THE GRAPEVINE. Mary, mother of Jesus and our mother.

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1 DATE CLAIMERS 24 Aug Book Week Dress Up Day 31 Aug Father Day Assembly 3H (MT/5G) 18 Sept SCHOOL PHOTO DAY THE GRAPEVINE Term 3 Week 5 16 August 2018 Mary, mother of Jesus and our mother. On Wednesday our church celebrated Mary the mother of Jesus in the Feast of the Assumption. Strange name that but it is not about making an assumption in a situation we don t understand. Though it could look like that at first. In Old English assume could mean being taken into, so on this feast, we celebrate Mary being taken into to be with Jesus. There, with him, she cares for us. She knows how to truly care for us, because in so many ways she faced and lived gracefully so many of the challenges of human life. A quick glance at her life shows us that she gave birth to her son in poverty many have done that. She fled as a refugee many have done that. She lived in a village with petty gossip many have done that. She wondered what her son was doing with his life many have done that. She watched him die a horrible death many have done that. Through all the events of her life, both good and bad, she believed that God s love was at work. She lived by faith, as we are called to do. Whatever challenges and sufferings came her way, even if she didn t understand, she believed that God s love could bring goodness and holiness out of the situation. Because she was faithful to God in all these situations, we feel that she understands the difficulties of our lives and that she cares for us as she cared for her son, Jesus. In her all-embracing motherly love, we can see the love of God for us. Not only is she a model of faith, she comes close to us and shepherds us with the love of God. Loving God, we praise and thank you for giving us such a model of faith in Mary, the mother of Jesus. As Mary was guided by your Spirit may she in turn give us your wisdom and love, especially in the dark days of suffering and confusion. We ask this in Jesus name, confident that you will hear us. Amen Sr Kym Harris osb ASSUMPTION MASS On Wednesday morning St Benedict s students and staff travelled to Sacred Heart Church to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption of Mary. We joined with the Sacred Heart school community as well as many parishioners for this special mass. A very big thank you to Fr Matthew Moloney who celebrated this mass with us, we appreciate his time and support. Thanks to Mrs Mary O Donnell and Mrs Tink Boyd who assisted with the preparation of the mass. Congratulations to all the St Benedict s students who participated including our readers, actors, banner bearers, offertory procession participants and singers - a fabulous effort from all. ALTER SERVERS Children in Year 4 and above are invited to be part of the ministry of altar serving at our school and weekend masses. This is an important ministry in our church and provides the opportunity for children to be actively involved in the mass. If your child is a current altar server, or wishes to commence as an altar server, please complete the form sent home today. It is also attached for your convenience. Training will be provided for interested students at a time to be advised.

2 Central Regional Working Party Update From the information gathered at the Regional Assembly in 2017, the Regional Working Party is compiling a survey that everyone is encouraged to complete. This survey will collect important information about what you feel God is asking of the Catholic Church in our region, at this time. This information will form a significant part of the discussion at the next regional gathering. The survey will be available for two weeks in September and be available in both digital and paper formats. God, Bless us with ears that hear your voice, eyes that see your vision, hands with which to do your work, mouths that speak your word and feet that will walk humbly, with faith. AMEN. Many thanks in anticipation and God bless, Catherine Simmonds. Regional Working Party Secretary BOOK FAIR Thank you to all of the students and families who have supported this week s Book Fair. The final day is tomorrow, with the library open from 8.15am. Students will also be able to make purchases during the first lunch break (cash sales only). Book Fair will be open after school today and tomorrow until 3.15pm. BOOK WEEK Schools across Australia will next week celebrate Children s Book Week under the theme Find Your Treasure. Many of the books shortlisted for awards in this year s celebrations have been purchased by the school and classes began engaging with them during this week. As part of our celebrations, students are invited to come dressed as one of their favourite characters from a book next Friday 24 August. The students are encouraged to select a character they can engage with during classroom activities throughout the day. Please be aware that you are not required to purchase items for the characterisation and will hopefully create an outfit of some description from items at home. Students in Year 5 & 6 will need to bring their change of clothes / uniform for their interschool sport commitments after lunch. SCHOOL SURVEY Members of the school community have all received an containing a link to a survey regarding the various aspects of our St Benedict s School community. I encourage all parents to complete the survey to provide us with valuable data regarding current and future purpose and direction. In addition to the parent survey, all students in Years 4, 5 and 6 and all members of staff will also complete a similar survey to capture their thoughts and understanding. reminders will continue through to the survey closing date of Friday 24 August or until the survey has been completed. SCHOOL APP & SOCIAL MEDIA St Benedict s has an App that is available for all parents across the various smartphone platforms (Android and ios). Please just search for St Benedict s Catholic Primary School Yeppoon in your App browser to locate our App (with our School Logo) and download to your device. Our App, website and school s Facebook page contain any official school information. Other sites, particularly Facebook pages that contain any reference to our name are not associated with the school and should not be used for information from the school. If you have a question regarding St Benedict s please use our official website, App, Facebook page, newsletter or contact the school. Once again, I ask that any other sites that contain wording that identifies or partly identifies our school (eg. St Benedict s, Bennies, etc.), removes any such wording from its title and setup.

3 2019 ENROLMENT - Prep to Year 6 Enrolments available now in all year levels St Benedict s is currently completing the 2019 enrolment process for our Prep classes and all other year levels. If you know of families considering enrolment at St Benedict s, please ask them to contact the Office or complete the enrolment paperwork as soon as possible. SCHOOL PHOTO DAY School Photo day has moved to Tuesday 18 September. Envelopes will be sent home closer to the day. ICAS Congratulations to Emily Mazzaferri who received a participation certificate in both the ICAS Digital Technologies and Science. Congratulations to Mia Walker for her Distinction in ICAS Science. DISTRICT SPORT Congratulations to Abbey Harvey and Austin Kasprowicz who were selected in the U12 Rockhampton District Cricket boys and girls teams. FLEC - Future Leaders Eco-Challenge On Tuesday 14 August, our year 6 stewardship group participated in the Future Leaders Eco-Challenge, which is part of our Reef Guardian School Program. St Benedict s joined with students from other local schools at North Keppel Island Environmental Educational Centre and were fortunate to participate in snorkelling, a beach clean-up and tour of the sustainability initiatives at the centre. Students were encouraged to think about the five main threats to the reef and come up with suggestions for how they can love the reef. We look forward to seeing the initiatives that our leaders implement around the school over the remainder of the year. ASSEMBLY AWARDS Term 3 Week 4 Congratulations to the following students who were presented with awards at our last assembly: Prep E Xavier Stathooles For your very clever writing and maths work. Well done! Year 1E - Hayden Wiese For his determined effort to stretch out his words in both reading and writing super work Hayden. Year 1E - Xavier Brady For your enthusiasm working with number this week. You were looking, listening and sharing your understanding. Super effort Xavier. Year 1P - Indigo Morris Oh no! Call the ambulance! Your work with numbers 10 before and 10 after is so good it hurts. You are fully sick! Year 2B - Lincoln Collier For the extra effort you have made in all of your writing. You are adding great detail and description to your work! Year 3H - Renee Field For the excellent way you completed your activities in literacy rotations. Year 3W - Joshua Edwards For your active contributions to class discussions about Zacchaeus and the message behind the text. Well done! Year 5G - Mia Prince - For your valuable contributions to math s lessons about fractions. You re giving fantastic explanations. Excellent work! Year 5C - Thorn Allery It is wonderful to see the great ideas and enthusiasm you are displaying towards the poem to a play group activity. Year 6R - Hayden Beath For your leadership in our Catholic Education Week mass. Year 6M - Cleveland Collier For the great effort you have shown when working independently.

4 Wow! It is already Term 3 and the Prep Bilbies have been involved in many wonderful learning experiences both in and out of the classroom. Last week, we celebrated Catholic Education Week and the Prep children performed three songs as part of our celebrations. They were absolute super stars on the stage! This term, we began guided reading in class and the Preppies are quickly learning how to use a range of different strategies to assist with their reading. Each Wednesday afternoon, they even get to read the books we have completed in class to their Year 5 buddies! We have been practising speaking and answering questions in full sentences and using part of the question in our response. I asked the Prep children what their favourite thing to do in Prep was. This is what they had to say: Emily: My favourite thing to do in Prep is drawing. Jonah: My favourite thing to do in Prep is box construction because you can build things and it s super fun. Lochie: My favourite thing to do in Prep is to play with the kinetic sand. Cohen: My favourite thing to do in Prep is the magnetics. Liam: My favourite thing to do in Prep is playing with the coloured blocks. Jimmy: My favourite thing to do in Prep is magnetics because they re super fun and you can build stuff like a house. Aria: My favourite thing to do in Prep is drawing. Dexter: My favourite thing to do in Prep is to build with the blocks. Elissa: My favourite thing to do in Prep is box construction because you can make stuff for your friends. Lincoln: My favourite thing to do in Prep is blocks because they re super fun. Lyla: My favourite thing to do in Prep is box construction because I can make things for Elissa. Will: My favourite thing to do in Prep is the magnetics because they re super fun. Paris: My favourite thing to do in Prep is playing with the animals because they are fun. Beau: My favourite thing to do in Prep is box construction because you get to build things.

5 What s on in 6R During Science we have been learning about birds, particularly their habitat, food sources and adaptations to their environment. Each student has created a bird fact file on Google Slides showing some of the different birds in our local environment. We have studied the habitat and food sources for birds in our school and made predictions about which birds we will find the most and least of. Over the next few weeks we are collecting scientific data on the different species of birds that visit our school and their abundance. Volunteers from Capricornia Birdlife will be visiting our classes again to help us with our bird watching experience. After this we will analyse our data and suggest how we could improve the environment for birds within our school grounds. (Ben and Nate) Sources of food for birds. Learning to use binoculars. We have also been doing paintings of birds with watercolours, chalk pastels and silhouette art. We have learnt about blending the watercolours and not to mix the chalk pastels together or it will ruin the details of the artwork. When we had to do some sketching of our art work we got ideas from this website: (Ariarn and Erica)

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7 19 th Sunday Ordinary Time Vocations Sunday 1 Kings 19:4-8, Eph 4:30-5:2, John 6:41-51 Yeppoon & Emu Park (700 words) On Friday in St Joseph s Cathedral we celebrated 40 years of ordination to the priesthood of our own Bishop Michael, and of 10 years for Fr Jomon also those who weren t there, 50 years of ordination of Fr Barry O Donohue, 30 years for Fr Kevin McGovern. Fr John Daly preached the homily and spoke of the generosity of service which they had given. Then he went on to speak and share about the baptismal call of us all and how so many others also were generous in the giving of their lives to the faith and how they lived their faith in so many ways. The challenges that people face today are very different from what Bishop Michael or Fr Barry when they were ordained. One thing is certain: our world and our church will not stop: changing, developing and seeking new ways of living life. But the common theme for them and for us all is a deep sense of relationship with God. A generous God, with you a generous people, responding today in so many ways which were different from 40 and 50 years ago. Amidst all our lives, many things continue to change and each of us are challenged and called forward by God in different ways and with different experiences as we have developed and grown in all our diversity. But there is a consistent thread which weaves through all our experiences and life; whether 50, 40, 30 or 10 years ordained, or ordinary people discerning life s calling or in year one of Sacred Heart School; as people of faith we seek the face of Jesus Christ in our lives: to dream of a different life and way of living for our world. Even though the challenge is different we all, as people, can struggle with our faith and like Elijah in our first reading we can become dejected and despondent and want to go back into the cave and of going to sleep wanting things to go away. In faith though, we come and recognise that it is Christ who calls each of us to change our hearts and be called forward in faith. To be called into life to be bread for each other bread of life as Christ is to us we are to each other. To be called forward to give of ourselves generously. Jesus didn t take but he gave himself as the bread of life and he said in our Gospel: anyone who eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world. Giving is not always easy because we mostly want something in return but as any parent would testify they give anyway, because they love their child unconditionally. We are called to make a difference in our homes and lives when looking to find direction or answers, and it is prayer and a relationship with Jesus that finds that way. As Fr Daly thanked those present for their generosity, I thank you for the generosity which is part of you the people of this place. Thank you for your care of the aged and the people of this place. Thank you for you the students for looking out for each other, the teachers in our schools, the catechists, RCIA and sacramental groups. Thank you for those who minister in caring for our gardens, putting on BBQ s, sharing your time with the sick. Look on the back wall and see just a few of the many people who share just a little with our community. There are many more. Thank you for your generosity of your time and the gifts which are shared in so many ways, by so many. Yes, it is different from the past and will be different in the future but knowing the generosity of our God being lived in each other, growing into new and faith filled ways of living and sharing the bread of life for our world, this will be our hope and direction as we look to the future. Amen.

8 16 August 2018 Dear Parents Your child has expressed an interest in becoming an altar server or continuing in this ministry at Sacred Heart Parish. This is a worthwhile and rewarding ministry for your child to participate in and we thank them for their enthusiasm. We do try to roster new altar servers with experienced servers so new servers have plenty of support as they learn their role. Training will be provided for interested students at a time to be advised. It is important that your child has your support in accepting the responsibility of becoming an Altar Server. Please sign and return the permission note below to the parish office or your child s school by next Friday August 24. Sincerely Fr Matthew I give permission for my child To commence the role of altar server To continue in their role as altar server My preference is for: 6:00pm Mass Saturday Evenings Sacred Heart Yeppoon 9:00 am Mass Sunday Morning Sacred Heart Yeppoon 7:00am Mass Sunday Mornings Emu Park I understand that I will need to support him/her in this ministry. Signed, ( Parent/Caregiver)