Dear Parents and Carers,

A heart-felt Happy Mother’s Day to the mums, step mums, grandmothers, great-grandmothers and special women in our school community. What an opportunity to celebrate, acknowledge and thank these amazing women for what they have done, and continue to do, especially during the past couple of months. Our staff wish you joy and peace on Sunday. 

Prayer for Mother’s Day

Lord, thank you for all mothers.

For the new ones, who endure sleepless nights with babies in their arms.

For the busy ones, who juggle the pressures of home and family life.

For the steadfast ones, who nurture and care for their special vulnerable children.

For the patient ones, who always seek to forgive and engage with their children.

For the persistent ones, who cleverly find new ways to connect with their adult children.

For the mother aunts, who step in to care for nieces and nephews.

For all grandmas, who love and support their precious grandchildren.

For the foster mums who are called to gather and cover the fragile ones.

For the Sunday mums who care for children and lead them in faith.

Thank you Lord for all our beautiful mothers.

Help us to support them and keep them in our prayers.

May you bless them now on this their special day. 

Amen.

How is your family going?

Many families are struggling in various ways at this time. Areas of mild to severe distress can be felt as a sense of the loss of community, or from the loss of work, financial concerns, illness, or the challenge of working and home learning.

I encourage any family to reach out to the school for support. We have mechanisms in place for the pastoral care of our families. If the matter is of a personal or private nature, please email the office and ask for me or your child's teacher to call you.

Uniform

As we begin our transition back to school next week, it is timely to remind families of our Uniform Policy. We have high expectations in regards to uniform and personal grooming. We believe these expectations set the standard for the way in which we also behave and learn. 

We thank parents and carers for supporting these high expectations by ensuring your children wear their correct school uniform and appropriate hairstyles.

Merit Awards and Principal’s Awards

Principal's Awards and Merit Awards will resume at a date to be advised.

Regards,

Kaylene Duffin
Principal

Sacramental Program

Preparation for and celebration of First Reconciliation, Confirmation and First Communion for children is postponed until further notice. 

Online Masses

Each Sunday at 9am AEST, Bishop Brian will be continuing to broadcast Sunday Mass online. You can watch them on the Diocesan YouTube Channel or Facebook page.

Miss Emily Costello, Religious Education Co-ordinator

Scholastic Book Club Catalogue Issue 3 is VIRTUAL!

If you would like to access Issue 3, please use the following link:

Ordering is done online with a credit card at www.scholastic.com.au/LOOP - you will need to register your details (if you haven’t already) and then you can start ordering. Please ensure that you select our school and your child’s class in the “Child Details” section.

Once the orders have been placed, the school will receive the books a couple of weeks later – you will be notified for pick-up.

All orders for this catalogue need to be made by 18 May 2020.

Sue Murray
Library

Notes from your school Counsellor

During these times, you might be noticing more emotional reactions from your children. While this is not unusual in stressful tines, it's important to model and teach emotional regulation to our children.  Emotional regulation is the ability to recognise and manage our own behaviour and reactions to the emotions and situations around us.  For example, to be able to calm down after something exciting or upsetting happens, to be able to focus fully on a task and regulate emotions like frustration or anger.  Following are some tips from NSW School Link newsletter, which have been slightly reworked for your needs.

HOW TO ENCOURAGE SELF-REGULATION IN YOUR CHILD

Monitor your own overwhelming feelings:

If your child is becoming dysregulated, do not join in with them. Monitor your tone, volume, language and body language. They will only dysregulate even more if you are both reacting the same way. Calm is contagious.

Emotion naming:

Have your child name what he is actually feeling and describe how it makes him feel. It can be really hard to do this, but it will be important for your child to emotionally regulate and improve their emotional literacy.

Emotional regulation takes time:

Don’t expect your child to nail it on the first go. It takes time to master the skill and there may be some good days and some bad days at regulating emotions.

Co-regulation:

Provide assistance and support for your child to self-regulate through warm and responsive interactions. Support and model how to regulate thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Allow a space for mistakes to happen.

BEHAVIOUR STRATEGIES: PLAN – PRAISE - MODEL

Plan

If you know your child struggles in certain situations, discuss this before-hand and identify your expectations. For example, “The shop will be busy and noisy.  It's okay if you get frustrated, but if you do, just take a deep breath, and tell me so I can help."

Praise

When your child does manage to self-regulate, offer praise.  For example, “I know you wanted to get out of there, and you really managed your frustration today, I am so proud of you."

Model

Demonstrate when you have self-regulated and tell your child. For example, “I was frustrated, but I'm glad I didn't get angry because I might have ruined the day for us”.