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Dear Parents,
Here’s a little story about someone who got a 'rude' awakening and which I found thought provoking.
“There was once a wealthy businessman who invited a group of guests around to his house for a party. As they are standing around the swimming pool, he points out to them that there is a shark swimming in it. ‘I’ll give a million dollars or the hand of my beautiful daughter in marriage, to the man who dares to swim one length of that pool.’ Immediately, there is a splash and he turns around to see a man in his pool, swimming with all his might towards the far end. The swimmer makes it and scrambles out just before the shark gets to him.
The businessman rushes around to congratulate him. ‘Well, my friend, which will it be, a million dollars or the hand of my daughter?’ ‘All I want,’ the man spluttered breathlessly, ‘is the name of the so-and-so who pushed me in!’” Author unknown
If we have had a difficult experience in our life, we might need a 'push' to get things started again. Accepting what’s happened to us will not change our circumstance but it can change our thoughts and feelings. There is no doubt that it takes courage to maintain a focus on the change we need to achieve and it takes wisdom to perceive problems as opportunities for personal development.
Living is a mix of experiencing both paths of life, peace and turmoil, opportunity and disappointment, gain and loss. However, obstacles, setbacks and hard times have the potential to make us the best we can be. “Your trials do not come to punish you, but to awaken you.” Author Uncertain
CATHOLIC SCHOOLS WEEK
Next week is Catholic Schools Week. All Catholic Schools in the Diocese of Wollongong will be celebrating this event with all other Catholic Schools in NSW and the ACT. The purpose of Catholic Schools Week is to increase public awareness of the strengths and distinctiveness of Catholic Schools, while acting as a focus for community celebrations about the good things that occur every day in Catholic Schools. The Kindergarten Welcome BBQ will be held next Monday evening, Shrove Tuesday Pancake Day for children will be held next Tuesday and our Year 6 students will be hosting our very first Assembly for the year next Friday afternoon. Our School Community looks forward to sharing Catholic Schools Week with you.
This year the Se
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I, _________________, am interested in participating in the 2019 Mary Immaculate Parents Lenten Group.
Signed ____________________ Date ___________________
Contact number _____________________________________
CHANGE OF ARRANGEMENTS
I take this opportunity to remind parents to please notify your child’s Classroom Teacher or the Office Staff if there are any changes to going home arrangements of an afternoon for your child. Parents are also reminded to please keep your contact details up to date. These details include phone numbers, addresses, email and emergency contacts. The safety and well being of all students is of paramount importance.
CAR PARK
A reminder to parents that during school hours parking in the Church Car Park is restricted to Staff, Parishioners who attend the 9.00 am Morning Mass, and school deliveries. I ask parents to refrain from entering the car park to drop off and pick up their children. Please be aware that the speed limit around our school is 50kph, and 40kph during the morning and afternoon School Zone hours. Please also be aware of the various parking restrictions around the School. As always the safety of our children is paramount.
WESTERN REGION SWIMMING CARNIVAL
On behalf of our school community I would like to wish our swim team all the best when they compete at the Wollongong Diocese Western Region Swimming Carnival next Tuesday. I am sure the children will do themselves and our School proud.
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
At Mary Immaculate the staff has an ongoing commitment to Professional Learning. The staff benefits from attending in services, in curriculum areas, that assists them in providing quality learning opportunities for the students in their class. The following staff have or will attend Professional Learning and hence will be away from School.
|
Date |
Staff Members |
Professional Development |
|
27 February |
Don Spencer |
Principal's Meeting |
|
27 February |
Rebecca Sidorenko |
National Learning progressions and links to the syllabus |
|
28 February |
Kirsty Simpson |
Lamplighters Spirituality |
|
1 March |
Christopher McInerney |
Nationally Consistent Collection of Data |
Have a great week and let Christ be our way and life.
Don Spencer
Principal
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE FOLLOWING
CHILDREN WHO WILL BE CELEBRATING THEIR
BIRTHDAY THIS WEEK:
Riley G, Chiara M, Elizabeth L, Denzel T, Jessica A,
Sienna C, Jaimee M and Daniela A
I have included an excerpt from an article about 10 things to ask your child about their school day. Hopefully it might be a good way of getting your children talking and give you more insight into their day.
Have you been asking your child everyday “how was school?” and getting the response “good” or “can’t remember”?
- What was the best and worst part of your day?
- What did you do in Science today (art, music etc.)?
- What subject did you enjoy the most today? Why?
- Who made you smile today?
- What was the funniest thing that happened today?
- Did you find anything hard today?
- What games did you play at lunch/recess?
- What did you learn today?
- What’s the nicest thing you did for someone today?
- What are you looking forward to tomorrow?
All of these questions are great conversation starters to help give you more information about your child’s day. Don’t ask every question everyday, just pick one or two and make sure you lead by example and get them to ask you questions too.
Another way to get the family involved is to place all of the above questions into a box and ask everyone to pick one or two at dinner time, they then get to share the answer with everyone.
Mrs Lillian Del Giudice
Assistant Principal
Wednesday 13 March 2019
Wednesday 3 April 2019
1:30p.m. to 2:20pm
In the School Hall.
Kindergarten parents / carers please come along and join us. Meet other parents, learn more about your child’s School. Relax with a cuppa over a friendly chat. Toddlers are most welcome
Congratulations to 3 Gold and 5 Gold, the two classes to earn a Gold Star last week!! Many other classes are close, it is looking better this week! I am again including a reminder of Library days for each class:
Monday – Year 2, Tuesday – Year 6, Year 5,
Wednesday – Year 3, Year 1
Thursday – Year 4, Kinder
Sometimes the lessons need to be changed, you will be notified of the change for that particular week, then it goes back to the regular day unless you are otherwise notified.
Premiers' Reading Challenge: Even though we can’t register yet for the PRC you can start reading the books. It is an easy challenge – students in Years 3 - 6 only need to read 20 books from the PRC list, and students in K, 1 and 2 are required to read 30. The booklists are found at https://online.det.nsw.edu.au/prc/home.html
If you would like a record sheet it can be printed from the website, or the students can collect one from the Library at Lunch 2.
You can search our Library Catalogue to see all the available books on the list – go to oliver.dow.catholic.edu.au/miev, and type ‘premier’ in the search box. You can then select the required level, either K-2, 3-4, or 5-6
Daily Reading: Please remember to try to read with your children for at least ten minutes a day, and encourage your children to read themselves. February 1 was World Read Aloud Day, a day when all around the world people are encouraged to read aloud to each other to focus on the importance of reading aloud and sharing stories. Around the world parents and teachers recognise the value of reading aloud to your children, no matter how old they are. Have a look at the website, http://www.litworld.org/wrad, and even download a book to share with your children.
Read Aloud. Change the World.
Happy reading!
Mrs Sue Bryant - Teacher Librarian
On Friday 22 of February, Cameron Brown of Explore Discover Act came to facilitate a day of LEADERSHIP with Year 6. He explained that if we never step out of our ‘comfort zone’ we will never try anything or do anything. He read a really interesting poem “It’s not the critic that counts” by Theodore Roosevelt. It was about someone saying they could have done better than someone else. We see this type of gossip and criticism all the time in the news as well as in our daily lives. Criticism can have a very negative impact, we need to learn to rise above it.
The day also consisted of lots of group activities that challenged us and made us problem solvers.
One idea I will take away from the day is “Leaders are builders, we don’t fix, we build with others by our side.”
Year 6 can’t wait to put all we learned into action this year.
By Madison Zeiba
6 Gold
“The start of the year is a great time for making changes and improvements to the way you raise kids. The trouble is, our good intentions towards change often become derailed around March, and we return to our default mode of parenting. So nothing much changes from year to year.
Switch on your kids’ strengths
Most of us have been conditioned to focus on what kids can’t do. It’s not your fault. You were trained by teachers and parents who were adept at picking up your poor behaviours, highlighting errors and encouraging you to eliminate your faults. There is a better way. The Positive Psychology movement lead by US-based psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman showed that when we can unearth kids’ strengths we are, in effect, unlocking their true potential for success and happiness. Three elements come together to make a strength, and parents need to be mindful of all three: performance (being good at something); energy (feeling good doing it); and high use (choosing to do it). Rather than locking on to your child’s weaknesses, set your antennae to your child’s strengths.
Balance kids’ extra-curriculur activities
Alongside social media and news events, being busy is now recognised as a major stress for many children and young people. Over-scheduling kids’ lives is a relatively new phenomenon. Go back a couple of generations and a few sports, music lessons and things like scouting movements were the mainstays of after school life for most kids. Now the choice of activities to keep kids busy after school hours is mind-boggling.
Having so many options is wonderful but it does place a new set of pressures on parents. Many complain that family life is like now living in a hamster wheel, always in constant motion, with hardly a time to catch their breath. The cost of loading kids up with scheduled activities is that many don’t get the chance for free play, or simply ‘vegging out’ on the couch. The benefits of all this activity in terms of kids’ skill development, personal growth and broadening social horizons is well-founded. However finding a balance is tricky as every child, like every family is different. Parenting Ideas expert.
Focus on friendships
Friendships are an important part of the road to adulthood for a child or young person. With families shrinking in size peer relationships are now fundamental in providing kids with a sense of belonging, a place to hone their identity and a group upon which they can develop their future relationship skills such as tolerance, empathy and forgiveness.
Friendships can be problematic. Not every child is naturally outgoing and makes friends easily. If your child is like this, but generally seems happy, then there may be no need to do anything. If your child has difficulty forming friendships and is worried by that, then there are many ways to approach this including: encouraging kids to spend one-on-one time with others, making extra-curricular activities fit their interests, and coaching kids to develop friendly behaviours.
Give kids tools to manage anxious moments
Let’s just say it upfront. We don’t have a childhood resilience problem as many teachers and professionals say, but we do have a childhood anxiety problem. A big one! And it’s mostly undetected as community understanding of anxiety is low. It’s our experience at Parenting Ideas that many parents are anxious and they don’t know it, and many children routinely experience anxiety, which goes unrecognised.
Everyone feels worried from time to time, but these feelings pass when the stressful situation has passed. Anxiety occurs when these anxious feelings don’t pass, and happen for no obvious reason. It’s a serious condition that can be managed and minimised with their right tools.
Develop rights of passage
Why are young people, like moths drawn to a flame, attracted to that annual end of school year beach and booze fest known as schoolies? Why do young people who for the best part of a year put their future self first and study hard to achieve best possible school results, put themselves at risk for a solitary week? It’s more than letting their hair down.
In the absence of adult-initiated rights of passage young people will always fill the void and create their own. For many young people schoolies is the right of passage. As a community we’ve struggled for many years to create meaningful rights of passage for young people. Once a young person’s first job, or their twenty-first birthday were significant markers of maturity, offering a sense that they were entering into the adult world. Community changes have largely eradicated these traditional markers, which make it harder for a young person to know when they’ve become an adult.
There are many healthy ways to recognise a young person’s growing maturity and mark his or her journey into adulthood. Many families are now creating their own rituals to mark key events such as the end of primary school, the start of the teenage years or various stages of adolescence. These traditions are now becoming legitimate rights of passage for young people.
Will anything be different this year?
Change and improvement in anything worthwhile generally comes incrementally rather than in one giant leap. We pointed you in the direction that we feel is important for you and your kids to take kids this year. It’s you who has to implement changes and do the work. Through our webinars we’ve made it easy to take that vital first step to better outcomes for kids. Have a great parenting year”.
Building Resilience = equals reduced stress
Resilience is the ability to deal with and bounce back from situations in life that cause us stress. Each of us will experience and deal with stressful situations in different ways and there will be times when we are not resilient. In everyday life we may face many different events than can lead to us feeling overwhelmed; change in routine, new friends, learning, sickness, change in home life can all impact us in different ways. All of us have the ability to develop resilience and employ the coping skills needed to deal with these events.
Children display resilience by being able to age appropriately manage their emotions and express their feelings. They look for solutions to problem, use positive self talk, ask for help when required, and adapt to change. A child who is not coping may shy away from talking about emotions, have outburst or pretend that everything is ok when its not. They may stop interacting with others and give up when they find things difficult. They may engage in negative self talk and lack confidence in themselves.
Remember it is important that children can learn to develop resilience and in doing so can move through life with the ability to take on challenges. We developed resilience through learning social and emotional skills. One of the keys ways children develop these skills is by watching how the adults in their lives handle situations. Modelling behaviour that displays positive ways in managing emotions, making good choice, resolving challenges and healthy interactions with friends and family help children learn these skills. Giving your child a safe space to talk about what is happening for them also allows your child the opportunity to explore healthy ways to work through events in every day life. It can also be helpful to reflect on experiences that your child has gone through, showing them that things can work out and highlight learning that has come from it. Building resilience is a skill for life that can help reduce the stress your child feels when facing challenges.
Rita will be attending the next Parent Connect Meeting 13 March, come and have a coffee and meet our School Counsellor, feel free to ask any question or just have a chat
Rita Maher
School Counsellor
CatholicCARE Wollongong
35a Cordeaux St, Campbelltown 2560
Phone: 02 4628 0044
Rita.Maher@catholiccare.dow.org.au
