St Mary's War Memorial School West Wyalong eNewsletter

National Prayer Campaign for Drought

The Catholic Church in Australia is dedicating the month of November 2019 as a time to pray for those affected by crippling drought conditions and to pray for the gift of rain.

This weeks mission prayer for the continents is for Europe.

As you pray the rosary this month, keep in mind those around the world and in our own country needing our help.

Our third colour is WHITE which represents the Pope who lives in EUROPE

Our Prayer for Europe

Let us pray for the people of Europe and missionaries who deliver God's love there.

We pray that Europe may be a place where the homeless find a home, the lonely find friends, and the sick find care.

Amen.

The canteen will be closed this coming Monday November the 4th as we do not have a volunteer.

Please send your children to school with both recess and lunch.

The recipients of our Whatever You Do, Do Well awards this week:

Woody Ambrose	Frederik Bell	Edward Brown
Scarlett Connellan	Brydie Ford	Cruze Loudon
Nixon Loudon	Harper McDonell	Harry Morton
Eleanor Ramsay	Ashley Thomas	Henry Walker
Rose Walker	Toby Westaway

We welcome Ms Kadi Lord who has joined us for a month on teacher placement with Kinder. We hope you enjoy your stay with us and what a great class to work with!

We would like to thank Greg McIntyre who "cored" our lawn on the weekend for free and just to be helpful. On Monday the children had a great time taking the "cores" and putting them into bare patches of ground - we think the lawn will grow so much better now!

Thank you to Chris Hanneman from the NRL who conducted skills sessions with our Kinder, Year 1 and Year 2 students this morning.

Thank you to our families who supported our Day of Colour on Wednesday. We raised $170 for Mission Month.

Our final Kinder Orientation is on Friday 8 November from m 8.55am to 3.20pm.

Children should wear comfortable clothes and a hat, and bring a piece of fruit, recess, lunch and a drink.

Wednesday 13th November @ 12.30pm	Whole School Mass
Wednesday 17th December @ 12.30pm	Year 6 Graduation Mass

Happy Birthday to

Jagger Lange and Nicholas Little

who celebrate their birthdays next week.

We hope you enjoy your special day.

Date and Day	Teacher on Leave or PD	Class	Relief
Monday 4th to Thursday 7th November	Mrs Harland	1/2 Mercy	Mrs Riechstien
Tuesday 5th November	Miss Jackson	3/4 Peace	Mrs Maier
Wednesday 6th November AP Meeting	Mrs Scott	N/A	N/A
Thursday 7th and Friday 8th November	Mrs Nielsen	1/2 Joy	Mrs Maier & Mrs Riechstien
Mr Nielsen will be absent on Thursday and Friday next week.

Snap chat? Instagram? Tik-Tok? Musical.ly? FaceBook?

As parents you may or may not be aware of some of these social media and social video apps and how they function.

However your children most likely have or will learn about them and they may ask you to get them on their device.

On Wednesday 27th November Sergeant Mark Griffith will be coming to St Mary's to present general information covering cyber safety and relevant laws. He will present to our year 5/6 students from 2.20 to 3.20 pm at school.

All parents, not just Year 5/6 parents, are then invited to attend a presentation for parents the same day from 7 - 8.30 pm in the school library.

We strongly encourage parents to come along to be informed and ask questions to ensure their children's safety in the cyber world.

Please RSVP the office by calling or click on this link to email your attendance by Friday 22nd November 2019.

Rock Bottom - Matinee Performance	Thursday 12 December at 11am
Speech Night including Rock Bottom	Thursday 12 December at 6pm
Year 6 Graduation Mass Year 6 Graduation Dinner	Tuesday 17 December at 12.30pm Dinner at 6.30pm
Final School Day	Wednesday 18 December
Term 1 2020 Commences for all students (All children including Kinder start the first Wednesday then Kinder students will have the next 4 Wednesdays off as they tend to get very tired.)	Wednesday 29 January

Planning is underway for St Mary’s Intensive Swimming Program. All students are encouraged to participate in this program. Swimming is very much a part of the Australian lifestyle and a high level of swimming ability and knowledge and skill in water safety is not only highly desirable but could be life saving.

The program will run over seven days, from Thursday 21 November to Friday 29 November. The program will meet the needs of the K – 6 PDHPE Syllabus and is under the control of L&R Group from the Holland Park Swim Centre and their qualified instructors. Class teachers will attend to supervise. The primary aim is to develop each child’s swimming ability. The program will offer the following skill levels:

*WATER LEARNER*	Water Learner encourages children to become independent in the water. We introduce the fundamentals of water safety and continue to develop water confidence. The core focus is to get the child to stay afloat and start achieving short distances of propulsion.
*WATER BASIC*	This level introduces swimming skills. At this level, children will learn kicking, breathing, streamline, body position and arm rotation, the core swimming skills needed to ensure your child has the correct techniques for their on-going development.
*WATER SKILLS*	Children are now displaying correct freestyle techniques. We start to advance the distances of swimming to 15 metres. Backstroke is also introduced along with more advanced skills and drills to refine the child’s stroke and to continue water confidence.
*JUNIOR MINI*	Junior Mini is re-enforcing the core swimming skills over a longer distances of 25m. Butterfly, breastroke and diving are now incorporated. Junior Mini is the first level of our squad training and fun and fitness are other key elements that are promoted.
*MINI SQUAD*	Mini Squad focuses on fine tuning all four strokes along with further development of dives, introduction of turns, starts and finishes. It will help children transition to and understand competitive swimming. There is also a concentration on developing fitness and fun.

The students will be placed in groups depending on their level of ability as advised by parents, and in consultation with Angus. Students will be assessed on the first day to make sure they are in the correct group.

Students not attending the program will be supervised at school and set appropriate literacy learning activities.

We have received a drought relief grant from the Catholic Education Office which will be used to pay for the intensive swimming program. There will be no cost to parents for the program.

The children have also received a paper permission form, you can use either that paper form or this electronic form. All children can be recorded on the electronic form.

Click on the following link to send your permission form electronically.

Swimming Excursion Permission Note

Our CPS Basketball report will be in next weeks newsletter.

However we must give a special mention to our Junior Boys Blue who won the Division 3 Grand Final ably led by Mr Nielsen. Well done boys!

CANTEEN CLOSED THIS COMING MONDAY 4 NOVEMBER

The canteen will be closed this Monday 4 November as we do not have a volunteer.

Please send your children to school with both recess and lunch on Monday.

The P&F held their Halloween Disco last night. The children had a fabulous time and some of the costumes were brilliant.

Thank you to the parents who took time to organise wonderful costumes, to the parents who helped with the door and the BBQ, and especially to two lovely dads, David Patton and Will Dean who presided over the BBQ with great skill.

Canteen Roster

Monday 4 November	Wednesday 6 November	Friday 8 November
CANTEEN CLOSED	Catherine Koop & Leah Blamplied Baking: Leah Blampied	Anna Player & Allirah Stewart Baking: Allirah Stewart
Monday 11 November	Wednesday 13 November	Friday 15 November
Carlie Byrnes Baking: Carlie Byrnes	Jodie McDonell Baking: Jodie McDonell	Fliss Ridley & Volunteer Required Baking: Fliss Ridley

Assembly, Book Week Awards and Lawn Coring

At our assembly today Cathy Lange from the Bland Shire Library presented some of our students with awards from Book Week.

Oliver Brown in Year 5 won the Year 5/6 Division and Indi Bales in Kinder won a major prize in the Kinder colouring section. What a fantastic achievement by you both.

We had a number of other students presented with certificates for outstanding effort and these were Hannah McDonell, Ted Curry, Kayla Edwards, Liam McClintock and Logan Pettit. Well done.

We would like to thank the Bland Shire Library who donated two book that were shortlisted to ur school library.