Friday 8th August 2025 ~ Issue 23

Child Safety Statement

School Values

Treat others the way you would like to be treated.

Respect Our School - Hormati Sekolah Kita

Do Your Best - Lakukan Yang Terbaik

Help Others to Succeed - Bantu Teman Untuk Berhasil

Important Dates

TERM 3

Monday 11th August - 'Bullying, No Way' day 

Thursday 13th August - AFL 9s - Gr 5/6

Friday 15th August - School Feast Day - Assumption of Mary

Wednesday 20th August - District Netball

Friday 22nd August - Book Week dress up parade 

Thursday 28th & Friday 29th August - Gr 3/4 Camp

Friday 29th August - CatholicCare Parenting Sessions

Sunday 31st August - Sacrament of First Eucharist

Friday 5th September - Father's Day celebration at school

Tuesday 9th September - Gr 3/4 Hooptime

Friday 12th September - Gr 5/6 Hooptime

Wednesday 17th September - St Mary's School Concert at Hamilton PAC 

Thursday 18th September - Last day of Term 3 - 3.15pm finish

PUPIL FREE DAYS IN 2025

Friday 19th September - Structured Literacy

ADVANCE NOTICE

Wednesday 17th December - Last day of the school year for students

From the Principal

Dear Families,

Another very busy week has flashed before our eyes! So much going on, particularly illness, unfortunately. We hope we see our students and staff well again and able to return to school very soon.

Today we were delighted to unveil our First Nations Art Project. This piece will have pride of place near the office at school, right where the children will see it each day. We are very proud of the work our students have done.

'Bullying No Way' Day will be acknowledged on Monday 11th of August. This year's focus is on giving bystanders to bullying the skills to have a voice in stopping these incidents. Our Student Representative Council (SRC) have decided that our students can wear a touch of purple - the colour for this day - with their school uniform. Homerooms will have  a focus on the theme during that week.

Have a wonderful weekend, shared with those you love,

Terrielynn

Feast Day of Saint Mary MacKillop - 8th August

Catholic School Culture

MASS TIMES – 2025                                                 

Hamilton: Saturday 6pm and Sunday 10.30am                                  

Dunkeld: Sunday 8.30am                  

Glenthompson:  Sunday 8.30am

Penshurst: Sunday 8.30am

Our Diocesan Community (Link below)

Learning and Teaching

School Wide Positive Behaviours

School Wide Positive Behaviour Support is:  A multi-tiered framework for establishing the social culture and behavioural supports needed for a school to achieve behavioural and academic outcomes for all students.

For the next two weeks at St Mary’s, we are working with our students on the following:

RESPECT - show care for our beautiful school

SAFETY - use words to sort out issues

RESPONSIBILITY - ask for support in learning when needed

Concert

We are getting very excited here - it's concert term!  All homerooms have been working hard on their items and we have been coming together to showcase what we have been rehearsing in our homerooms.  If your child is coming home humming some excellent music that you may not have heard for a while, that's why! We can't wait to see it all come together over the term. Homeroom teachers will be in contact with any costume requirements, etc, so keep an eye on your Seesaw messages!

Our concert will be held on Wednesday 17th September at HPAC (Hamilton Performing Arts Centre).  We will have two shows - our matinee at 11am and our evening performance at 7pm.  Tickets will be on sale soon.  They will be sold online and a link to the ticketing site will be linked to the newsletter and sent out via Seesaw. No tickets will be sold at school. Tickets will be $10 each.  If you have a child under 2, who can sit on your lap and does not require a seat, you do not have to purchase a ticket for them.

We are aware that we will have many family and friends who will want to come along and support our concert.  However, to ensure that everyone has the chance to attend the concert, we have capped the tickets at 5 per family. This is across both shows, not 5 per show!  This is to make sure that everyone can come along.  If there are unsold tickets closer to the concert, we will let you know. We thank you for your understanding with this.

Sports Catch Up

AFL 9s

We have four teams participating in the AFL 9’s competition at Pedrina Park on Thursday 14th August. We will have 39 students split between two boys and two girls teams playing on the day. The day will commence at 10.45am and will finish at approximately 2.00pm. Thank you to Mr Perez, Mrs Sherlock, Casey Rook and Debbie Sutherland who will be attending the event.

AFL 9’s is a modified version of AFL Football for our Grade 5 /6 students. It highly encourages all players to have the opportunity to develop their skills, enjoy the game and build teamwork skills. 

Notes containing further information, the teams and the draw all came home this week. Please contact me if your child’s copy hasn’t made it home yet.

Netball Victoria School Championships

We are looking forward to the Netball Victoria School Championships being held at Pedrina Park on Wednesday 20th August. We will have 24 students competing in two very large teams on the day. Thank you to the staff, Mrs Sherlock, Mrs Whyte and Casey Rook, who will attend. Also to Roxanne Holmes, Vanessa Brown and Jess Hayes, who have volunteered their time for this day. We greatly appreciate your support. Further information will be sent home next week, once we receive further information from Netball Victoria. 

St Mary’s AFL Auskick / Superkick Program

The AFL Auskick and AFL Superkick program commenced this week with Tristan from AFL Victoria. Tristan ran the budding footballers through a few games to get to know the kids and see their skill levels. From next week onward the kids will be broken into at least two smaller groups to give them the best experience. Please remember that this is an external program being offered by AFL Victoria, it is not staffed by St Mary’s. However, Mrs Gordon will walk the kids up and then ensure everyone is collected. 

HoopTime

The Hamilton District Hooptime will take place in Week Eight. The Grade 3/4s will take the courts on Tuesday 9th September and the Grade 5/6s on Friday 12th September. We have 47 students interested from each department, which will see us have 6 teams ranging from All Stars, Future Stars and Rookies. All teams will be coached by a member of staff. However, we will need some families to assist with scoring. If you are interested in scoring at HoopTime please let me know via SeeSaw or email. 

Dates for your Diary

TERM THREE

August

Thursday 14th August - AFL 9’s @ Hamilton 

Wednesday 20th August - District Netball @ Hamilton 

September 

Tuesday 9th September - Grade 3/4 Hooptime @ Hamilton

Thursday 11th September - WHP Table Tennis (round robin format, no progression to state)

Friday 12th September - Grade 5/6 Hooptime @ Hamilton 

TBC Primary Golf

Elise Gordon

egordon@smhamilton.catholic.edu.au 

Book Week

It is almost that time again....Book Week!  We love to celebrate all things reading and books and Book Week is the perfect opportunity!  The theme this year is 'Book An Adventure', so students can base their costume around this theme, or their favourite book character.  As in previous years, this is not compulsory, only if your child would like to dress up.  

Our Book Week Costume Parade will be held on Friday 22nd August.  We will have our parade at 9am on this day to share all of the wonderful and creative costumes.  If you have any questions about our Book Week celebrations, please contact me.

As many of you are aware, in the past, we have held a Book Fair around this time as well.  However, due to the success of moving our Book Fair to Term 4 last year (and with  a concert to prepare for!), we will continue this into the future. At this stage, the Book Fair will be held in Week 5 of Term 4 - week beginning Monday 3rd November.  More information will be available closer to the time.

Tania Stevens

Wellbeing

Child Safety

CYBER SAFETY EXPERT - SUSAN MCLEAN

On Tuesday evening, I attended an information session with cyber safety expert, Susan McLean.  Susan is a well renowned speaker in this space, with 27 years experience with VicPol, plus a number of qualifications in this area from universities in both the US and UK.

Some of the take aways from this session:

 - The three 'R's' ~ Respect, Responsibility and Reputation.  Our children, before accessing any online content should ask themselves if they are showing respect (to themselves, their peers, families and school), if they are being responsible and if the content will harm their digital reputation. These three 'R's' are a great starting point when discussing good digital citizenship with our children.

 - Susan spoke about the importance of using parental controls with any online app your child might be using and she shared a list of useful resources for parents.  I have attached this list below.

 - Susan also spoke about needing to be aware of what emojis mean - it is often like a different language!  She shared a list of emojis and their 'hidden' meanings.  I have attached it below too.

I will have more to share with you from this session next week.

Tania Stevens

CatholicCare Parenting Session

As per a Seesaw message on Thursday, CatholicCare are offering individual parenting sessions for families here at school. A great opportunity! 

Leadership and Stewardship

Kitchen Garden 

Our Kitchen Garden continues to go from strength to strength. We are enjoying seeing the students learn new skills and try new foods.
Like any program or organisation, we try hard to manage our budget without scrimping on the quality of the program delivery and in this case, the ingredients that are offered.
We were so excited last week to be told that we have had a new shed donated to the school for our program! Judy, one of our amazing volunteers along with her husband, David who own Eureka Garages and Sheds, have so kindly donated the shed that will live near the vegetable garden that will house our tools and supplies for both the garden and the chooks.
Thank you to Judy and David for their amazing generosity.
We are most grateful and simply thrilled!

Catherine Egan

Today in the Kitchen Garden, the students made Japanese Pancakes, Pumpkin, Kale and Feta Quiche and Chocolate Spiders for dessert - a three course meal!  Delicious!  Below are some photos from the day and the recipes for you to try at home.

Kitchen Garden - Term 3, Week 3

Speed Limit Within Monivae

We have been asked by Monivae to remind families that the speed limit within Monivae is 15km per hour.  This is particularly important as you approach the bus exchange and the pedestrian crossing, where many students are crossing at the beginning and the end of the day.  We thank you for your assistance in this matter.

Community Engagement

St Mary's Christmas Parade

This year our annual Christmas Parade will be held on Friday 5th December.

We have been thinking of what we can do for our raffle - perhaps something big?

If you have any ideas please let us know.

Thank you to the lovely Trish Taylor who has put her hand up to be the Decoration coordinator 💗.

Later in the year we will ask for helpers to assist the coordinators in the above roles and keen bakers to make gourmet gifts to sell (Christmas cakes, biscuits, rum balls etc) at our Gourmet gift stall.

If you have any questions regarding the Christmas Parade please contact Shannon at school.🎄

Assembly

Our next assembly will be on Friday 15th August at 2.55pm.