Term 1 Week 10 Monday 27th March 2023

Our Weekly Prayer

From the Principal

Key dates for the Diary

Term 1

Monday 27th March Young Leader's Day

Tuesday 28th March School Photo Day

                                    Holy Week Liturgy at St. Colman's Church @ 12:15

                                   12:45pm- Official blessing and unveiling of our Undercover Area and Artwork followed by a BBQ lunch- ALL INVITED

Wednesday 29th March Lions Eye Health Program FREE screenings

Monday 3rd April Jane Lee starts Long Service Leave

                                      AFL Positive Start Clinic- Children to wear Sports uniform

                                       MRC Taster Day- Seniors to attend

Tuesday 4th April District Aths in Camperdown

Wednesday 5th April- Foundation children attend school on Wednesday

 Thursday 6th April Last day of Term 1- Assembly, Will's Great Shave, Easter raffle drawn and Easter Egg hunt @ 12:15

Tuesday 25th April ANZAC Day

Wednesday 26th April First day of Term 2

Monday 1st- Friday 5th May-Meals on Wheels

School Closure Dates 2023

Term 2: Monday 24th April (Compliance)

                  Thursday May 4th Warrnambool Cup Holiday

Term 3: Monday 14th August (Catholic Social Teaching) 

                  Tuesday 22nd August (Literacy)

Helpers Needed

We are calling for voulnteers to help out in the following ways:

1. Tuesday March 28th; help out at the BBQ at 1pm. Serving food (15-30 minutes) and cleaning up afterwards (15-30 mins)

2. Early next week we need several people to help 'basket up' our Easter donations into prize packs. Depending on how many people help out this should only take 30-60 minutes, most likely one afternoon after school or whatever is convenient for the volunteers.

                                                        3. We are rostered on for Meals on Wheels for the week Monday 1st -Friday 5th May. We would love some new volunteers to help with this. We will try to partner new helpers with old helpers so that you can do it together and enable new people to learn the ropes from veteran helpers!!

Please contact the office if you are able to help out.

School Photos TOMORROW

Please remember that school photos are being taken tomorrow. Children are to be in full summer school uniform, including navy socks and black shoes. See photos below for what our uniform should look like.

If you haven't already returned your child's Photo Envelope, please remember to send it with them in the morning.

Holy Week Liturgy and School Celebration

Tomorrow, Tuesday 28th March, everyone is invited to share with our school community in a couple of special celebrations. We will begin by participating in a Holy Week service with Fr. Gary at the church from 12:15pm. We will then return to school and Fr Gary will officially bless and 'open' our Undercover Area. We will also unveil the commissioned artwork that the children completed last year with local Indigenous artist Emma Stenhouse. We will acknowledge and thank Emma for her help creating this magnificent painting and we have also invited representatives from Acciona to attend so that we can thank them for their grant that made this project possible. 

We will then enjoy a BBQ lunch together. It would be great to see as many members of our school community as possible there to join in this celebration of some of our most recent projects.

We will require some help with the BBQ on the day, feeding everyone and then cleaning up afterwards. So if you are around and willing to help just shout out and we will find a quick job for you to do!

2023 Sacramental Program

Our Lady of Mercy Parish is implementing some changes to our Parish based Sacramental program that will take effect this year.

As of this year, all three sacraments (Confirmation, Reconciliation and First Communion) will be celebrated by children in Year 3. However, our Sacramental Program has been greatly affected by Covid-19 for the past two years. This means that there will be children in Years 4, 5 and 6 who will also need to celebrate some, or all, of these three sacraments.

A COMPULSORY parent/carer meeting will be held on Wednesday 26th April at either 3:30 in Mortlake or 7pm at St. Thomas’ Terang, so please keep this date free. More information will be sent to families this week.

All children who have been baptised are welcome to participate in the Sacramental Program. If this is something you think you may be interested in, but your chilo isn't Baptised yet contact Janet to discuss your options. We have had several children baptised during school masses in the past and this may be something you wish to consider.

Unwanted School Uniforms

At the end of last year we were looking for a solution as to what we should do with our old school uniforms. Jane has signed up to a company called ‘Wornup’ who collect old school uniforms and put them to good use for schools in need.  If you have any of the old, out dated uniforms at home please drop them off at school so they can be passed on to this company.

We are also keen to start up a Second Hand Uniform cupboard at school for families who are currently suffering financial hardship to access. If you have any uniforms or shoes that your children have outgrown and that you no longer need, please consider donating them so they can be given to families in need within the school community.

Program Support Group meetings (PSGs)

Families of children who are on a Personalised Learning Plan are invited to attend a Program Support Group (PSG) Meeting on April 4th or 5th. These 20- minute meetings are held during the school day and will be with your child's classroom teacher and Janet (as Learning Diversity Leader). 

Please book your interview online through PAM.

Lions Eye Health Program (LEHP)

On Wednesday March 29th, we welcome back members of the Warrnambool Lions Club who will be conducting FREE vision screening tests.

​Members of the Lions club have been specifically trained to perform 4 vision screening assessments including:

1. Visual Acuity - using a Lea 3m -15 line Symbol Chart
2. Colour Vision - using a Quick 6 - Basic Colour Screening Book
3. Depth Perception - using a Stereo Fly Screening Tool
4. Spot Vision Screener - State of the art portable machine designed to screen for Myopia (near sightedness), Hyperopia (far sightedness), Astigmatism (blurred vision), Anisometropia (unequal refractive power), Strabismus (eye misalignment) and Anisocoria (unequal pupil size). 

All children in Foundation, Year 3 and Year 6 will have the opportunity to be tested. However, if your child isn't in these grades and you have concerns about their vision, please complete the attached form and return it to school ASAP and they will be screened also.

Easter Raffle

Thank you to all the families that have donated something that will be given as a prize in the raffle and sold your raffle tickets. If you are yet to bring in your donation, please do so by the end of this week. All raffle tickets need to be returned to school by Wednesday April 5th.

The raffle will be drawn at our final school assembly for the term (Thursday April 6th at 12:15)

Project Compassion

During the Ash Wednesday mass, Father Gary spoke of the importance of using Lent as a time to help those less fortunate than ourselves. He encouraged us to get behind Caritas' Project Compassion. As a school we have Project Compassion boxes in all of our classrooms to encourage children to donate money and we will also be supporting Project Compassion through several fundraising initiatives. 
One of these ideas is to sell Zooper Doopers each day for 50c. Our Year 6 school leaders will be selling them daily and all money raised will go into the Project Compassion box.

2023 Footy Tipping Competition

It is not too late to jump on board and support this community project.

Our Footy Tipping Competition is up and running and we 36 registered entrants.

Top spot is highly contested and currently we have two people sitting up there on 13 points

Already we have had some major upsets and the wheels have already fallen off the Cat's Wagon!!

This year we will be running the comp through the ESPN app/website. Please hop onto www.footytip.com.au to join the "St. Colman's 2023" competition.  Entry fee is $20 adults and $10 school aged children.

If you haven't already done so, please pop into the office to pay for your entry.

School Advisory Council

We would like to introduce you to our SAC members for 2022-2023.  Lily Convery-Oborne (Chair), Jo Wallis, Alison Greig, Michelle Lehmann, Jo Dolling, Zion Palmer, Sophie and Nick Allen, Rachel Baulch, Rosie O’Connor (School rep), Janet Cain (Principal) and Fr. Gary Jones (Parish Rep)

These people are the voice of the parish and parents in the school. If you have any questions or anything that you would like raised please contact one of these people.

The SAC meets twice a term and we thank these people for agreeing to be a part of this group that provides an essential link between the school and its families. 

We held our second meeting for the yeasr last Thursday and discussed;

- Foundation Transition Program to school. The SAC was asked to provide feedback on the extended Orientation Days offered  to our newly enroled students at teh end of last year. The board agreed that this was a well run program. The children were engaged and familiar with the environment. The additional transition days were well reviewed by people outside of the school community. It showed that the school cares and clearly made an additional effort to ensure a good transition for their children. The additional information that all classes sent home was also well reviewed and provided a great sense of clarity for how each classroom will run. Janet has suggested an information session to take place before the kinder children were picked up on their transition days. Parents are coming in anyway and this would provide additional time for clarity. 

- The SAC began initial discussions into organising our annual major fundraiser, The Major Raffle. Discussions were held about getting more people out into the community to sell tickets. It was agreed that Friday lunchtimes at Clarke's, Saturday morning at Bate's, Sunday Community Market and regular stints at the Mortlake Saleyards were key times for selling lots of tickets. A roster will be created where all families will be nominated a time slot where they will be responsible for selling tickets at one of the community locations listed above. If they are unable to make that time they need to organise a 'swap'. The raffle will be launched mid term 2 and will be drawn at our Trivia Night.

- Annual Trivia Night will be held this year on  FRIDAY JULY 14TH.

- Mortlake local, Marie Varley, has offered to donate her time to work with the students in regenerating the school community garden. The particulars are still to be confirmed, but it is likely to be a fortnightly occurance. When dates have been set, a call out will also go on the Parish Newsletters for any Parishioners who may like to join in and help out.

- Mercy Regional College will be welcoming French Language Assistant, Lola, next term. Lola will work with teachers and students on authentic conversations in French. Lola will also spend some time at our school each week. 

-Lunch Orders- Lindsay from Clarke’s has mentioned the difficulty for her being able to have staff leave the cafe in the lunch rush to drop off lunch orders especially when there are only one or two at times. She is very willing to work with us on this but wondered if the days that lunch orders are provided could be cut down. The board agrees that the lunch order days should be cut back to Monday and Friday as of term two.

Annual award winners display in foyer- Janet showed the draft of an honour board for the St Colman’s Welcome, Learn and Care awards that were introduced at the end of last year. The board liked the design of this and agreed that the order should go ahead.

Changes to Sacramental Program and end of year mass- Father Gary is implementing some changes to the Sacramental Program as listed above in the Newsletter. 

A couple of new ideas were discussed. One was introducing a monthly Early Years session, where young families will be invited to bring their pre school children into school for a two hours play based session utilising school facilites such as the Art Room, playground and sports equipment Undercover Area. Lily Convery-Oborne is keen to lead the development of this community engagemnet project. 

We will also investigate the possibility of creating a bike track around the outside of our school grounds. We will look into the feasibility of implementing a complete biking program including bike track design and construction, a fleet of bikes, helmets and bike storage solutions. We believe this initiiative can assist in reversing the nationwide trend of inactivity and inspire a fitter, healthier and more engaged generation. 

If you have any feedback or suggestions about any of the above items, please reach out to one of the SAC members to discuss. 

Each week we will profile a member of our SAC and this week we will profile Sophie Allen.

I’m Soph. I’m Mum of Jack, grade 1 and Charlotte grade 4. We live on a farm about 20km north of the school. Nick works on the farm full time and Charlotte and Jack love to help on the weekends and school holidays. Our favourite time of year is in the spring when all the lambs and calves are born. Last year we bottle fed 3 calves and 1 lamb.  I work full time as a orthopaedic theatre nurse rep. I drive to Warrnambool, Geelong and Ballarat to work in theatre.  I am extremely happy we have after school care now! I joined the SAC as I was always curious and asking questions about what was discussed…. And Lily convinced me!! I have learnt a lot about how important it is for us parents and caregivers to be involved and be part of the conversations and decision making of the school. I thought most of the decisions were carried out without us but not the case. It is so important to be part of it and working with Lily and Janet has been wonderful.  I hope to keep making this school a wonderful place for our gorgeous kids to be. Lots of exciting things coming up, so please sing out if you want to be a part of the SAC. We would love to have as many as we can.

Award Winners

Each week during our Friday assemblies, our staff award students who have achieved great things in the past week. This year we are inviting all parents and friends to attend these weekly assemblies which take place at approximately 2:45pm each Friday in the Undercover Area.

🎂 🥳 Happy Birthday 🥳 🎂

It looks like being one long week of celebrations in the Junior Room! Happy Birthday to Patrick, James and Nora. We hope you enjoy your special day!

MRC O'Keefe Campus Open Afternoon

TMFNC Auskick and Net Set Go

Out of School Care

A reminder that during 2023 we have access to Out of School Care, supplied by TheirCare, at Mortlake College. Registration is made via the TheirCare website. https://theircare.com.au/

Many of our students have already begun to use this program and the feedback from both parents and children has been overwhelmingly positive. Everything has run seamlessly so far, so if you are considering sending your children to Before or After Shool Care, you can be assured that this program is extremely easy to utilise.

Their Care also offers School Holiday Programs. See flyer below for some fun holiday activites to keep your kids busy!!

Feel free to contact the office if you have any questions about accessing TheirCare or use the contact details at the bottom of the flyer to contact them directly.

Junior Girls Footy Come and Try night

St. Colman's School is a Child Safe Community

Child Safety Officers

Janet Cain and Rosie O'Connor are our Chuild Safety Officers.

Contact them on:

Phone: 55992285 or 0490539167

Email: jcain@scmortlake.catholic.edu.au or roconnor@scmortlake.catholic.edu.au

Child Safe Standard 5: Equity is upheld and diverse needs are respected in policy and practice.

In complying with Child Safe Standard 5, St. Colman's must, at a minimum, ensure:

• develop and endorse a policy statement or curriculum document that details the strategies and actions it will take to uphold diversity and equity, that:
  • makes sure school staff and volunteers understand the diverse circumstances of students, and how to provide support, and respond to vulnerable students
  • gives students, staff, volunteers and the school community access to information, support and complaints processes in ways that are culturally safe, accessible and easy to understand
  • pays particular attention to the needs of:
    • students with disability
    • students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
    • students who are unable to live at home
    • international students
    • lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender diverse, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) students
    • Aboriginal students and provides and promotes a culturally safe environment for them.

NCCD

Please read the attached information sheet for parents regarding NCCD.