“It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters, in the end."

(Ursula Le Guin)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to 2019 where we begin another year of our journey together in Catholic education at Holy Trinity School and ELC. Our students have settled in extremely well and I am also very proud of the committed staff who have been working hard to prepare your child/ren for another successful and rewarding year of learning. During the last week of January, all staff participated in professional development and planning for 2019. Our major focus for learning this year will be shared at the parent information night next week.

 Our school theme for this year is based on the following Psalm:

“Teach me your way O Lord, and I will walk in Your truth.

Grant me an undivided heart to revere Your name.”

(Psalm 86:11 )

Let us pray and strive for a year where, as a Christian community together, we walk in truth, guided by our Lord who teaches us in so many ways the power of faith, hope and love.

We welcome on our staff this year our new Religious Education Coordinator and Kinder White teacher, Emily Capper, Mary-Anne Winchester, also in Kinder White,  Caitlin Meany, Kinder Green teacher, Tracey Hanlon, Year 1 Red teacher, Meg Millband Year 2 Red teacher, Catherine Joy, Year 3 /4 Green teacher  and Tiffany Fletcher our new new music teacher.   We also welcome back Stephanie Leehmuis and Rose Lee who will be working a few days a fortnight in some classes.  At our ELC we welcome a new teacher Jarrah Chapman (Black Cockatoos)  and Educator, Sarah James (Rock Wallabies). We also have  a Youth Worker, Sarah Person, who will be working with the Parish and both Parish schools throughout the year.  At Holy Trinity Sarah will join us each Monday, and on the 18th of February will be facilitating a Retreat for our Year 6 students/leaders. 

We also welcome new and returned families to our school and we look forward to welcoming everyone together next Friday 15th February at the Parent Information Night and Welcome BBQ. 

• Kinder Parents will meet in the Kinder classrooms at 5:00 pm, then join us in the hall at 5:45pm.
• ELC parents will meet in Year 1 Green classroom at 5:45pm.
• All Families of Year 1-6 will begin this night in the hall at 5:45pm.  

At 5:45pm Parents of Kinder to Year 6 will be introduced to staff, P and F and School Board and be presented with important information about the school year. Parents will then collect information sheets around the hall from their child/ren class teacher/s.  We will finish with a Sausage Sizzle together, organised by the P and F. 

Baby-sitting will be available for children in Year K-2 in the 5/6 White (Mr Pye) classroom, whilst parents are in the hall.  Year 3 -6 children will be invited to sit with their parents during the hall presentation.  ELC children will be supervised in the ELC building, whilst ELC families meet in the Year 1 Green (Mrs Swan) classroom.  I strongly encourage you to attend this informative and social evening together with your families.

This year we will again be having Parent Partnership Meetings in Weeks 3-5.  As I have talked about before, schools are all about relationships. These Parent Partnership meetings are a great opportunity to firstly begin forming a trusting and respectful relationship between parents and teachers.  They also provide opportunity for parents to share unique aspects about their child, their likes, strengths etc.  At the information night next Friday, each parent will be given a survey with the other handouts from teachers to fill in for the Parent Partnership meeting.  Next week you will be given opportunity to nominate a time to meet with the teachers. 

I look forward to seeing you all next Friday night and thank the staff and P and F for all their input into this evening.  I also look forward to a wonderful year together of learning, collaborating and celebrating.

"Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mine worker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.” (Nelson Mandela)

With every best wish for a holy and peace-filled week ahead with your beautiful families,

Philippa

Car Park Safety

A reminder please about procedures around drop off and pick up. 

• Please park in the allocated, marked car park spaces on the top bitumen area.  Please do not park parallel to the fence, especially in the the afternoon, as this is where cars flow in and out to pick up children seated and waiting.
• Please use the crossing to bring children out of and into cars, in the morning and afternoon.  This is to ensure the safety of children around cars moving in and out of the car park. 

Friday Award and Assemblies Time

Weekly awards will continue to be published in the newsletter each Thursday.  On Friday morning, these will be presented at line up.  We will no longer be having a Friday assembly in the hall.  Assemblies will continue to be on most Monday afternoons, either a class or prayer Assembly.  Other announcements, school song and national anthem will now be a part of these Monday assemblies. Parents are still encouraged and welcomed at our Monday afternoon assemblies as indicated in the school calendar and to stay on Friday morning outside at line up for awards. 

Teach me Your way, O LORD, and I will walk in Your truth. Grant me an undivided heart to revere Your name.

Week One

Welcome to all our new families for 2019 and welcome back to our existing Holy Trinity families. I trust you enjoyed your break with your family and friends.  I am very excited and to be joining the Holy Trinity community as the joint Religious Education Coordinator and Kinder White classroom teacher for 2019. I look forward to meeting you all throughout the year.

This year as a school, our 2019 school theme will focus on the teachings of Jesus. Students will develop their understanding of the connections between the teachings of Jesus and the Catholic Faith and what makes Holy Trinity a Catholic Community. Each term we will break open the Scripture Psalm 86:11, focusing on different aspects of Jesus’ teaching.

Upcoming Religious Education Celebrations

Yours in Christ,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Emily Capper

Religious Education Coordinator                                             

Top five parenting tips for this year

by Michael Grose

The start of the year is a great time for making changes and improvements to the way you raise kids. The trouble is, our good intentions towards change often become derailed around March, and we return to our default mode of parenting. So nothing much changes from year to year.

At Parenting Ideas, we have selected the five tips that we think will have the most positive impact on kids this year.

1.Switch on your kids’ strengths

Most of us have been conditioned to focus on what kids can’t do. It’s not your fault. You were trained by teachers and parents who were adept at picking up your poor behaviours, highlighting errors and encouraging you to eliminate your faults.

There is a better way. The Positive Psychology movement lead by US-based psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman showed that when we can unearth kids’ strengths we are, in effect, unlocking their true potential for success and happiness. Three elements come together to make a strength, and parents need to be mindful of all three: performance (being good at something); energy (feeling good doing it); and high use (choosing to do it). Rather than locking on to your child’s weaknesses, set your antennae to your child’s strengths.

Professor Lea Waters, author of the wonderful new book The Strength Switch and current President of the International Positive Psychology Association will conduct a webinar ‘Switching on your child’s strengths‘.

2. Balance kids’ extra-curriculur activities

Alongside social media and news events, being busy is now recognised as a major stress for many children and young people. Over-scheduling kids’ lives is a relatively new phenomenon. Go back a couple of generations and a few sports, music lessons and things like scouting movements were the mainstays of after school life for most kids. Now the choice of activities to keep kids busy after school hours is mind-boggling.

Having so many options is wonderful but it does place a new set of pressures on parents. Many complain that family life is like now living in a hamster wheel, always in constant motion, with hardly a time to catch their breath. The cost of loading kids up with scheduled activities is that many don’t get the chance for free play, or simply ‘vegging out’ on the couch. The benefits of all this activity in terms of kids’ skill development, personal growth and broadening social horizons is well-founded. However finding a balance is tricky as every child, like every family is different. Parenting Ideas expert Dr.Jodi Richardson will help you find the right balance of activity for your family in her webinar ‘Balancing extra-curricular activities‘.

3. Focus on friendships

Friendships are an important part of the road to adulthood for a child or young person. With families shrinking in size peer relationships are now fundamental in providing kids with a sense of belonging, a place to hone their identity and a group upon which they can develop their future relationship skills such as tolerance, empathy and forgiveness.

Friendships can be problematic. Not every child is naturally outgoing and makes friends easily. If your child is like this, but generally seems happy, then there may be no need to do anything. If your child has difficulty forming friendships and is worried by that, then there are many ways to approach this including: encouraging kids to spend one-on-one time with others, making extra-curricular activities fit their interests, and coaching kids to develop friendly behaviours. The wonderful Sharon Witt will conduct a webinar ‘Teach girls to build each other up‘, focusing on friendship skills especially for parents of girls.

4. Give kids tools to manage anxious moments

Let’s just say it upfront. We don’t have a childhood resilience problem as many teachers and professionals say, but we do have a childhood anxiety problem. A big one! And it’s mostly undetected as community understanding of anxiety is low. It’s our experience at Parenting Ideas that many parents are anxious and they don’t know it, and many children routinely experience anxiety, which goes unrecognised.

Everyone feels worried from time to time, but these feelings pass when the stressful situation has passed. Anxiety occurs when these anxious feelings don’t pass, and happen for no obvious reason. It’s a serious condition that can be managed and minimised with their right tools. Parenting Ideas founder Michael Grose is conducting a webinar ‘Managing your child’s anxiety‘ to help parents on this challenging but important topic.

5. Develop rights of passage

Why are young people, like moths drawn to a flame, attracted to that annual end of school year beach and booze fest known as schoolies? Why do young people who for the best part of a year put their future self first and study hard to achieve best possible school results, put themselves at risk for a solitary week? It’s more than letting their hair down.

In the absence of adult-initiated rights of passage young people will always fill the void and create their own. For many young people schoolies is the right of passage. As a community we’ve struggled for many years to create meaningful rights of passage for young people. Once a young person’s first job, or their twenty-first birthday were significant markers of maturity, offering a sense that they were entering into the adult world. Community changes have largely eradicated these traditional markers, which make it harder for a young person to know when they’ve become an adult.

There are many healthy ways to recognise a young person’s growing maturity and mark his or her journey into adulthood. Many families are now creating their own rituals to mark key events such as the end of primary school, the start of the teenage years or various stages of adolescence. These traditions are now becoming legitimate rights of passage for young people. Internationally recognised expert on rites of passage Arne Rubenstein will be conducting a webinar ‘Creating 21st century rites of passage‘. 

Will anything be different this year?

Change and improvement in anything worthwhile generally comes incrementally rather than in one giant leap. We pointed you in the direction that we feel is important for you and your kids to take kids this year. It’s you who has to implement changes and do the work. Through our webinars we’ve made it easy to take that vital first step to better outcomes for kids. Have a great parenting year.

(Source: Parentingideas.com.au)

PART-TIME PARISH SECRETARY (3 days, 20 hours week): People are invited to apply for the position of Parish Secretary. Essential: strong communication and liaison skills; strong organisational skills; ability to work in a team environment and to take direction; understanding of and respect for the Catholic Church and its teaching. Desirable: Experience in an office environment and facility with financial and database packages.  Salary will be subject to the Clerk Award 4/5 rates.  Phone 6281 3999 for a copy of the selection criteria and duty statement. Applications to Fr John Woods, PO Box 297, Curtin ACT 2605 / john.woods@cg.org.au close Thursday, 28 February.

Swimming Carnival

The swimming is booked at CISAC on Friday 22 February, Week 3. All students from Kinder through to Year 6 are participating. All classes will be transported by bus from Holy Trinity to CISAC Belconnen. The permission notes will be pushed out through SZapp tonight. Students from K-2 will participate in a rotation of novelty activities in the small pool and outside in the grassed area. All students who are 8 years old or turning 8 this year and older will be able to enter 50m and 25m events.

Please note a change to the carnival. The 50m events will commence from 8:30am to allow time for the 25m events. If your child nominates to swim in the 50m events they will be required to be dropped off at CISAC by 8:15am. Teachers will be there to supervise.

A timetable of events will be released closer to the date for more accurate timing of events. All students will also participate in the novelty activities during the day. 

Riding to School

If your child is riding to school it is strongly encouraged that they lock up their bike during the day as the bike cage is an unsupervised area. If your child requires to borrow a lock we have some bike locks they can borrow, please see Mr Feerick if you require one.

Weetbix Tryathon

Good luck to all the students who have registered for the Tryathon this Sunday morning at the AIS. The children will all compete in swimming, riding and running events. The Holy Trinity Marquee will be there as a central meeting place for the school community.

       TERM 1, WEEK 2 - WED 13 FEB

Team Leader:  Mark Bauer,  Rian Foley, Nigel Baker, Mary-Anne Winchester

Irish Dancing classes will be continuing in our school hall on Thursday afternoons from 3.45 – 4.40pm.

Irish dancing is a great way to keep fit, and make new friends. It also assists with coordination and gross motor skills. The sequences and patterns of the moves make it spectacular to watch.

Anne-Marie Dimmock, is a qualified Irish dancing teacher registered with the Commission in Dublin Ireland. Anne-Marie competed for many years in local and National competitions with excellent results.

If your child is interested in learning Irish dancing or you would like more information please ring Anne-Marie on 0418 626 911 after 3pm.

WODEN VALLEY YOUTH CHOIR

Woden Valley Youth Choir has provided a music education to hundreds of ACT and Queanbeyan schoolchildren for 50 years, since February 1969.   WVYC offers a dynamic choral programme for young people aged 8 to 21 and we are proud to provide so many positive benefits to our members.   Auditions for young people from year 3 to university age wishing to join the choir in 2019 will be held on Saturday 23 February.  We have a small number of vacancies in our two primary aged choirs and about a dozen places in our high school/university age treble voice choir and our new choir “Centauri Voices” for young men with changing/changed voices.   For more information please go to http://wvyc.org.au and download an application form or email info.wvyc@gmail.com or phone 1300 599 655

ROTARY CLUB OF HALL INDIGENOUS SCHOLARSHIP
WVYC is pleased to announce that scholarship(s) to the value of $1,000 have been generously provided by the Rotary Club of Hall to enable indigenous Canberran young people to have access to the choir. Applicants should follow the application process for an audition and also contact the administrator on info.wvyc@gmail.com for scholarship guidelines.

WODEN VALLEY SOCCER CLUB

 Incorporating Juniors (U5-18), Mens and Womens State League, and  Womens and Mens Masters Teams in 2019

 Join the largest Junior Soccer Club in ACT!

Registrations for 2019 - WVSC OPEN DAY - Saturday 9th February 10am to 1pm, Mawson Playing Fields

To Register:

1. Log into Play Football 
2. Select “Woden Valley SC”
3. Select your age group for 2019 (package)
4. Register and pay

2019 Season

Seniors Commence 6/7th April, Juniors Commence Saturday 4th May

For more details please email admin@wvsc.org.au

Or visit our website www.wvsc.org.au

ACT REGIONAL SCOOTER TITLES

ACT Regional Scooter Titles will be held on 16 February 2019 at the Woden skate park.

The Australasian Scooter Association's (ASA) ACT Regional Scooter Titles will be held at the Woden Skatepark on 16 February, 2019.  It was a terrific day last year and entrants are invited to register at https://revolutionise.com.au/asa/