ABOUT - Term 2 Week 1 - 1 May 2025

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

The will of God is the seed of our dreams....ever growing with possibility and longing to leap forward, scattering new and surprising blessings throughout our everyday reality.

~VALE~ POPE FRANCIS

During the school holidays, we were saddened to hear of the passing of Pope Francis at the age of 88 years.  Please see below messages from Executive Director of Schools, Christina Trimble and Bishop Michael McKenna.

Message from Christina Trimble, Executive Director of Schools
Our Holy Father was a fine age and had been very ill for much of this year, however, his appearance outside the Vatican on Easter Sunday had brought much joy to those gathered there and gave us hope that he may be able to lead us for some time to come.

Pope Francis gave the Church and the broader community hope. His concern for the environment in Laudato Si, and his call for brotherhood in Fratelli Tutti spoke to all. He had a great gift to be able to touch the hearts of those within and beyond the Church.

Pope Francis led by example and as shepherd he knew “the smell of the sheep”. His concern and compassion was always for the human dignity of those who live on the margins of society. His words were lived as he reached out to prisoners, to the poor and the disabled, and to those who were impacted by the conflicts that plague our world.

I am reminded of his call to us all in this Jubilee year: “We must fan the flame of hope that has been given us and help everyone to gain new strength and certainty by looking to the future with an open spirit, a trusting heart and far-sighted vision”.

As we mourn the loss of our much-loved Pope, we pray that God will welcome him into his loving embrace. May he rest in peace.

Message from Bishop Michael McKenna, Bishop of Bathurst
When I heard that Pope Francis had died, my first prayer was from Matthew’s Gospel: “Well done, good and faithful servant! …Come and share your master’s happiness!”

Just a day before he died, the Pope left his convalescence to come to St Peter’s square and bless the Church and the world on Easter Sunday. Faithful to the end.

Much has been written and said about this consequential papacy and the man who served in it.

For now, let us pray for our brother, that the risen Lord will carry him to the common resurrection. And may his prayers join with ours that the cardinals will be guided by the Holy Spirit as they prepare to call a new Bishop of Rome.

WELCOME BACK!

Welcome to a new school term.  Hopefully everyone had an enjoyable and relaxing break and we look forward to another fruitful and fun-filled term.

ANZAC DAY

Once again the students of our school made us feel very proud when they participated in the ANZAC Day March last Friday. Thank you very much to those students and staff who represented the school so well. It is a very important day and I am sure everyone appreciated your participation.  Lest We Forget

POLDING WINTER SPORTS TRIALS

We wish Katie Colwell and Jakirah McKenzie the best of luck when they compete in the NSW Catholic Primary Schools Polding Soccer Winter Sports Trials being held in Bathurst tomorrow, Friday, 2 May. It is a fantastic achievement to reach this high level of competition. Congratulations Katie and Jakirah. 

DIOCESAN CROSS COUNTRY

Best of luck to our competitors in the Diocesan Cross Country event which will be held next Tuesday, 6 May in Coolah. Our competitors include: Sam Luckie, Thomas Colwell, Samson Starr, Piper van den Ende, Grace Johnston, Caroline Taylor, Annabelle Foran, Jack Howard, Liam Cosier, George Taylor, Aaron Robin, Hannah Peart, Harper Wykes, Mary Lesslie, McKenzie Harvey, Charlie Cruickshank, Rose Howard, Katie Colwell and Alice Peart.

YEAR 1 MOTHER'S DAY LITURGY

Year 1 will celebrate a Mother's Day class Liturgy next Thursday, 8 May at 10:30 a.m. in St Joseph's Church. Everyone is welcome to attend. Please bring a plate to share for morning tea which will follow the Liturgy. 

SACRAMENTAL PARENT MEETING

A Sacramental Parent Meeting for all parents and children in Years 3 and 6 who will be receiving the sacraments of First Communion and Confirmation this year, will be held at school next Thursday, 8 May at 6:00 p.m. During this meeting Fr Nam will explain the significance of these sacraments and lead parents and children in a prayer session. We will also outline the programs that we will teach at school and organise how the days will run.  All parents and children in Years 3 and 6 are welcome to attend. 

MOTHER'S DAY STALL

Each year parents are asked to donate gifts for the Mother's Day Stall.  This gives the children the opportunity to purchase a gift for their mothers and grandmothers that they have selected themselves, whilst raising money for our P&F Association.  The stall will be held next Friday, 9 May and we are extremely short of gifts at this stage.  Please support this P & F fundraiser by donating some gifts for our stall! Your contributions can be sent in at any time and left at the school office.  If your gifts could be wrapped in clear cellophane, that would be greatly appreciated.  Prices at the stall range from $1.00 to $5.00 and we aim to have enough gifts for each child to purchase at least two gifts.

MOTHER'S DAY RAFFLE

In conjunction with Mother's Day Stall there will be a raffle with three hampers up for grabs!  Tickets are $2.00 each and a book of 5 tickets was sent home with each family on Tuesday. The raffle will be drawn at the conclusion of the stall on Friday, 9 May.  Thank you Morgan Adams for organising the prizes for the raffle.

ENROL NOW FOR KINDER 2026

We are now taking enrolments for our Kinder class of 2026.  If you have a child ready to start school next year, please call in and pick up an enrolment pack or phone the office and we can email a pack to you.

SCHOOL UNIFORM

Children may wear either summer or winter school uniform for the beginning of this term. It's a personal choice, depending on the weather. 

LIFE EDUCATION VAN - HEALTHY HAROLD MERCHANDISE

To coincide with the Life Education Van visiting our school during Week 4 this term, Healthy Harold merchandise is available to pre-order for any families wishing to do so, by visiting https://bit.ly/haroldshop Instructions on how to order are below.  Orders need to be placed by TUESDAY, 20 MAY and items will be delivered to your child during Healthy Harold's visit to school in Week 4.

PRIMARY SPORT - TERMS 2 & 3

Sport for the primary students will be held on Fridays in Terms 2 and 3. Therefore all Years 3-6 students will need to wear their sports uniforms on a Friday. Infants sport will remain on Thursday. 

PORTFOLIOS

All children took home their Term 1 Portfolios for the holidays. Hopefully you have been able to look at the children's work. Could all the portfolios be returned to the school as soon as possible so we can start putting the Term 2 work into them. 

GILGANDRA FILM FESTIVAL 2025

As mentioned last term, families from our school have been invited to attend the Gilgandra Film Festival tomorrow Friday, 2 May to view the children's documentaries, "This Is My Friend".  The evening will be held at the Gilgandra Shire Hall from 5:00 p.m.  Artistic Director, Simon Target, will introduce each film and will be available for a Q&A afterwards.  Entry to this event is FREE and a light supper will be served.

To purchase tickets to the main screening of the Gilgandra Film Festival, this Saturday, 3 May, please click on the below link.  Tickets are $30.00 each and include entry, all films and a supper provided by the CWA. Tickets will also be sold on the door.  Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and film screening starts at 7:00 p.m. sharp.

For more information and to RSVP for catering purposes, please contact Sue Armstrong on 0427 359 926 or email gilgandraff@gmail.com.

ELECTION 2025

Catholic Education asked the Australian Labor Party, Liberal National Coalition, the Australian Greens and key Independent candidates to provide their response to our priorities for Catholic education:

•  Funding certainty for Catholic schools.
• Support for faith-based schools.
• Sector-neutrality. Addressing disadvantage.
• Early childhood education

Overall, they scored:
 Australian Labor Party
 Liberal National Coalition
  Australian Greens
? Independents (supported by Climate 200)

 For full  responses, please read through the below scorecard.

FOOD HANDLER TRAINING LINK FOR CANTEEN VOLUNTEERS

Please click on the below link to undertake the Food Handler Training required to be completed by all of our canteen volunteers. 

www.foodauthority.nsw.gov.au/training/food-handler-basics-training 

WHAT'S ON.....for the next 2 weeks at St Joey's

CLASSROOM NEWS

Kindergarten

Welcome back to Term 2! It has been lovely to see all the smiling faces return to school and hear all about the exciting things everyone did over the holidays. We shared stories about trips away, spending time with family and special activities we enjoyed. During Literacy we started reading “Mrs Wishy-Washy” and are loving the fun adventures of the characters. In Maths we explored the concept of ‘half’ and practised dividing objects and shapes into two equal parts. We also began our new Science topic, ‘Staying Alive’, where we talked about living things and how we can care for our pets. Mrs Jeffery has asked that each student bring in or email a photo of their pet to help us with our discussions. To finish the week, we used our creativity to make colourful emus inspired by the book, “Edward the Emu”. The children worked hard to add bright colours and fun details to their emus and they look amazing! We’re excited to continue our learning in Term 2 and look forward to another busy and fun-filled term ahead!

Mrs Alison Newstead & Mrs Julia Jeffery

Year 1

Welcome back to school for Term 2. We hope you had a very enjoyable holiday and the happiest of Easters. We have hit the ground running this term preparing for our Liturgy in celebration of our mothers next Thursday. We sent an email during the holidays requesting a photo of mums and their child/ren. Many of these have already been sent in but if not please email a photo to p.haling@bth.catholic.edu.au or send in a hard copy and we will scan and return it. This photo will be only shown during a presentation during our Liturgy. During English this week we read “The Good Egg” and identified the character traits of this character. We then had to create our own character from an inanimate object and give it some traits. We planned and composed a story about the character we created. Some characters included a brave pencil tin, an adventurous apple, a naughty silo bag and a fierce sword. We learnt about patterns in Maths by describing patterns, creating patterns and using letters to describe the core of a pattern such as AB, ABC and AAB. We also used dice dots to make number sentences that add to 10. We hope everyone has a great weekend!

Mrs Phillipa Haling & Mrs Haylee Barry

Year 2

Welcome back to another busy term. I hope everyone had a lovely break. Year 2 has been straight back into the routine and working hard. During Maths we have been describing the position of objects using the terms ‘left and right’, ‘above and below’ etc. Children have also been learning to give accurate directions to people to finish at a certain point. We have been manipulating 2D and 3D shapes and learning how to describe them. We began our new Literacy unit by reading the story, “Nian, the Chinese New Year Dragon”, which is an adapted Chinese legend. A special thank you to those children who were able to join us for the ANZAC Day Mass and March on Friday. This was such a special day for us to honour our veterans and we have been discussing this in class. Children completed reading and sight words this week for homework, Maths will begin next week. Enjoy the weekend! 

Mrs Nikkola Thomas

Year 3

Welcome back everyone! It has been fantastic seeing everyone's smiling faces again. We have swung back into our normal routine starting with Spelling and Grammar. This week in Grammar we are learning about proper and common nouns. We listened to a fun song about the differences between them and completed a range of worksheets to help us identify them. In our Literacy unit, we started our new novel, “Wandi”. We started by discussing the importance of dingos in the Australian ecosystem and what impacts they are making on Australia. We also explored the textual concept of argument and authority through this novel. In Maths we are learning all about measurement. We had lots of fun making our own one metre ruler using paper and then measuring various things. In Art, we started a new artwork inspired by Zoe Ingram, the illustrator of “Wandi”. We are focussing on warm and cool colours and I’m positive they will look amazing. Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

Miss Abigail Dobson

Year 4

Welcome back to Term 2! It sounds like everyone enjoyed the Easter break. We have had a great start to the term with all students settling easily back into our routine. In English we are finishing our Informative text unit. We have explored timelines as a text feature and created our own timeline of ‘NASA Adventures’. We have also learnt about hybrid texts - when a text has more than one genre, ie informative and entertaining. We read a hybrid text, “Meanwhile Back On Earth” which was an imaginative story yet also contained facts. During History we have learnt about the supplies which were brought out on the First Fleet ships and the reasons why they were needed. Have a lovely weekend!                                        

Mrs Melinda Morris

Year 5

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. Thank you to all the students who attended the ANZAC Day March and ceremony. Your participation was greatly appreciated. This week, we are looking at different types of nouns in Grammar and are endeavouring to draw the nets of a variety of 3D shapes in Maths. It was great to hear everyone’s holiday news, and during Text Types, we are now writing about our holiday adventures. In Digital Technology, we are investigating QR (quick response) codes -  what we use them for and how we can create our own QR code. Our new Science unit this term is ‘Out of this World’ where we will explore the planets, stars and other elements that exist in our solar system. Vincent Van Gogh is our inspirational artist this term and we are creating a collaborative artwork of his world famous painting, ‘Starry Night’. Have a great weekend.

Mrs Meichelle Schier

Year 6

Welcome back to our Year 6 students and their families! We hope you had a wonderful holiday break. We have hit the ground running in all aspects of school life, that’s for sure! We have wrapped up our 3D Spatial Structure Maths unit, with a focus on cubic metres and volume. We had quite some fun making our one metre square with paper and getting all our measurements accurate. We challenged ourselves and made a cubic metre using poles and connectors. In English we have started our new Literature unit which includes the novel, “Rabbit Soldier Angel Thief” by Katrina Nannestad. We will focus on characterisation and the use of different language features. In Grammar we revised adjectives and put them to use in our writing task. During Religion we will continue learning about ‘Easter: A Time to Celebrate Hope in the Risen Lord’. We wish you all a productive, happy and healthy term!

Mrs Jess Morrissey & Mrs Donna Colwell

ALTAR SERVERS

CANTEEN ROSTER

NOTICEBOARD