new roster will be sent home in the next few weeks.

Thank you to the parents who have offered their assistance with the running of our swimming carnival this THURSDAY 4^th February.

If you have indicated that you can help during the day (time keeping), can you be at the pool at 9:10am please.

We have many volunteers so we will be able to share the workload during the day.

The start time for the carnival will be approximately 9:20-9:30am.

The 25m races will be run after the main program is completed, before the relay races (approximately around 12pm).

Ribbons and Western Region notes will be handed out at the school assembly on Friday 5^th.

Please note the Western Region Swimming Carnival is in West Wyalong this year on Monday 15^th February.

Welcome to the 2021 school year. We look forward to working with our school community on another exciting year ahead. The first Community Council meeting will be held on Tuesday 9 February at 6.15pm. As such, we would love to hear from any parents who are keen to join the Council and work with our team.

Currently, two Council positions are open, so if you would like to apply please email our Principal Christine Baron christine.baron@cg.catholic.edu.au with an expression of interest. If you would like any further details about the Community Council and the work we do, then please don't hesitate to contact Renee Lindley on 0416 285 262.

The Community Council would like to welcome all families, staff and friends to the 2021 school year. We look forward to catching up with you all and would like to invite you to Lott's Family Hotel this Friday, 5th of February at 6pm, for welcome drinks.

This will be a casual get-together and all are welcome. For all our new families, this is a great opportunity to meet other families and catch-up in an informal environment. 

Due to COVID regulations, we are required to provide numbers to Lott's. Could you please notify the school by Thursday if you and your family will be attending. Please email the office at office.stpatricksgundagai@cg.catholic.edu.au. 

Look forward to seeing you Friday. 

Wednesday 3rd February, Wednesday 10th February, Wednesday 17th February and the final one will be Wednesday 24th February. 

First full week of school for our new Kindergarten class will be in week 6 starting Monday 1st of March. 

This Wednesday we welcome our new student and family school counsellor to our school.   If you would like your child to speak with our school counsellor Nadia please contact the office and a form can be sent home for you to complete. 

Here is a little information about Nadia:

My name is Nadia Ho and I have been part of the CatholicCare Student and Family Counselling team since January 2021. I worked as a behavioural therapist for 9 years across Sydney and Canberra in the past.

I am a Social Worker and also studied psychology in university. I am experienced in working with and delivering therapies for children with disabilities aged from 2 to 12. I have practised evidenced based methods, such as applied behavioural analysis and play therapy. My role as a social worker provides changes to the tradition therapy models. I promote therapy to be family focused, relationship focused, autonomy and right focused therapy. I have passion for working with children and their families to improve their wellbeing.  

I can be reached via email nadia.ho@catholiccare.cg.org.au

We look forward to working with you and your school throughout 2021!

Kindergarten and Year 1/2: 5.00-5.30pm

Years 3/4 and Year 5/6: 5.30-6.00pm.

All information sessions will be held in the relevant classrooms.

Please email the office to advise what session time you will be attending.  We ask that all parents please adhere to social distancing and hygiene regulations while on school site please.

Some exciting news for our after school care progam run by Country Children's Early Learning will be up and running this Monday 8th of February.  Please see attached flyer for more information. 

Due to the current administration build, access to our canteen is prohibited. As such, our canteen coordinator Alicia Hargreaves is working through some alternatives for our regular Friday canteen, until such time as we can gain access to the building.

We understand Canteen is a very important part of our students' week and they look forward to it immensely, but please bear with us and we will hopefully have a solution within the next couple of weeks. 

Class Library days for 2021 are as follows: 

Kindergarten - Wednesday (starting Weeks 6 3rd of March) 

Year 1 / 2 - Tuesday 

Year 3 / 4 - Thursday 

Year 5 / 6 - Tuesday 

Please ensure your child has a suitable library bag to protect the books

Murrumbidgee Local Health District health promotion officer Gabriella Tange has provided us with information regarding healthy lunchbox ideas. 

Now students have returned to school and there are new families and students to our school, it is a great time to start with promoting healthy eating and physical activity for health children.

It is HEALTHY LUNCHBOX WEEK that Nutrition Australia is promoting and assisting families and children to make healthy lunchboxes. This is a great and easy place to start! All the information can be found at this website - https://www.healthylunchboxweek.org.au/

There are recipes, videos, communication toolkit and fact sheets and guides to explore along with a competition in which students can be involved.

Help spread the word about Healthy Lunchbox week!

Scrappingclearly has a large range of Creative Kids packs available online and instore - claim your Children’s $100 2021 Voucher from Service NSW.  2021 Vouchers are available. Vouchers can also be used for all Scrappingclearly kids kits and classes. Claiming is easy just download the service NSW app and search Creative Kids. 

Here is a link,  once you have completed you will receive a 16 digit number and your $100 Contact Kylie Tout at Scrapping Clearly (Gundagai) to pick out your Creative Kids Kits in store on online.  Kylie has an extensive selection to choose from.  You can see alot of her selection through her shop window in Sheridan Street

https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/.../apply-creative-kids

We are so excited to be able to offer parents and grandparents the opportunity to assist with classroom programs at school.

If you would like to offer your time to assist in classrooms could you please indicate which day and time suit best.

MONDAY        TUESDAY         WEDNESDAY         THURSDAY                 FRIDAY

9.00-11.00am

11.30-1.00pm

Alternate times I can offer:

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Allergy Awareness

We currently have children at St Pat’s who have anaphylactic reactions to nut products. These reactions can be triggered by contact, ingestion or inhalation. It can also include contamination of equipment whether this is play equipment, desks or other classroom materials. For example, if a child ate a peanut butter or Nutella sandwich and touched the play equipment, a child with a severe allergy, could suffer an anaphylactic reaction from touching the same equipment.

This reaction is called Anaphylaxis. It is a severe, rapidly progressive allergic reaction that is potentially life threatening and requires urgent treatment. Our school does its best to be an "Allergy Aware" school. The school cannot guarantee a totally allergen free environment, however as a preventative measure could we please ask you to consider the students in our school who are at risk of anaphylaxis by:

• Avoid sending food to school which has nuts, nut products in.
• Along with our teachers, speak to your child to respect children who have food allergies.
• Speak to  your child encouraging them not to share food, drink, food utensils or containers with anyone.
• Encourage your child to wash their hands before and after eating.
• Ask your child to get help immediately if their allergic schoolmate gets sick.
• The resulting potential life threatening medical emergency could be avoided by minimising exposure to nuts.

We would like to extend our birthday wishes to all children and staff who celebrated a birthday in January:

Mr Ferguson, Mrs Eccleston, Mrs Carberry, Mrs Winters (Leonie)  

14 January - Harrison Campbell-Jaeger

14 January - Jasper Rui 

22 January - Dale Paton 

26 January - Sophie Graham

Celebrating today, 2nd February is Archie McDonnell & Jack Peterson

We hope you all had a lovely day with family and friends 

Altar Serving 

Saturday 20th February : Harry Crowe, Sophie Graham 

Saturday 27th February : Juliet Pearce, Ellie McDonnell 

Radio News

Every Wednesday at 2:15pm our Yr 6 leaders will present their weekly report to "Sounds of the Mountains" radio station with upcoming events 

Week 4 - 17th February : Harry Crowe, Locky Eccleston 

Week 5 - 24th February : Jessica McDonnell, Jezanna Winchester 

Week 6 - 3rd March : Ollie Gailey, Jezanna Winchester