Week 2 Term 1 2023

Welcome to 2023, we have had a wonderful start to the school year. Our children have settled beautifully into their new learning environments, beginning to establish relationships with new friends and their teachers. It is lovely to see all our children wearing their St John Bosco School uniform proudly and arriving on time for an 8:45am start.  I have enjoyed welcoming and farewelling children at the front of the school each morning and afternoon witnessing children arriving keen and eager for a new day of learning and leaving the school grounds full of stories about their day. Thank you to all the families who are obeying the parking signage around our school grounds, this will ensure you don’t receive a parking fine from the Council, they have been out in force lately, snapping photos of cars parking illegally.

It was wonderful to see so many of our families at our Welcome Night/AGM earlier in the week. Although it was a warm evening everyone enjoyed the opportunity to come together for the first event of the year. We were delighted to have over 60 adults attend our AGM. It was a great opportunity to socialise while leisurely reading the 2022 School Board Reports. We have our 2022 School Board Reports for you to read on our school website for those who could not make the AGM, https://www.sjb.catholic.edu.au/our-school/school-reports It was lovely to introduce the 2023 School Board members to the community, we welcome two new members Kate West and Amandeep Reel. A big thank you to Kate and Amandeep for accepting their nomination to be part of the decision making process at St John Bosco School.

I am thrilled to introduce our new staff members to the St John Bosco community. We welcome Matthew Scott our new Japanese Teacher and Performing Arts teacher. David Angus will be working with our Year 3-4 children. Louise Marshall is our EALD teacher and is also working with the Year 1-2 children. Charlie Willoughby is also a Year 1-2 teacher, Charlie is very familiar with our community as she has worked in our OSHC. Jenna Weber will work one day a week with our Reception children. Kelli Rose will also work one day a week with the Reception children and one day with our Year 5-6 children! Sarah Graham is leading our Little Boscos Transition Program in Semester One. Mace Van Weenen will assist with Little Boscos, while also being one of our Physical Education Teachers.

Our children will have five specialist lessons each week throughout 2023, we have talented teachers that have expertise in a specialist field. Each specialist lesson is forty five minutes in duration. The specialist lessons include two Physical Education lessons, Science, Performing Arts and Japanese. We look forward to sharing highlights of the children’s learning in their specialist lessons.

A big thank you to the families that sent back their form indicating they can assist with Parents and Friends initiatives throughout the year, without your assistance we cannot have wonderful events for our children and families. We have a Parents and Friends meeting next Wednesday 13th February at 6:00pm in our school staffroom. You are welcome to attend the meeting to help brainstorm other events that will assist in building community at St John Bosco School. We will construct a roster of parent volunteers for each event at this meeting and circulate it to families. Looking forward to seeing you next Wednesday evening.

We finished the week by welcoming 18 Little Boscos into our Transition Program. Sarah Graham and Mace Van Weenen have set up a beautiful learning environment for our newest learners. With confidence we can proudly say our six month transition program assists our children in making the transition into school smooth, with few tears from our Receptions who had their first full day of school last week. These new Receptions have already formed solid relationships with their teacher and their peers, they are familiar and confident with the indoor and outdoor learning environments at St John Bosco and we can credit Little Boscos to this!

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend. Exciting times ahead in 2023!

Kate Turner

It was a pleasure to welcome our children and families back to St John Bosco after what I hope to have been an enjoyable and restful break.

Our biggest problem in the mornings is that we have our children running through the front doors to get to their classrooms – so if this is a sign of joy and anticipation, I think this is going to be a good year!

Last week we celebrated the Feast Day of our patron, St John Bosco.  On Friday the 3rd of February we welcomed our community to attend a Liturgy in the Library dedicated to our namesake.

We look forward to sharing many more community events together this year.

Sacraments Parent Information Night

There is a Sacraments Parent Information night on Wednesday 15th of February at 6:30pm in the school library.  The session will be led by Fr Long Hai, Parish members and both myself and Rita Campbell, APRIM from Tenison Woods School, will be there to support the night.

If you are curious about the Sacramental Program; you are welcome to come and listen. Everyone is WELCOME!

Shrove Tuesday 

As we ready ourselves for the season of Lent; traditionally Shrove Tuesday is an opportunity for us to use eggs and fats before embarking on the Lenten fast and pancakes are the perfect way of using up these ingredients!

We will be serving pancakes at 8:25am in the Courtyard.  Please come in and share a pancake and a chat with our wonderful community members.

Ash Wednesday Mass – ALL WELCOME

Please join us to mark the beginning of Lent at the Ash Wednesday Mass at 9:00am, Wednesday 22nd February – St John Bosco Church.

In peace,

Sara Hart

1-2R have shared their ideas about prayer. Prayer enables us to have a relationship with God and experience Him within everyday life. Prayer is a means of being with God and nurturing our spiritual wellbeing. The children engaged in dialogue about prayer exploring why people pray and the different forms prayer can take. They were also encouraged to contribute their ideas about the beliefs, cultural practices and experiences of prayer within their own religious faiths. Following on from our discussion, each child worked on creating a page for our class prayer book where they represented their own prayers through writing and drawing.

Why do people pray?

It’s a moment when we talk to God. We pray to God if someone is not going very well in hospital and then a miracle might happen – Summer

Then we can pray to God and everyone – Vardhan

We can talk to God and pray to him so he can do stuff for people. He can give people food and lots of stuff – Cooper

We pray to God – Yarshira

We pray to God with respect and love – Sophia

We pray to God if there are any accidents and if the doctors can’t help we can pray to God – Shanaya

God can help us for forgiveness – Johnny

Different forms of prayer…

You can sing a song – Liana

Or you can paint and use it to pray – Shanaya

If you have a picture in a room or on a table, you can use it to pray to God. You can pray in different kinds of countries and life. You have God with you here (pointing to her forehead) – Inayat

You can pray in your heart – Sophia

You can pray at church – Izac

Enrolments

Following the conclusion of a successful year in 2022, we are happy to inform you that Greek language classes will be offered at St John Bosco School for students interested in improving their language skills in Modern Greek in 2023.

Greek classes (R-7) will operate every Tuesday from 3.30pm – 5.30pm.

Online registrations will be open from Monday, 2nd of January 2023.

For more information and enrolments go to www.gocsa.org.au

Step 1: Register your child at http://enrolments.esasa.asn.au/?schoolid=e36

Step 2: Go to www.gocsa.org.au to pay fees.

Step 3: Print a copy of payment and present it to the teacher.

For information on enrolments and to purchase new books visit St John Bosco School in person on Tuesday, 7th of February 2023 from 3.30am – 5.30pm.

Lessons will start the following Tuesday, 14th of February 2023.

Students will need to be registered and fees paid online prior to the first Greek lesson.

For further information or clarifications please contact the Schools Coordinator on 8231 4307 or at himot@gocsa.org.au