Dear Parents and Carers,

After his first day at school one of the kindergarten children remarked to me- “he’d had a great day, but did he need to come back tomorrow?”

Starting school can be a tricky time for children and we all need bucket loads of patience and understanding during life’s big transitions. Sometimes the move from a more play-based pre-school structure provides its challenges for our little people. 

The pressures on parents and families can be overwhelming and it is sometimes difficult to know how to cope with our children’s behaviour. There are some good parenting strategies to use based on experience and research. Michael Grose has been a great advocate for assisting parents for many years. One of the strategies he uses is to refer to behaviours as choices. By doing this we can separate the behaviours from the child and we can also focus on positive behaviour choices.

We need to call our children out for ‘inappropriate’ behaviour by describing it as a poor choice and helping them to understand what may be a better choice in a given situation.

“Parents can reinforce the idea of choice by consistently referring to a child’s positive or negative behaviour as a choice. “Good choice, sharing your toys with your brother.” “You could make a better choice and come home on time when you visit a friend.” https://www.parentingideas.com.au/blog/micro-habits-to-parent-better-every-day/

At St Michael’s we are here to support you and working together we can teach our children of all ages and stages the skills they need to cope with transition and change.

Farewell Mrs Monro

Next Friday 4^th March will be Mrs Lisa Monro’s last day at St Michael’s. We are planning some special surprises at school with further information in the newsletter for parents/friends who would like to say goodbye on Saturday night 5^th March.  

Community Council Nominations

A note went home via COMPASS yesterday explaining about our wonderful Community Council and calling for nominations. The forms and information are also attached to this newsletter.

Wet weather pick- up

Our new afternoon pick up for parked cars has worked really well and I thank all our parents for helping us to keep everyone safe. In the event of wet weather at afternoon pick up time, all children will come to the library to be collected at the drive through pick up point. Best options are to drive through to avoid families getting drenched. We will keep cars moving quickly and are repainting the area for visible stop and collect spots.

We really appreciate your patience during a wet weather pick up as everyone needs to come through the one spot and we are trying our best to ensure the children enter cars quickly.

Thank you for all you do to support St Michael’s and have a great week,  

Many Blessings

Judy Egan

Ultimate Professional Day!  (Farewelling Mrs Monro)

Dear Parents,

Next Friday, the 4^th of March, we will be saying goodbye to Mrs Monro, our wonderful Front Office Manager and the ultimate professional. As a part of the celebration we are having a dress up day, where students are invited to dress up as professionals from any field. We will be having a few different activities to help make the day special and to say goodbye to an amazing lady, who has been a pillar in our community for many years.

Get involved, dress up, have some fun and let’s make this day brilliant for Mrs Monro!

Many thanks

Mr Webb

Religious Education around our school – Spotlight on Kindergarten

In Kindergarten we have investigated what makes a prayer space and continue to practise new ways to pray. This week we have started to look at the Creation Story. Perhaps you’d like to look at this easy video version of the story with your children: https://youtu.be/cZrwd7DgStA As you walk around this week – what things do you notice in God’s beautiful Creation?

Religious Life at St Michael’s

Next week we change gears in the Church liturgical year with Shrove Tuesday and the beginning of Lent with Ash Wednesday. Our prayer cloths and the garments worn by Fr Loi in the church will change to being the purple ones. Lent is a time of increased prayer and reflection, preparing ourselves to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ at Easter.

Shrove Tuesday

Shrove Tuesday marks the end of Ordinary Time in the Church calendar. We feast and celebrate before the Lenten fasting. Traditionally we make pancakes – in the past to use up all the flour and sugar that wouldn’t be eaten during Lent. Unfortunately, we are still unable to share food at school so we can’t have our usual feasting of pancakes at school. Instead, I encourage families to make pancakes for breakfast, lunch or dinner and share photos with me of your cooking and feasting. Photos shared will be in next week’s newsletter. My email is meaghan.younger@cg.catholic.edu.au

Ash Wednesday

As a school we are still unable to come together to celebrate Mass so we will host a prayer liturgy at 11:45 on MS Teams. Classes will all join this special time of prayer and receive the ashes sprinkled on children’s heads in accordance with current Diocesan guidelines. The ashes we use will be blessed by Fr Loi at the 9:30am Mass at St Monica’s – if families would like to be connected with our Ash Wednesday liturgy perhaps being at that celebration could be one way to creatively share the experience.

Project Compassion

As usual we will be supporting Caritas through their annual Project Compassion. Next Wednesday families will receive a small Project Compassion money box and are encouraged to fill it during Lent and return it to school at the end of this term. All money is donated to Caritas to support their charitable works around the world. In coming weeks there will be information shared about the current focus of this work.

Sacramental Program 2022

First Eucharist will be celebrated in Term 2, 2022.

Confirmation will be celebrated in Term 3, 2022.

Reconciliation will be celebrated in Term 4, 2022.

For further Information – please contact the Sacramental Program Coordinator at sc.belconnennorth@cg.org.au or check the parish website for updates at www.cg.org.au/belconnennorth

ACT Swimming Championship Nominations Required Now! URGENT

If you wish to nominate your child to be selected to compete at the ACT Swimming Championships, please contact Mrs Hardwicke by no later than Friday 25th February. Due to COVID restrictions, the process is very different for this year and students will need to provide an offical time with their nomination. 

Erin Hardwicke

erin.hardwicke@cg.catholic.edu.au

Library Matters

Help needed!!!  If there are any parents who are able to volunteer to cover new library books, we would appreciate your help.  Books and contact can be taken home with families and returned at your convenience.  We have over 200 books that we are hoping to get onto the shelves for the students in the near future. Please see Erin or Lisa if you can assist in any way.

SORA Library App

If you haven’t already downloaded the SORA App, we encourage you to do so. It allows students to borrow ebooks and audiobooks from our school's digital library collection. When in the App, it will ask for the school name, please select 'ACEN Member Collection' (this is for various CE schools). If your child logs in from home, student login details are required. Your child's login details are as per the student login used at school. If your child has forgotten their login details please see their classroom teacher.

Looking forward to an exciting year in the library.

Erin Hardwicke

Erin.hardwicke@cg.catholic.edu.au

Congratulations to the following students who achieved a Harmony Award in Week 4.  Awards will be handed out to students during the day on Friday.

Well done!!   

Special wishes to those children who will celebrate their birthday this week:

Luca 3/4F, William KD, Ana 1/2B & Bram KD

We hope you have a great day!!

As several of the students at our school have a life threatening allergy to nuts and related products we have adopted a NUT FREE policy. 

Our school does not sell any nut products and we ask you to support our efforts by ensuring that your child does not bring peanuts, peanut butter, nutella or other nut related products to school in their lunch boxes.  This will require you to take note of the content of items such as muesli bars etc.

We appreciate your support in ensuring the health and safety of all our students.