ABOUT - Term 1 Week 7 - 20 March 2025

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

We are one family, all following in God's way.
With open arms, we welcome you, into our Joey's family.

KINDER WELCOME LITURGY

It was a beautiful Liturgy held in St Joseph’s Church this morning as we officially welcomed our Kinder class of 2025.  The Kinder children were wonderful and we congratulate all of them for their reverence and enthusiasm.  The Year 6 leaders were splendid as they told us about each of their buddies.  Thank you to all those family and friends for joining in this special celebration.  A huge vote of thanks to Mrs Newstead, Mrs Jeffery, Mrs Morrissey and Mrs Colwell and for all their hard work in preparing the Liturgy.  Our 2025 Kinder class includes:  Laine Anderson, Levi Anderson, Annlitta Anoop, Isaac Antaw, Joe Barry, Colt Budworth, Dougal Cruickshank, Angus Foran, Max Godber, Charlie Haling, Harrison Hammond, Oliver Harland, Sophie Howard, Hunter Hutchison, Charlotte Melhuish, Charlie Quayle, Elisha Robin, Adelaide Robinson, Noah Weston.

ST JOSEPH'S P & F DEBUTANTE BALL

This Saturday, 22 March - Doors Open - 7:30 p.m.
Presentation of Debutantes - 8:00 p.m.

Many thanks to those who have purchased tickets to attend the St Joseph's P & F Debutante Ball this Saturday evening.  It is sure to be a great night out!

Thanks also to those who helped out at the working bee last Sunday.  Just a reminder that there will be a further working bee at the Shire Hall tomorrow, Friday, 21 March to decorate the hall and set up the smokers' tent.  It's not too late to help - just turn up at the hall tomorrow between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. or Sunday, from 9:00 a.m. for the clean up -  we currently have NO HELPERS for the clean up!  Sweets can be taken directly to the Shire Hall on Saturday or dropped into school tomorrow.

We are still in need of volunteers to help out on the night of the ball to help finish and serve food platters and helpers to wash and clean up.

Please see the Ball helpers' Roster below.

ST JOSEPH'S DAY CELEBRATIONS

We had a day full of fun and celebrations yesterday for St Joseph’s Day.  St Joseph is certainly a special saint for all of us at St Joseph’s and we like to honour him on this special day.  The festivities began with a lovely Mass in St Joseph’s Church.  During the Mass our newest members of the Junior Joey's received their badges.  We then went to the pool and enjoyed class parties in honour of St Joseph.  After the parties the Year 6 leaders were superb as they entertained us with their synchronised swimming routine.  Then the whole school joined Year 6 in the pool for some groovy dancing.  Finally, everyone had lots of fun on the ski biscuits.  Wow, what a great day!  Many thanks to the Alchin, Altmann and Morrissey families for lending us their ski biscuits.

JUNIOR JOEYS

With the guidance of the Sisters of St Joseph, our school is part of a national program where students from Years 5 and 6 can choose to become junior members of the Josephite Association – Junior Joeys!  The purpose of this program is to:

• LEARN about Mary MacKillop and the Sisters of St Joseph.
• PRAY for those in need.
• PRACTISE some form of outreach in the community.

Congratulations to our new members of Junior Joeys who were presented with their badges at the St Joseph’s Day Mass on Wednesday.  Our new Junior Joeys are:  Taylor Alexander, Mia Buckley, Oliver Buckley, Katie Colwell, Charlie Cruickshank, Tiaki Diamond, Bella Hammond, Laycee Hazelton, Jack Howard, Rose Howard, Dusty Jordan, Maci-Jae Lomax, William Luckie, Lleyton Lummis, Liam Millstead, Pearl Mudford, Archie O'Connor, Alice Peart, Layla Walker, Olivia Yates.

SUPER SPELLERS!

Our School Spelling Bee Finals will be held next Monday, 24 March for Years 3 and 4 students at 11:20 a.m. and on Wednesday, 26 March for our Years 5 and 6 students at 11:20 a.m.  Congratulations and good luck to these super spellers who have qualified for the school’s finals.  The Years 3 and 4 finalists include Isobel Barry, Harper Wykes, Tiffany Fong, George Taylor, Hannah Peart, Meenakshi Binu, Caroline Taylor, Sam Luckie and Eddy Woodrow while the Years 5 and 6 contestants will be Neve Walker, Clancy Larkin, Estelle Hazelton, Caitlin Younghusband, Ryan Faulder, Jakirah McKenzie, Mia Buckley and Oliver Buckley.  Well done to you all!

Our top two spellers in each section will go on to compete at the Diocesan Spelling Bee in Wellington on Wednesday, 28 May.

THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE LORD MASS

The Annunciation of the Lord Mass will be celebrated next Tuesday, 25 March at 9:00 a.m. (please note the earlier time) in St Joseph’s Church.  Year 5 is preparing the Mass and all are most welcome to attend.  Due to the early time, there will be no morning tea after Mass, however students can still bring a plate to share with the class at morning tea time.

SCHOOL CROSS COUNTRY

Training for the school cross country commenced this week and will continue next week for any students in Years 3-6 interested in competing.  The nine and ten year old competitors run 2 kilometres while the eleven and twelve year olds run 3 kilometres.  The Joey's trial will be held at school on Thursday, 3 April (Week 9) at 9:00 a.m.  The Diocesan Cross Country will be held in Coolah next term on Tuesday, 6 May (Week 2).

IT'S A BOY!

Congratulations to Mrs Best and her husband, James who welcomed their baby boy, Leo James, to the world last Friday, 14 March.  Leo is a little brother for Ella and our best wishes go to Prue, James, Ella and Leo.

YEAR 7 2026 ENROLMENTS AT ST JOHNS COLLEGE DUBBO

Enrolments are now open for St Johns College, Dubbo for those Year 6 students who would like to attend St Johns College, Dubbo in Year 7 2026.

The College has advised that enrolments will close on Friday, 11 April and are asking interested families to get their child's enrolment form in ASAP to secure a spot in 2026.

Interviews will take place at the College during the first few weeks of Term 2.

MERIT AWARDS

Congratulations to the following students who received Merit Awards at Assembly on Tuesday:

KINDER: Laine Anderson for always taking pride in his work, Isaac Antaw for great imagination when writing about what he could see in an igloo and Charlie Quayle for a super effort controlling his scissors to cut out carefully.

YEAR 1: Daniel Herbig for his energy and commitment while swimming for Sport, Chase Copelin for his engagement and enthusiasm in Maths during '3 Tens in a Row', and Cecilia Smith for being a kind and caring member of our Year 1 class.

YEAR 2: Clark Baker for great work in Phonics, Claire Barry and Tess Howard for creating great ‘Wild Things’ in Art and Liam Mellor for working hard on his reading.

YEAR 3: Elsie Howard for fantastic work gathering information about fascinating explorers in History, Frankie Medd for working hard identifying the subject, verb and coordinating conjunctions in compound sentences and  Isabelle Sandry for working hard to write a full narrative that is well sequenced.

YEAR 4: Bridie Moeris for a great effort in Maths, Meenakshi Binu and Tiffany Fong for terrific work writing codas from Oliver’s perspective and Liam Cosier for improved confidence in Maths.

YEAR 5: Jack Howard for a wonderful effort to read fluently and with expression and Laycee Hazelton for working conscientiously in all tasks.

YEAR 6: Jakirah McKenzie for her excellent active participation in the classroom and Darcy Adams for readily participating in class discussions.

CLASSROOM NEWS

Kindergarten

What an amazing week we have had in Kinder! We celebrated St Joseph’s Day on Wednesday with a beautiful Mass and an action packed afternoon at the pool, dancing and scooting along the water on Big Bertha! It was so much fun. A big thank you to Mrs Hutchison, Mrs Godber and Mrs Cruickshank who made our delicious cupcakes. Today was the highlight of our Kinder adventure so far. We were so proud to be welcomed officially into the Joey’s family at our Welcome Liturgy. Our Year 6 buddies compiled and read our profiles beautifully and we received amazing badges. We were so excited to see so many family and friends in our church to celebrate with us. Thank you to everyone for helping and supporting us. This week we have been revising our sounds and numerals and completing portfolio tasks. Have a great weekend.

Mrs Alison Newstead & Mrs Julia Jeffery

Year 1

Wow what a week! We enjoyed a beautiful Mass yesterday for St Joseph’s Day followed by some fantastic fun at the pool. Thank you to Mrs Haling for our yummy cupcakes!  Today we celebrated our Kinder class of 2025 with a wonderful Welcome Liturgy. Well done to the Kinder students and their Year 6 buddies. In English we began exploring the informative text, “Eric Carle’s Book of Amazing Animals” by reading an excerpt of the book about sloths and answering some comprehension questions in full sentences. We then used what we learnt about sloths to write our own informative text about sloths. Did you know sloths are the slowest animal on the planet and sleep peacefully for up to twenty hours a day? We also read about cool reptiles like the alligator and the river turtle and wrote some great sentences about them, making sure our sentence began with a noun group (article, adjective, noun). During Maths we used skip counting to find the total number of objects of equal groups and determined the number of groups and the number in each group. Year 1 enjoyed reading the parable of “The Mustard Seed” this week. We learnt that parables were stories Jesus used to teach people about the Kingdom of God. “The Mustard Seed” taught us that the small things we do can make a big difference! We hope your weekend is great.

Mrs Phillipa Haling & Mrs Haylee Barry

Year 2

We kicked off the week celebrating St Patrick’s Day with the residents of Cooee Lodge. They certainly enjoyed our Irish jig and jokes and we made them a bookmark to remember us. A big thank you to our super bakers - Ally’s Mum, Tess’ Mum and Piper’s Nan for cooking delicious cupcakes that we enjoyed at our St Joseph’s Day celebration on Wednesday. Thank you Year 6 for a great time at the pool, we enjoyed grooving along to Greased Lightning and having fun on the biscuits. We have continued to work on narratives about “Where the Wild Things Are” during writing time and drew our own ‘Wild Things’ in Art. We also began planning a narrative about a hiking trip, we brainstormed disasters that could happen that are both interesting and believable. Have a lovely weekend! 

Mrs Nikkola Thomas

Year 3

How are we already in Week 7? The term is flying by. On Monday and Tuesday this week we completed our final Naplan tests. Every student ‘Gave Of Their Best’ and worked hard for the whole time limit. Yesterday was St Joseph's Day. We had the best time at the pool, playing on the tubes and watching Year 6 performing their synchronized swimming display!   Thank you to Billie and Molly’s mums for making our delicious cupcakes. In HSIE we investigated the explorer, Willem Janszoon. We completed an explorer biography on him using our chromebooks to find the information needed. In Grammar we are learning about different sentence types. We have completed a worksheet identifying different types of sentences and will continue to explore these tomorrow.  Congratulations to our Kinders for their beautiful Liturgy today. They all read beautifully! Have a great weekend.

Miss Abigail Dobson

Year 4

What a fun-filled day we had celebrating St Joseph's Day yesterday! Thank you to Amelia Altmann for making our delicious cupcakes. In Science with Miss Dann, the children have been learning about how seeds grow. They are conducting an experiment to see if they are able to grow cress in a plastic bag using damp cotton wool. They are hoping that it sprouts and grows well in the sunlight! During English we are planning a narrative. We are aiming to include all the elements we have learnt during our narrative unit based on “The Thing About Oliver”. In Maths we are exploring chance and data and have gathered data to create our own column graphs. Have a great weekend! 

Mrs Melinda Morris

Year 5

This week, we completed our NAPLAN assessments of Numeracy, Reading and Language Conventions. During Text Types we have begun writing a speech, “All About Me”, which students will present to the class in Week 10. We have started a new focus unit in Maths - 3D shapes and their properties and continue to practise adding and subtracting fractions. In Grammar we are learning about main and subordinate clauses and how they link to compound and complex sentences. Yesterday, we had a wonderful day celebrating St Joseph's Day. During Mass Year 5 were presented with their Junior Joey’s badges and certificates and then it was off to the pool for an action packed afternoon. A big thank you to Charlie, Will, Rose, Maci and their families for providing the delicious cupcakes to eat as part of our celebration. Next week Year 5 will lead the Annunciation Mass, and we hope many family and friends can join us on Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Meichelle Schier

Year 6

Wow! What a busy week it has been! The highlights of the week were definitely St Joseph’s Day on Wednesday – what an awesome, fun day! The synchronised swimming was amazing! The other spectacular event this week was the Kinder Welcome Liturgy. We would like to thank all our friends and family who attended and officially ‘welcomed’ our newest Joey’s family members. We have enjoyed getting to know our buddies a little more and were proud to deliver our individual buddy profiles. In the classroom we have learnt about the sound ‘ow’ ‘o’ ‘ow’ and revised changing words to plurals. Our class novel, “Storm Boy” has come to an end and it is fair to say it was a popular read and lots of us (including Mrs Morrissey) weren’t very thrilled with the ending. On a brighter note, we are excited to start our new novel shortly. Have a safe and wonderful weekend!

Mrs Jess Morrissey & Mrs Donna Colwell

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