Dear Parents and Carers

As we enter into the final week of Term 1 we begin to prepare for Holy Week within the school community. This is traditionally the week leading up to Easter. This year Easter will fall in the middle weekend of the holidays so as a school we will be commemorating the events of Holy Week each morning with a small liturgy in the Hall. This morning at 9:10 am, Year 1 and 2 have lead the liturgy of Palm Sunday, the welcoming of Jesus into Jerusalem the crowds celebrated the arrival Jesus and waved palms in his honour. This begins Jesus’ journey towards The Last Supper on Holy Thursday, Crucifixion on Good Friday and finally the joy of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. It is these events that define the person of Jesus and show us the ultimate example of love and forgiveness. Please feel free to join us this week in the hall at 9:10 for the Holy Week commemoration.

On Tuesday we will be holding an Open Day at St Mary’s. We welcome our new and existing families to come and visit our school seeing all the wonderful things we have to celebrate as a community. We will begin with our Holy Week Liturgy in the hall at 9:10am. Then at 9:30am, you are welcome to Open Classrooms and finally an address and questions in the school hall. Thanks to the P and F for providing Morning tea on the day and our year 6 leaders who will be showing new families around our school.

Since our last newsletter we have had our school Cross Country, which was a wonderful event in glorious sunshine. It was very impressive to see the effort and perseverance that every student put into their event.

There was also lots of parents present to enjoy the races and the fantastic cheering from all the colour house teams. During the cross country our new play equipment also arrived on the truck so thank you to our parents who were on hand to unload 600kgs of beautiful equipment ready to be installed very soon. A big thanks also to Mrs Gabby Peters for her fantastic co-ordination of the event and to Mr Brent Harding for stepping in at the last minu7te to run the event.

During the holidays we will be marking two very significant community and religious events; Good Friday, Blessing of The Fleet and ANZAC Day. We are asking for any students available to support the school presentations on Good Friday and

ANZAC Day, a note has gone home and we would love our school to be well represented by as many students as possible ‘giving back’ through service to our community. Please try to ensure that you try as families to observe Holy Week and the Easter season by attending Parish services. (Details are in the Newsletter)

Finally, I would like to thank the school community for their enormous welcome to Mrs Valentini and I this year. We are blessed to have become a part of such a caring community, the students of St Mary’s personify the Christian values of ‘caring for the other’. This means that the students treat each other as members of a family, they care for each other and support each other. We have been so heartened by the strong enthusiasm and dedication of our P and F under the President Jodie Lee’s guidance seeing the introduction of Breaky Club and Soul Food this term, both wonderful community building opportunities. The school community is also so fortunate to have such dedicated staff from the Office, to classroom support and teachers, everyone at St Mary’s works as a team with our students at the centre.

I would like to wish everyone a holy and happy Easter, may all of our families be safe and enjoy the company of each other over the holiday period. We look forward to seeing everyone back in Term 2.

Yours in partnership

Laurinda Nelson