Term 4 Week 3 2024

Hello Families and welcome back to Term 4,

I trust that you all had a beautiful, restful holiday with your families. 

Reminders.

As we head in to Term 4, these are some general reminders to keep things running smoothly at St Mary's. 

1. Please ensure that your child has a school hat and that it is worn each day at school. All children are expected to wear a St Mary's school hat (no caps). If a child does not have a hat, there is an expectation that they play in the shade. 

2. Please make sure long hair is tied up at all times. This helps us to keep head lice away from our school.

3. Please ensure your child is not bringing toys to school from home. Home items need to stay at home as these can often cause an issue with other children, etc..

We have lots of events happening this term so please have a look at our date claimers and I look forward to seeing many families at our school and community events.

World Teachers Day.

Last week we held a Morning Tea to celebrate all the amazing teachers and educators in our St Mary's family. We are so grateful for all the incredible hard work that our teachers do each and every day for our St Mary's kids. I have never worked in a school that has such an amazing sense of team and support. Thank you St Mary's teachers for all that you do!

Elders/Grandparents Breakfast. 

It was so wonderful to see so many families, Elders and Grandparents last Friday morning for our community breakfast. A very big thank you to all of our families for making the effort to come and join us for breakfast.

Spirit on Country Conference - Tamworth.

Last week Uncle Mark, Miss Brooke and myself had the absolute pleasure of attending the 3 day Spirit on Country conference in Tamworth. This conference encompassess everything we know about good practice in Inclusive Education for Aboriginal students and their families. We have learnt so much to bring back and share with our school community, and we are all feeling really energised and enthused about our new learnings. 

Wishing you all a great start to the school term.

Nadine 

Congratulations to our Week 3 award winners

In Maths Kindergarten have been writing the before and after numbers in the 10's shown by Carmella and Year 1 have been writing before and after numbers in the hundred's and thousand's shown by Cohen and Josiah.

Roman and Romi practicing writing their tricky words. Roman writing numbers 1-80 independently 

Miss Mady's Year 4 class have been helping the Kinder/Year 1 students for a couple of weeks, demonstrating 'Acts of Kindness' as part of Year 4's Religion unit. Year 4 have been 'buddy' reading with K/1 last week. They will continue this 2 days a week, sometimes K/1 reading to Yr 4, and Yr4 also modelling reading and questioning K/1 about the stories. All students have been enjoying this experience!

 Students designed, made and decorated shoes suitable for a hot day. Year 2/3 joined K/1 to assemble and decorate the shoes. Students experimented with different materials suitable for shoes. They ended up using sign board plastic, seat belt webbing, and rubber because those materials are light, flexible, comfortable and strong. They added a bit of bling for decoration!

In 2/3 students have been learning money skills and the value of money. They have been using different coins and bills to create the same amount. They then created their own shopping list and had to calculate the total for their shopping bill.

Year 4 have been busy since the start of term. Students have been using different mediums in maths. Miss Mady has been using Uno cards to help teach math as shown by Regent and Tayven. Lilly, Sofia and Anna are using grid books for their math work.

Students worked together to make the decorations for 'Grandparents Day'

Miss Mady has been showing students jewellery making. Sometimes meditation is good for a brain break as shown by Tayven

Learning club busy using Math programs on their laptops with Miss Sam and Uncle Jason

In science stage 3 had a egg drop challenge where they created a safe surrounding for their egg to then drop and hope not to crack. Focusing on mass and gravity.

What a lovely morning at st Mary's for Grandparents Day. Thank you to all of our families that came and shared breakfast with us.

Students from Years 3 - 6 attended Valla Beach Resort for a 2 day cultural camp. Although the weather cut the camp short students still made the most of their time there with activites such as beach worming, yabbying, fishing, beach walking, bush tucker/bush medicine with Angel, meditation and Gumbaynggirr story time with Miklo..