No.17 Term 4 Week 2 27 October 2017

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1 1 Castle Street Edwardstown SA 5039 Tel: Fax: Website: No.17 Term 4 Week 2 27 October 2017 DIARY DATES TERM 4 Week 3 Monday 30th October Special Friends Day 9:30am Tuesday 31st October Touch Football Carnival Finance Meeting 6:30pm Board Meeting 7:00pm Wednesday 1st November All Saints Day Yr 2-5 Mass 9:30am R/1 Liturgy Thursday 2nd November Little Investigators Playgroup 9 11am Friday 3rd November Little Ants 9-11am Week 4 Meet The Maker In the 4/5 community we use a growth mindset to embrace learning as a challenging and rewarding process. Good learners reflect on their learning journey and this week the 4/5 community hosted a "Meet the Maker" evening to celebrate their published written and artistic work. Parents were given the opportunity to offer feedback and feedforward. This year I have recently improved my art techniques. My spelling is much better this year. My idea generation is larger. But I'm still finding editing and revising a bit difficult. - Thomas This year I have improved with my sketching and my story writing. I didn t know how to draw a night sky last year and now I do. I have enjoyed using my writers notebook to gather information. I had no idea what abstract art was last year and now I do. - Eva This year I have improved so much in using punctuation in my writing, I have learnt to draw simple but effectively with my mandalas and with more practice I will get more confident in what I do Nikoleta I'm good at drawing cartoons, writing poems, and I love making comics on my every day problems. - Tom Wednesday 8th November 2/3 RC Assembly at 2:30pm Thursday 9th November Little Investigators Playgroup 9-11am Friday 10th November Little Ants 9-11am Saturday 11th November Remembrance Day I'm good at drawing, writing poems and I also feel like I've improved at my sketching. I love writing narratives that are fictional. I also find info reports such as the natural disasters project really fun and I like doing them because sometimes it s a challenge. - Jesse I love to write stories that have elements of truth and then I make them fictional and interesting. I have learnt that you can t do everything the first time and you need to make lots of drafts to get a final piece that is quality. - Zoe

2 Page 2 Dear families and friends Tess Talks Well, the term break is over and term four has begun. The children and staff came back smiling and ready to pick up where they left off. I trust the break from routine gave you a chance to relax and spend some time with family and friends. For the first three days of the break, I fell asleep every time I sat still, I didn t realise how tired I was. Then, I completed many jobs around my home. The biggest was to arrange having 14 palm trees removed they were so tall I was starting to feel like I was living in the Jack and the Beanstalk story or should that be Jill and the Beanstalk!! As a Catholic school this term we prepare for Advent, the time of waiting for Jesus to be born. No matter where you are in your faith there is no denying this is an amazing story. In my religious studies over the years I have had many a lightbulb moment. The first being when I was told that maybe, just maybe, there was no donkey in the manger. I d grown up with that picture in my head, had been in Nativity plays where someone proudly took on the role of carrying Mary on their back across the school hall stage. As my learning grew, my faith developed and my spirituality flourish I realised it wasn t necessarily the details of the story that mattered, it was the message that was being shared. So as we approach Christmas, we get ready for a time to celebrate, love and giving and generosity of hear. May the term ahead be a joyful one for you, there will be much to celebrate and many times to come together as a community and to share our love with one another. St Anthony s Fete The countdown is on for my first ever St Anthony s Fete and I m so excited. It is amazing to see that such a significant event in the schools calendar can happen in the background without any real impact on the day to day running of school. I know there have been a large band of workers, meeting, talking, seeking donations, planning, organising, making lists and checking them twice and probably dreaming about the fete. It is a credit to our school that we have such a dedicated and energetic parent body and as the principal, I thank you. To all those not directly involved at the moment, I ask you to read notices, donate where you can and keep up to date with what is happening. We may have a super group running the fair but we all need to get behind them and support the day. If every family helps out on a stall or for the set up or the clean-up then many hands will truly make light work for our community. World Educators Day Friday 27 October is deemed World Educators Day and on your behalf, Robyn M and I provided a morning tea for staff to thank them for the work they do in teaching your children, our children. Being an educator is a complicated career, it s not just about teaching a curriculum. What we teach is prescribed by government yet educators put their own personality into how they teach and at all times trying to engage a class of different little people. Children who have different learning styles, different abilities, interests and willingness to participate. Being an educator means having a deep awareness and understanding of many children and their families. Class Placements A blessing of a small school is that we all need to be able to work together and with each other as there are few ways to separate children. As I said in the Newsletter last term, we are beginning to work on class cohorts for I believe class teachers are the best people to make a professional judgment on which class a child should go into and which children they will work best with and I know that you will trust us to make the best decision. However, as a school we value parent input. If you have any information you believe we need to consider, could I ask you to put it in writing and hand it to the front office by the end of week three, (3 November) a one week extension, just in case you didn t read the last Newsletter! I encourage you to focus on your child s academic needs and avoid including names of children and or teachers. Please let me add, as adults a way we can help children to build their resilience is to support them through difficult times. Life has ups and downs and what better way to build our coping skills than when we are surrounded by loved ones who can hold our hand and walk the tough journey with us. If your child does begin to worry about next year, a simple, I know you re worried but let s leave it for now or I know you re worried about next year, when have you been worried before? How did you handle that? and then distract them in a way that you know will be successful. When we trust in each other and in God, things have a way of turning out just right!

3 Page 23 Tess Talks (Contd) Political Strategy The Catholic Education Office has instigated a strategic approach to raise our systems awareness for local politicians. The aim is simply for our local candidates/members to see firsthand how Catholic Education is funded and the variances between us and public education. Next week I will be meeting with an Independent member in our electorate. Chris McSporran the Chairperson of the school Board will join me and together we will share our strengths and challenges in providing the best education we can. If you are interested in joining us, please don t hesitate to contact me and I can pass on the relevant information. Catholic Education Office Early Years Symposium Hollie and I were invited to talk at this conference recently, there were approximately 70 attendees, including the Assistant Director of Catholic Education. Hollie was asked to present on her work with Playgroup and how this has evolved over the past year plus how we are looking at developing it further. She was wonderful, speaking confidently about the program and there were many experienced people in awe of her ideas and enthusiasm. I was asked to present from a leadership angle on our outdoor learning spaces and in particular our Pop Up Play Trolleys. It was rewarding to share my learning and our journey with colleagues and I felt very proud of the way we have developed our outdoor learning spaces to accommodate individual children as well as help them to grow their social emotional learning. In hindsight I should have put a copyright on the idea as I have a feeling we are going to see this idea in many schools! I look forward to chatting with you in the school yard over the coming weeks. Keep smiling, Tess RESOURCE CENTRE NEWS The Book Fair is on!! Please come and visit the Book Fair in the Resource Centre. We are currently open before and after school until next Wednesday 1st November so don t miss out on picking up some early Christmas stocking fillers! We will also be open for Special Visitors Day on Monday. The children get to keep their books and we earn valuable points for our school through scholastic for more books and resources. Please note that all items that are on hold and not collected will be returned to stock on Tuesday afternoon.

4 Page 54 Religious Identity And Mission The Gift of Older People! Christian faith is primarily about believing that the love of God is revealed to us in all of creation, in the love we experience through the people in our lives and especially through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus shows us what God is like.and Christians share in the mission of Jesus to reveal the extravagant, unconditional, merciful and inclusive love of God. All of our special older visitors who gather with us on Monday, through their love, care and abundant generosity, are signs of God s love especially to the children whose lives they touch. Children love stories especially their own unique family stories. Grandparents have a unique opportunity to share with children the stories that belong to their particular family.these stories help to build children s awareness of their origins and who they are and where they fit into this world. We are looking forward to seeing many of you at our Special Visitor s Day next Monday 30th October at 9:30am Celebrating, being grateful and encountering God through the love we share with each other is central to the Catholic identity of St Anthony s School. Many thanks to all families who sent in so many beautiful photos am sure you will understand that we have not been able to include all of them but at least every family who sent some in will have one or two photos on the slide show! Saints and Halloween What s the connection? As the celebration of Halloween in our secular Australian culture gains in popularity (and the shops continue to make more money!) it presents our Catholic school with a great opportunity to educate our children (and ourselves!) about the history and tradition of this celebration. The word hallow means holy or saintly. We use the word in the Our Father prayer when we say hallowed be thy name meaning the name of Jesus is to be held holy. On 1st November each year - for nearly 1200 years - the Catholic Church has celebrated the Feast of All Saints originally called All Hallows Day! For hundreds of years in the Church all significant celebrations (like All Saints) began with a vigil the night before the people prepare for the celebration by acts of prayer and fasting. This celebration of the evening before became known as All Hallows Evening shortened to Halloween!!! On Nov 1 st the Catholic Church honours all those who have lead saintly lives even those who are not official saints of the Church I m sure my own grandmother, sister and father are included! On 2nd Nov we celebrate All Souls Day when we remember all those who have died. We celebrate these days in the belief that there is a special communion or connection between those who have died and we who are still living.

5 Page 5 Religious Identity And Mission (Contd) So.why the witches, ghouls, pumpkins and lollies??? The origins probably lie with the ancient Celts. For them 1st Nov was the beginning of the new year and the beginning of Winter. On the night before they celebrated the festival of Samhain (their Lord of the Dead). They believed the spirits of the dead would walk on the earth again at the beginning of winter so to scare them away they would light bonfires and wear masks not to celebrate the dead spirits but to scare them away!!! They would hollow out a turnip and place a candle inside to scare off the spirits (the Americans replaced the turnip with pumpkins!). The current practice of trick or treating may have originated from the Celtic farmers who would go from door-to-door collecting food and other items for the village feats and bonfire. It was believed if you gave food it earned you good luck, those who didn t give might be cursed with bad luck! When the Irish migrated to America it is probable that they combined the custom of trick and treating with the celebration of All Hallow s Eve. So fast forward to 2017 and here in Australia and we are increasingly influenced by this strong, secular North American (some might say consumerist) practice.it is becoming a part of Australian culture that we can t ignore it can be a fun and magical time for families (especially children) and it offers us the chance to connect it with a Christian understanding of death and life. (thanks to Mary Camilerri from CESA for info used in this article ) You will notice at St Anthony s School that our focus in November will be on the connection we have with those who have died both the well-known saints throughout history and all those we have known and loved the communion of saints. The children are writing the names of people they love who have died and we will display them in the front office for all of November. Families are welcome to add to the display and be assured those named will be remembered in our prayers in November. Perhaps if you re family celebrates Halloween and trick or treating maybe also consider lighting a candle, saying the following prayer and remembering all those who have died. We remember, O God. The people who have loved us, the example of heroes, the healing words of people who cared, the brave acts of people who stood up for what was right We remember, O God. The gentleness of grandparents, the joy of friends, the kindness of strangers, the love of parents We remember, O God. The love of Jesus, the blessing of his Spirit, the reminder of his words We remember, O God In every time and place the saints, the holy people, the people who have loved us, those who have shown us what is important to you. Amen We remember Jesus promise that love never ends. Robyn Mercer Assistant Principal Religious Identity and Mission

6 Page 6 Special Visitors Day We would like to invite all grandparents and other great senior people and friends who are special to us When: Term 4 Week 3 - Monday Oct 30 th 9:30am Liturgy in the Church 10am-11am Classroom visits 11am Morning Tea We are looking for some photos of children with their grandparents or other special older friends. please send via to rmercer@stantedw.catholic.edu.au

7 Hello All, P&F Happenings Page 7 Welcome back to Term 4! It is a busy one so fasten your seatbelts and get ready for the ride!! Special Persons Day is this coming Monday. It is a really lovely morning for the children and their Special People. The P&F have contributed to the cost of the delicious morning tea that will be provided. There are a few parents who have volunteered to set up and help serve coffee/ tea (a big thank you to them), and if you are also free and would like to help out, please come along on Monday morning to the Tuck Shop area and we will gladly put you to work! (No experience required!!!). I said last term that I wouldn t mention People s Choice Lottery again, but I am going to break that promise to tell you that we raised about $1200 from that endeavour! So an excellent effort from our little community!! At the end of this year, the Executive will finish up our 2 year term. The vacant positions will be : 2 x Co-Chair and Secretary. No experience is necessary for these roles! The Parents and Friends role is to support the fun and fundraising. We support on special occasions and contribute to enhancing our children s learning experiences. Please think about whether you re interested in one of the roles. Remember that everyone in the community is a member of the P&F and we work together and support each other. Fete advertising is up and the launch was this morning. There is also a Fete Newsletter attached so get on board with all things Fete and we ll see you around the Playground! Letitia, Emily, Jennie and Jenny P&F Executive OSHC Sports Day is fast approaching in Week 5 Friday 17th November. Please note that OSHC will not be available for before or after school care on this day. Notices regarding sports day will be sent out soon.

8 Page 8 Road Safety SAPOL have sent us some road safety reminders and we will providing you with their safety tips in each newsletter for the rest of the year. Sgt John and Humphrey say Road Safety around Schools Begins with You If you pick-up your children up from school, you know how congested parking can become when everyone wants to be right out the front when their child walks out of the gate. If your child knows that you will be there to collect them, they will be looking for the car they recognise (yours) not necessarily looking out for all cars. Issues such as tiredness, excitement or simply being distracted can significantly increase the risk of being involved in a collision. Young children are sometimes referred to as small adults; however they have special characteristics that require specific considerations. In particular, they do not have the perceptual or cognitive capacity to make sound judgements about road safety risks until about 12 years of age. If they need to cross a road to get to where you are parked, their smaller size limits their ability to see and be seen from the kerb. In addition, children sometimes have a false sense of confidence and security around traffic, which can mean that they are at a higher risk in the pedestrian environment. It might be a little inconvenient for you, but it is a lot safer for your child if you make the effort to pick them up at the gate. Online Lunches Every Friday Just a reminder you can order lunches online every Friday prior to 8:30am. If you want to set up your online ordering, it is a simple process. Please visit to register. Can all parents please check your details online to make sure your child is placed in the right year and class. This can be done via my account and then click on the user details tab to check and change if necessary, thank you.

9 Photo Insert: Stained glass window of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, located inside the St Maria Goretti chapel within St Anthony s church at Edwardstown, South Australia. St Anthony s School Page 9 Sacrament of Confirmation and First Holy Communion 2018 Students seeking the sacraments of First Communion and Confirmation are asked to lodged their Enrolment Forms (located at the western entrance) at the Parish Office before 8th December Children need to be going into Year 4 in 2018 with at least one parent who is a baptised Catholic. It is necessary that children attend Mass on the Sunday The Lord s Day each week. Preparation will begin in the new year, date to be determined. Parents who wish to receive for themselves the Sacrament of Baptism, Confirmation and First Holy Communion are also invited to register with us for an adult program. Should you decide to receive Jesus in this Sacrament then why not begin the journey with us now in the Eucharistic Assembly. Weekend Mass on The Lord s Day: Saturday 6pm Sunday 9.30am. Weekday Masses Tuesday Friday 9.30am SAINT ANTHONY OF PADUA Edwardstown Catholic Parish Address: 832 South Road, Edwardstown, South Australia 5039 Telephone: (answering machine checked regularly) edcathpar@adam.com.au Website: Facebook Page: StAnthonyofPaduaRomanCatholicChurch Parish Priest Father Phillip Alstin Mrs Caterina Pileggi Catechist Parish staff Ms Robyn Grave Parish Secretary Parish office hours Wednesday 8:00am-12:15pm Thursday 8:00am-12.15pm Friday 8:00am-12.15pm Weekend Mass times Saturday 6:00pm Sunday 9:30am Weekday Mass times Tuesday 9:30am Wednesday 9:30am Thursday 9:30am Friday 9:30am Confession times Before and after Holy Mass. Wednesday 6:30pm-7:15pm Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament Wednesday -10:00am until 7:15pm including confessions from 6:30pm-7:15pm concluding with Benediction. Anointing of the sick First Friday of the month after 9:30am Holy Mass. This is followed by Holy Communion to the sick and housebound by the Priest. Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Matthew Chapter 11, Verse 28.