St Michael's Catholic Parish Primary School Mittagong eNewsletter

Dear parents and carers,

Last week, we installed a very special artwork in our school entranceway, honouring the tradition of our school and its history. This artwork was gifted to us by our Year 6 class of 2022. The artwork depicts two students and a nun representing the Sisters of St Joseph, who were the founding educators of St Michael’s students. Our school was founded in 1891 and was originally known as St Joseph’s, like so many other schools that were created in that era under the leadership of Mary MacKillop. Mary is now known as St Mary of the Cross MacKillop (Australia's first saint). Mary MacKillop was known to visit our area and would have been part of the decision making regarding our school.

Thank you to Mr David McKinnon (past parent) who created the framework for the artwork and installed it and to Mr Scott Fleeton (current parent) who is going to stain the timber to protect it for another 100 years!

I hope you have the opportunity to look at this artwork and reflect upon the history of our school, that being over 132 years. I am so proud to be part of this wonderful community.

Tomorrow we are celebrating the Feast of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop with a liturgy and activities designed by our current Year 6 leaders. This day is always a highlight in our school calendar and I know our Year 6 students are very excited to lead the day.

A REFLECTION

The Sisters of St Joseph's model Mary MacKillop’s spirit in the significant work of care especially in the area of education. They invite us this year to honour St Mary of the Cross MacKillop by setting aside a prayer practice…

Sit quietly,
breathe in life.
Breathe out peace.
Breathe in life. Breathe out peace. Breathe in life.
Breathe out peace.

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Mary MacKillop Prayer

God of the Pilgrim,

Mary MacKillop trusted your guidance in her journey of life and deepened her confidence in your will. May we renew our trust in your Providence to lead us to hope as we bring our prayer before you.

May we grow in the fullness of your love and the depth of your mystery.

We ask this through Jesus Christ, our Way, our Truth and our Life.

Amen.

“All depends on prayer. Begin with it and end with it.”
(Mary MacKillop)

PRINCIPAL APPRAISAL

Last week a team consisting of consultants from Sydney Catholic Schools, Catholic Education Office Wollongong and a CEDoW Principal, conducted my principal appraisal. They met with all the staff, some parents, a randomly selected group of students and myself, to discuss our school and my support of this school. At the end of the day they met again with me to discuss their findings. I was overwhelmed with the beautiful comments given by the interviewed groups and I must say, very humbled by your support. Thank you so much for the ongoing care and thoughtfulness you all show and the genuine way you support me and our wonderful staff at St Michaels. This is “our” school and everyone plays an important part in providing a place for our students to feel safe, cared for and enriched. I look forward to seeing what we can do together to continue making St Michaels a truly great school.

ART AUCTION UPDATE

Our collaborative paintings look AMAZING!! Every child in our school has painted part of their class paintings. All seven class artworks will be auctioned at our Trivia Night on the 12 August.

If you wish to place a bid on the artworks, we will have them on show in our school office foyer from Monday afternoon and there will be a bidding sheet in the office. If you can’t come into the office, you can talk to Kristie Faavae in the office and she will record your bid for you. Final bids will take place at the Trivia Night- which is next Saturday evening.

Below are the artworks commencing with Kindergarten. All artworks were inspired firstly by a painting with a vase and flowers and then each grade chose their own flowers and colours for their class painting. These photos do not do justice to the original artwork, however they give you an idea of what they look like. Artwork titles were also chosen by the classes.

Money raised from the artworks will go towards purchasing iPads for our K-2 classes.

Kindergarten

Titled “Don’t you just love it”

Year 1

Titled “Purple Galaxy”

Year 2

Titled “Night Flowers”

Year 3

Titled “Life in Blue”

Year 4

Titled- “Flowers of Joy”

Year 5

Titled Nature’s Wonders

Year 6

Titled Flowerful

WESTERN REGION ATHLETICS

Congratulations to all our students who represented St Michaels at the Western Region Athletics in Campbelltown last Friday. Thank you also to Mr Tuckwell, Mrs Anderson and Mr Nash for supporting the students. The following students placed in the top 4 of their events and will now represent our school and the Western Region at the Wollongong Diocese Athletics Carnival :

Will Solomon- 1st 800m

Willow Lester- 4th 800m and 3rd Discus

Mason Putland- 3rd Long Jump

Tobias Naufahu- 4th Discus and 4th 100m

Lucinda Ticchio- 2nd Discus

Jerwil Hipolito-2nd Shot Put

Charlotte Stirling- 3rd Shot Put

ACTIVITIES WE HAVE HELD SO FAR THIS TERM

St Vincent de Paul Winter Appeal

Thank you for your generous support of this appeal. A representative from St Vincent De Paul Mittagong branch will be collecting the food items to give to families in need in our local area. They are grateful for our ongoing support. Thank you to Mrs Mitchell and Year 6 for organising this very important appeal.

YEAR 6 MASS WITH THE BISHOP

On Wednesday 26th July, Year 6 along with Mrs Mitchell, Mrs Prentice and myself attended a Year 6 Mass with Bishop Brian. It was a very special Mass celebrated with the Year 6 classes of St Anthony’s Picton, St Paul’s Camden, St Paul’s MossVale, St Clare’s Narellan and St Thomas Aquinas Bowral. Over the past term, Bishop Brian has met with all of the students in Year 6 and celebrated Mass at various parishes. We thank Fr Sean and Bishop Brian for supporting our schools through this initiative. Thank you to St Thomas Aquinas Bowral for hosting morning tea at their school after Mass. Thank you also to St Paul’s International School for providing transport for our students to travel and from STA. We truly appreciate your kindness and support.

NAIDOC WEEK LITURGY AND ACTIVITIES

Over the first week of term, we celebrated NAIDOC Week through liturgy, storytelling and creative arts. It was a very special week at St Michaels.

(more photos available on our St Michael’s Mittagong Facebook page)

NORTHERN SYDNEY SYMPHONIC WIND ENSEMBLE

Thank you to the Northern Sydney Symphonic Wind Ensemble who visited our school. They were amazing! The ensemble is made up of students in Years 6 and Year 7 from across schools in Sydney. Our students were able to hear some fantastic music pieces and the visitors showed them how each instrument is played and what they look like. One of our Year 1 students even got the chance to be a conductor. We were very lucky to have this opportunity to hear beautiful music.

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GYMNASTICS

Every Thursday all our students participate in a gymnastics lesson led by Ryan from Gymnastrix. We thank Ryan for his ongoing support of our school and our students. Our students are learning so many skills and have great fun!

WAKAKIRRI

This year, a group of students have been participating in Wakakirri practices for their upcoming performance at the Wollongong Entertainment Centre on Wednesday 30th August - not long now! I would like to thank the parents of these students for supporting this opportunity and a very special thank you to our staff, in particular Mrs Williamson, Mrs Whipp and Mrs Eggleston for all the work they have put into planning, preparing the students and costumes/props. We hope to be able to do a dress rehearsal sometime in the near future to showcase their work. Details soon.

CRAZY HAIR DAY FOR CATHOLIC MISSIONS

On Wednesday our students came to school with CRAZY HAIR! All donations went to help support the great works carried out by Catholic Missions. Thank you for all the amazing efforts by our students and staff.

EVENTS TO PLAN FOR

In the coming weeks we have so many special events. Last week, you would have all received our term planner. I just wanted to highlight a couple of bigger events that need to be planned for.

NEDS MINDSET- MONDAY 14TH AUGUST

This performance highlights the importance of caring for people and being an upstander. They discuss ways children can support each other and their own positive mindsets. This company does not charge the school for their service. They do ask that we promote the possibility of students purchasing yoyos as a way of “paying forward” the ability for their performance to happen at another school, just like what happened for us, with a previous school supporting the initiative to be able to perform at our school. Order forms for yoyos can be brought into the school office this week.

BOOK WEEK

Monday 21 August. We have a performance company called “G Day Asia” performing at our school.

Tuesday 22 August is our Book Week Pyjama Day- Students can wear their pyjamas, onesies, ooshies, tracksuits etc to school this day for some Book Week activities.

PRIMARY SOCCER GALA DAY

Thursday 24 August at Tahmoor for those students who have indicated that they are attending.

FATHERS DAY STALL

Thursday 31 August- helpers wanted. Please contact Katrina Bartone or a member of the P&F executive.

G DAY (GRANDPARENTS, GODPARENTS AND GREAT PEOPLE)

Friday 1st September- organisation details for this day will come in future weeks, however what you do need to plan for at the moment, is who from your family may be able to attend on the day. We are running the day exactly the same as last year, with two concert sessions- one in the morning for families with A-K surnames, followed by a joint morning tea where all visitors from both concerts can have morning tea together and see the students. Following morning tea, there will be a second concert (the exact same as the first) for families with L-Z surnames. Having the two concerts allows us to have space in the hall for the visitors. We found in previous years, many, many grandparents attended and our hall was just too small to fit everyone in safely.

All students will perform at both concerts.

For those new to the school, the organisation of the visitors means that if your child/children have a surname that begins with a letter in the alphabet range of A-K example “Amy Brown”, then their grandparents or godparents or great people will attend the first concert. If your child/children have a L-Z surname like “Tom White”, then their visitors will attend the second concert.

PLANNING HELP- the P&F are looking for parents who will help with the set up of the morning tea on the day. Please contact Sheridan Burgess, Rachel Rossi, Krystle Kearney, or Melissa Bartolo if you can help with this. All families are asked to bring something along on the day, for the visitors to eat for morning tea.

The P&F are asking at this point in time for donations of any paper or plastic plates, paper cups or napkins that you might have at home and are no longer using. We are encouraging a recycling theme for our event, so if you have left over birthday paper plates, christening paper plates, christmas paper plates, easter paper plates or napkins etc please consider donating them to our GDay morning tea. I know I looked in my cupboard last night and saw leftover plates from parties I have had over the years that I will donate. Have you got some too?? Once a yummy scone or cake is on top of the plate it won’t matter if it is a 4th birthday Barbie or Batman plate :)

Below is a DRAFT timetable of events for GDay.

9:15 am	Liturgy and Children’s concert for St Michael’s families with *“A to K”* surnames e.g. A student named Amy Brown would have her grandparents attend this session.
10:45 am	Morning Tea provided for Grandparents (Great People). This includes grandparents who have viewed the first presentation, and those arriving to view the second presentation. St Michael’s students will commence their lunch break so that grandparents and “great people” can spend some time together with the children.
11:30 am	Liturgy and Children’s concert for St Michael’s families with *“L to Z”* surnames e.g. A student named Tom White would have his grandparents attend this session
1:00 pm	St Michael’s students will commence their Afternoon Tea break. Students may leave early at 1pm with Grandparents if ‘signed out’ via the school office.

BOOK FAIR

A Book Fair will be operating during GDay for the visitors to look at and perhaps purchase from. Parents and students will be able to look at the Book Fair also on Monday 4th September and Tuesday 5th September.

Thank you for your ongoing support of our school. Have a lovely week.

God bless

Katrina West

PRINCIPAL

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P & F News

Our P&F TRIVIA NIGHT is this Saturday 12th August!

Thank you to all those who are joining us at the event. Thank you also to those who were unable to attend the night but helped in an important way by either sponsoring or purchasing raffle tickets. We appreciate your support.

A reminder that doors open at 6:30 pm for a prompt start at 7 pm.

We suggest that you arrive a little earlier if you like and have a meal downstairs at the club and support the club for supporting us! RSL event rules do not allow us scope to provide additional food apart from the platter each table will be given.

There will be lots to do on the night, with games in between Trivia rounds. We have tried to include a range of questions to give everyone a fair go.

Most games will be a $2 entry so bring along your coins. We will have a:

Paper plane competition

Giant Jenga

Coin Toss

Pass the parcel

You will also have the opportunity to purchase a limited number of trivia answers for your table at $5 each or 3 for $12.

There will be a silent auction for goods and services kindly donated by local businesses, and an auction of 7 artworks (created by each class).

We will also be selling ‘lucky dips’ for $5, $15 and $30.

Direct deposit will be available for the auctions. We will have some coins on the night if you do need change. If you can bring your own change, it would be greatly appreciated.

We do not expect everyone who attends to spend money at the event. We are very grateful for the support provided just by attending. If you are able and keen to participate in the games and/or auctions you are very welcome to.

A HUGE THANK YOU TO ALL OF THE BUSINESSES WHO HAVE SPONSORED THE TRIVIA NIGHT.

Please support these local businesses who have donated so generously to the Trivia Night. A final list of sponsors will be sent out after the night.

The Hermitage (Marist Brothers) are holding Roast Dinners again on Wednesday 16th August and Wednesday 30th August from 5:30pm-8:00pm.

Cost is $40 per person for a two course meal.

BYO

Bookings are essential so please contact - phone 48721911 or reception@thehermitage.org.au

26 May	National Sorry Day All day Recurring event

30 May	Parents Day BBQ All day

12 Jun	Hot Dog Day All day