Dear parents and carers,

Our week has been terrific!

We have seen students helping each other both in class and on the yard.

National Simultaneous Storytime – Yesterday we participated in the 2020 edition of the National Simultaneous Storytime – Whitney and Britney certainly had the moves!  While it was disappointing that we could not share the morning with the children from the Star Room at the pre-school, we hope that they are enjoying their own copy of the story.

The children have developed a routine of regular hand washing and are making use of hand cream to continue with the current restrictions and routine about regular hand washing.

We will continue to follow guidelines as advised by both the Australian Government, NSW government and NSW Health and Catholic Education previously sent out to families.

Please be aware that children who have runny noses, coughs, cold or flu like symptoms will be sent home from school and we ask that they stay at home until the symptoms have cleared.

The update of our behaviour plan is a work in progress.  In terms of our behaviour management, we are focusing on how we can be considerate of others and their feelings.  This can include taking turns, positive encouragement, opening a door for someone, offering to carry equipment, taking care of the equipment that we do have or even remembering to say please and thank you.  All these actions are easy courtesies that are gratefully received.

Sometimes remembering to take turns can be hard and when the children are open to working with other on this often new or perhaps unexpected friendships can be formed.

Please be aware that due to the lockdown, our reporting for semester one will look different to previous years.  We are finalising this and will give you some further information about this next week.

School Garden - Thank you to Aize and Camilla G who have been helping in the garden this week.  Our vegie garden now has celery, carrots (both purple and orange) strawberries, lettuce, beetroot, cabbage and snow peas.  We are looking forward to being able to cook up a storm once they have grown.

Thank you also goes to Jack R, Adelaide, Georgia and Brydie who have been helping in the gardens in recent weeks.

Kinder 2021 – many families are already beginning to plan for 2021.  If your family has a younger sibling at home who will start school in 2021, please collect an enrolment form from the office to complete and return in preparation for next year.

If you know of a family who would like more information about St Joseph’s, please invite them to contact us at school.

Book Club – flyers were sent home this week, please finalise your orders by Friday, 19 June 2020.

Tomorrow we will be having our next reward day event, this one involves Lego.  Children who have gained a gold token will participate in this event.

Our next reward event will be held in a fortnight and we are exploring possible art activities for that event. 

Take care and stay safe,

As part of the Religious Education program this term, the K/1 students have been exploring meditation as a form of prayer. They are taking turns to prepare the prayer focus and choosing something for all of us to focus on as we meditate. It is interesting to see how the thinking has changed from an egocentric ‘me’ focus to much more of a focus on other people who need our prayer support. Yesterday, the chosen focus was plants, which also included rain, crops and farmers. The day before, the student chose praying for the sick, which meant some of the students were thinking about Covid 19, pets etc. Today’s focus was grandparents.

Now that we are becoming more used to the routine, the students are describing meditation as peaceful and calming. It is the only 2 or 3 minutes of the day when no one is moving or speaking. It is one more way to take a ‘brain break’ from the busy school day. I think it is especially important at this time, as a strategy for enhancing wellbeing, because some students are finding it quite difficult to adjust back to the routine of a full school day. Perhaps we could all make some time for meditation in our busy lives. 

Thank to everyone for sharing your work this week, our classrooms have been looking very different in a great way, everyone is working hard – thank you to everyone for your creative efforts with completing your learning this week.

Here are just a few samples of what we have been seeing around our school this week.