I hope everyone had a wonderful long weekend and spent time with families and friends in the beautiful sunshine. Last Sunday we celebrated the very significant feast of Pentecost, this feast is a time signified by hope and renewal. The apostles feeling frightened and alone after the crucifixion of Jesus their leader. They gathered together in community trying to support each other in their time of fear, it was at this time that together they experienced the strength and hope of the spirit of God which we refer to as the ‘Holy Spirit’, symbolised by fire and wind. The spirit appeared and strengthened the community with the courage to speak and take action to bring about Jesus’ message of love for each other above all else. In these unsettled times in our world with an alarming increase in division among religions and peoples of diverse cultures, inspired by the spirit of the father it is our mission, as individuals to embrace and include others into our lives.

Over the past week, I have had the pleasure of meeting many new families as they present their children for enrolment at our beautiful school St Mary’s. What a privilege to speak with these parents about their hopes and dreams for their children. To experience the joy and personalities of these little ones and the unconditional love that their parents have for them makes this one of my favourite tasks as Principal. I thank these families for trusting St Mary’s to provide a school community that is nurturing, safe and brimming with opportunities for their child. We look forward to welcoming them as a group for our ‘Transition to School Playgroup’ in Term 3.

Last Friday, we held our Athletics Carnival at Frog’s Holla. The carnival was a great
community events with so many parents, grandparents and friends of the school gathering to cheer on our athletes. The carnival was organised so wonderfully by Mrs Gabrielle Peters and her band of parent/ staff helpers. The idea of the day was to give all children a go at all the varied events including high jump, long jump, shotput and running events. The house colour teams were well represented by many students going to great lengths to wear their house colours in some wonderfully creative outfits. We were blessed with a beautiful sunny day and a band of our wonderful P and F doing a roaring trade with their sausage sizzle and cake stall. An enormous thanks to everyone who contributed to make this day such a great success. 

It is with some sadness that we inform our parents of the resignation of Mrs Siobhan Bailie from her Year 2 position at the end of Term 2. Siobhan has made the decision to devote more time to her family and young children, Siobhan has been a highly respected and valued teacher and member of staff and will be sorely missed by all in our school community but particularly Year 2 and Mrs Valentini. We wish Mrs Bailie and her family every success for their future. We will be holding interviews shortly to fill this position.

This week we are happy to welcome Mrs Mary Hazell back to St Mary’s after an extended time of leave. I have not had the pleasure of working directly with Mary but understand the high esteem in which she is held by the staff of St Mary’s particularly in the area of Literacy.  Mary will recommence her Literacy support role this week for two days, sharing this role with Mrs Katy Reid who has been working in this position so capably in Mary’s absence.

Our school has also been fortunate to be involved in so many arts opportunities lately, next week is the local writers’ ‘Storyfest ‘ with our children having opportunity to meet and work with many renown childrens’ authors including Leigh Hobbs, and experiencing events involving Harry Potter and Grug for our Kinders. A big thanks to Mrs Ann-Marie Wilson for her passion and organisation of these experiences for our school in our local community.  We are also very thrilled to have eight of the twelve finalists in the writing competition being St Mary’s students. We are thrilled to announce that Hugo Perry-Dickenson, Oscar Perry-Dickenson and Elise Proctor have all made it through to the short list, please enjoy their stories in our newsletter!

I believe that children have a sense of belonging when they wear their uniforms and this was evident in our beautiful verse speaking choirs at the Shoalhaven Eisteddfod last week.  The joy that was evident in the poetry recitals was a credit to our students and their dedicated teachers, congratulations again to the Year 1 choir who are undefeated in their verse speaking to date, having taken first place two years in a row.

As the cold weather is upon us in a large way last week, I urge parents to ensure that their children are coming to school dressed in full school uniform with jumpers and jackets clearly labelled. These coats and jumpers are expensive items for families and we want to ensure that they do not go astray, we cannot guarantee that children will not leave them laying around but we can say they will be easy to return when they are labelled.

We wish Eden and Audrey Sakora best of luck as they travel to Eastern Creek for the
Combined Catholic School Cross Country on Friday 14th June.  We know they will do St Mary's and their family proud. Go Girls!!!

I look forward to seeing you around our school this week.

Yours in partnership

Laurinda Nelson

Principal