Last Sunday’s Gospel...

The Gospel was about people working in the fields in the hot sun and the workers who came later getting the same pay as the workers who had started at the beginning of the day. Understandably, people questioned the justice of this. The story teaches us that God deals in mercy. Justice is a human concept because we humans cannot see into people’s hearts to see how truly they may repent and be as deserving of God’s love as someone who has tried to be good their whole lives.

Did you know...

The gospel story was told to show the Jews, who had been faithful to God for over 1000 years, that the gentiles who were hearing God’s message through Jesus, possibly for the first time, were just as entitled to salvation as were the Jews.

From the Principal...

The end of another term is upon us. It is the first one this year where we have had a full ten weeks actually at school! The students and teachers are all well settled into more ‘normal’ school routines now – though everyone is a little tired and the break will do us all good!

We are commencing a maintenance program on the school these holidays. I have engaged a company to pressure wash all the brickworks and pathways, repair rotting fascia and paint the eaves, gutters, downpipes and poles around the school. We will be dong this block by block so it will need to carry into the Christmas and possibly the Easter holidays next year. It is a big project. Hopefully the school will look fresher!

The P&F have kindly agreed to donate a large portion of the money needed  - approximately $28,000, to put artificial turf on the play area between the stage 1 and 2 buildings – across the path from the covered area. This will provide a large space for the students to run and play, free from trip hazards that are there now. Once the diocesan approval comes through for this capital project, we’ll get it started too! We have also ordered the statue for the foyer of the Holy Family. It will commemorate the life of service Fr Peter Caruana gave to our school. We will also be able to move it around for special occasions – it will be light enough being made of fiberglass. It is being made in Italy so we hope to have it by Christmas. I very much appreciate the support of the P&F, both financially and through the questions and feedback they provide to me. I encourage you all to join in as much as you can.

PAT testing has been completed – I’m sure your children have told you about it. We are looking forward to having the data, along with our school based data, to see the effect this year has had on the learning of our students. We have been doing a great deal of professional development in the teaching of reading this year so are hoping to see an upward trend in reading results to measure the impact of the hard work the teachers are doing in this area.

You will notice the screens and furniture in the office area. We have been able to remove the tables. I hope you like the first impact our school will have on visitors.

Have a lovely break and I hope you get lots of opportunities to ‘waste’ time with your children. These primary school years are very precious!

God Bless

Michelle Rolfe

Principal

Our school community celebrated R U OK? Day on Thursday 10 September 2020 with this year's message being 'There's more to say after R U OK?'.

Mental Health Month aims to promote awareness across all groups in our communities about mental health and wellbeing. The theme can be broken down into:

• Tune in to be present; 
• Tune in to your senses; and, 
• Tune in to your communities.

Uniform- Please find attached School Uniform List

This is available from Lowes Minto

From Term 4, 12 October, 2020, students are required to wear their Summer Uniform.

Congratulations to Year 5 and Year 6 students who have all been working to produce artworks inspired by scripture passages as part of the Diocesan Christmas Art Competition. It was difficult to select only six works that could progress to the next level of the competition! All of the artworks will be displayed in the library so that our students can appreciate and be inspired by the wonderful artmaking skills of Years 5 and 6. A special congratulations to these students whose artworks have progressed to the next level of the competition. We wish them the best of luck!

 The Donkey's Way - Rosa-Lynn Bullman (Year 5)

 Hands of the Wise Man - Hudson Prenter (Year 5)                                      

Holy Night - Grace Mikhael (Year 5)

The Three Puppets - Melissa Zhang (Yr 6)

Dianne Winarczyk
Holy Family Catholic Parish Primary School