Disco & Working Bee

My sincere thanks to those who helped out at the disco and the working bee and made both events a great success. I do appreciate staff who come along outside hours to help with disco supervision and lending a hand in the working bee. I think its great for our students to see that staff and parents care for our school and give up precious time to help it look its best. I hope people are appreciative of all the work in filling in holes in the car park on a hot afternoon.

About $750 was raised at the disco! Our first fundraising goal for 2024 is to buy some new water coolers for the school & replace the aging bubbler system we have.

School Counsellor

I welcome Ash Venkat our new school counsellor. Information about how to access the school counsellor is later the newsletter.

New Youth Minister

Next week we will have a new Youth Minister on staff working one day a week. His name is Michael Bourke and Year 6 had a chance to meet him already at their retreat day last Friday. I am sure you will make him welcome.

School Community Council (SCC)

Community Council is in the process of transition to a new structure following a review by the Catholic Education Office. At present we have an Interim Council running and the plan is to transition to the new council in Semester 2. This means that next term we will be holding elections to create a new council. The council will be similar to our current council having a Chair, Secretary & Treasurer, as well as Principal (EX Officio), Staff Representative & up to 8 other members. The council will be then seeking people to be part of working groups that will feed into the council. One of these working groups will be the P&F Fundraising group. The council will be working over the next few months to finalise these groups & Terms of Reference for their operation. Stay tuned for more information about how you can be involved.

At the 1^st Interim Council meeting the survey conducted at the end of the year about Fundraising goals was discussed. From this discussion the Council have decided on these 5 priorities going forward:

1. New bubblers and water bottle filling station
2. Outdoor PA System
3. Upgrade car park road
4. Soccer goals for playground
5. Shade cloth outside Kinder & Year 5/6

Spanning across the six weeks of Lent each year, Project Compassion brings thousands of Australian schools, parishes and supporters together to raise funds for people living in some of the most vulnerable communities across the world.

All students have a Project Compassion box in their classroom that they are asked to donate money to over the next 6 weeks. Students have discussed ways they can raise money for these donations, some ideas included; extra chores, small change after shopping or using the canteen, collecting bottles for the return and earn scheme, etc. 

Each week the boxes will be collected with a running total of the class who has raised the most money. At the end of the 6 weeks the class who has raised the greatest overall total will recieve a prize. 

Thank you to all our families who supported our pancake breakfast, we managed to raise $100 for project compassion this morning and we will have our traditional Easter raffle closer to Easter to round off the almsgiving season. 

If you have any concerns please contact me via cassandra.harris@cg.catholic.edu.au

Northern Region Swimming

We had a wonderful team of swimmers and supporters travel to Boorowa on Thursday 29 February to compete in the Northern Region Swimming Carnival against St Josephs, St Marys (Crookwell), Mt Carmel (Yass), St Gregory's (Queanbeyan) and St Bede's (Braidwood). We had great success with lots of our SPP kids making the Archdiocese team:

Zach & Zoe Anderson, Toby & Lucy Boniface, Oliver & Flynn Keast, Jack Cunningham, Riley Hayter, Oliver Coelho, Astrid Schmidt, Sophah Chant, Grace-Jane Sorensen, Ava Cosgrove-Bowden, Ariana Wilson, Kyson Swan and Elsie McClelland.

Archdiocese Swimming

A very quick turnaround saw our Archdiocese team head back to Boorowa on Monday 4 March. Thank you to all the parents who took time to drive the children to this event. We are very excited for Zoe Anderson and Kyson Swan who qualified in their respective girls and boys 50m freestyle events to compete at the NSWCPS competition at Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre on 3 April.

Individual sports trials are open through the CECG sports website. These trials are intended for Year 5 & 6 student's ONLY.

This year our school canteen will continue to operate Tuesday to Friday. Student's requiring lunch from the canteen need to submit a lunch order via the QKR app by 9am the day the order is to be received (remember you can order up to two weeks in advance). It will also be open during first break for over the counter snacks, ice creams and drinks. Miss Courtney Kozel will be our canteen manager while Mrs Bennett is on leave.

We currently have no Size 8 black sport shorts in stock, and the supplier is out of stock also.

If you need Size 8 black sport shorts you are able to purchase from one of the uniforms supply shops in town (Kmart, Lowes, Best & Less).

If you have some size 8 shorts on backorder please contact the office.

Spologies for any inconvenience.

The uniform shop is run by parent volunteers and is open on a Wednesday morning 9-9.30am for fittings and sales. The best way to organise your child's uniform requirements is to order via Qkr. Orders need to be placed by 8.30am each Wednesday so that they are able to be sent home that day; orders placed after 8.30am will not be filled until the following week.

2 Red with Mrs A-J.... We had Great fun in sport this week!

2 Blue with Mrs Bush... 2 Blue are well on their way to becoming independant Litercy Learners. They are settling into our morning routines and are enjoying learning new skills. We are so proud of all their hard work!

We have started the year in Years 1 & 2 Creative and Performing Arts with a combined Drama/ Visual Arts project based on puppetry. The students were quickly amazed by the amount of techniques, practised skill and focus it takes to really make a puppet "come to life". While this may look like a light-hearted and fun Arts unit on the surface, there are dozens of educational and developmental benefits to learning puppetrty at any age, including:

• Literacy skills of storytelling, dialogue and character development
• Wellbeing development through identifying and voicing varied emotions
• Fine-motor and Gross-motor muscle control
• Critical listening and confident public speaking

Birthdays 14-31 March!

If you remember the following details school drop off and pick up should run smoothly. Please view the map below for parking restriction details:

Morning Drop off:

• Supervision at school starts at 8.30am. Students arriving earlier than this WILL NOT be under active adult supervision so please avoid dropping your children off before this time. Between 8.30am and 8.55am students are to take their bag to their classroom and then make their way to either the hall or basketball court where they are to wait in year groups until the morning play bell rings.
• Knox Street/Princes Avenue parking (front school entrance) - ideally families with students in Kindergarten only should be parking in this area. Please be aware of the bus zone, parking restrictions and keeping our neighbour's driveways clear. We also ask that you consider our staff when parking in the morning as there are limited all day parking zones where they are able to park.
• Hall gate (Knox Street) - Bus students are dropped off here. 
• Princes Avenue/Adam Street (back school entrance) - Parents are able to park on either side of Princes Avenue (outside car line) or in Adam Street if you need to walk your children into school (please note that this part of Princes Avenue is a one-way road). Be aware of parking restrictions and keeping our neighbour's driveways clear.
• Car Line (off Princes Avenue) -  Car line is a 'kiss & go' system where parents drop their children off without getting out of the car; please do not park and exit your car in car line as this creates major traffic issues. Car line is our preferred method of parent drop off as it ensures student safety.

Afternoon pick-up:

• Knox Street/Princes Avenue parking (front school entrance) - ideally families with students in Kindergarten only should be parking in this area. Please be aware of the bus zone, parking restrictions and keeping our neighbour's driveways clear. Kindergarten parents are welcome to park and wait for their child outside the classrom. Kinder students are also able catch the bus or get picked up from carline.
• Hall gate (Knox Street) - Bus students only are collected from here. A teacher is rostered on duty at this gate each afternoon and stays to supervise students until the last bus comes.
• Princes Avenue/Adam Street (back school entrance) - Parents are able to park on either side of Princes Avenue (outside car line) or in Adam Street if you need to walk into school to collect your children (please note that this part of Princes Avenue is a one-way road). Be aware of parking restrictions and keeping our neighbour's driveways clear.
• Car Line (off Princes Avenue) - Car line is available for parents to pick their children up without having to park and get out of the car; please do not park and exit your car in car line as this creates major traffic issues. Car line is our preferred method of parent pick up as it ensures student safety. Car line can be very congested in the afternoons. If the waiting line is outside of our driveway the advice from NSW police is that you should continue around the block via Adam Street until the line moves forward. Please consider arriving at 3.30pm or after to ease this congestion; your child will be safe and supervised until you arrive. Two teachers are rostered on and supervicion at car line is until 3.45pm. After this time your child will be taken to the office and a call will be made to parents to arrange pick up ASAP.

https://www.aspire-oshc.com.au/before-and-after-school-care

We are able to hold student medications in the office for those children who require either short term or ongoing medication. Our system has been updated by head office so please read the following carefully if this applies to your child.

Short term medication (pain relief, antibiotics, antihistamine etc) -

• Parent/carer must visit the office to sign medication administration authorisation form so that our staff are able to administer the medication.

Ongoing medication (asthma inhaler, antihistamine, ADHD medication, etc) -

• Parent/carer must visit the office to sign medication administration authorisation form so that our staff are able to administer the medication. 
• Parent/carer to ensure medication remains in date, and that there is sufficient supply for one term, each term.
• Parents/carers of students with asthma action plans or other official diagnosis must provide current paperwork from the doctor
• Asthma Inhalers - if your child is in year 5 or 6 or capable of self-administering their ventolin, they are able to keep their inhaler with them in their bag; if this is the case there is no need to complete the authorisation form.

A belated congratulations to Olivia Egan in 2 Blue and her family on the safe arrival of a baby boy, Harrison! Born 1 January 2024, the first baby in NSW and the ACT... and maybe even all of Australia!

Goulburn Regional Art Gallery

Young Artist Award

Soccer Registrations

Our newsletter, The SPP Chronicle, is normally published fortnightly (odd weeks) on a Thursday afternoon at around 5.30pm.

Each fortnight we include anything and everything that has happened in the preceding two weeks such as excursions, assemblies, sporting results and photos, liturgies, etc. We also provide information about upcoming school activities and events, student birthdays and important information and correspondence for families. We love to give shoutouts to our students and school community like thankyou's, baby announcements, special achievements and EOI's for sporting & other school or community group involvement, so if you have news that you think we could include just email it through to office.sppg@cg.catholic.edu.au.