Our Patch- Before and After School Care

Our Patch has secured a permanent leader for our before and after school care program. Lin Mu will lead our program each day. Many of you will already be familiar
with Lin as she has been working part-time leading our program with Lilli over the past term. I wish to acknowledge and thank Lilli for her work at our school supporting the students and families. We may see Lilli from time to time in the holiday program.

Our Patch is currently offering Karate sessions on  Thursday afternoons. Please see the separate article in this newsletter for more information.

Kindergarten Visits

Last Friday and today we welcome our friends from Bruthen Street Kindergarten. The two four year old groups spent time with Miss Longmuir in the foundation classroom, learning about letters and sounds. They were very excited to have a play on our playground. Our friends from Guardian Childcare will be visiting our playground this week as well.

P&F Mural Project

Our P&F have been steadily working away at sourcing an artist for the P&F Mural Project. They are currently working closely with the school to form a student advisory group, who will be involved in a consultation process with the artist. Students who are interested in being part of this group will complete an expressions of interest form at school and submit to their teacher.  We plan for this group to meet in the weeks ahead. A special thank you to Suzanne Currie who is leading this project and liaising with students, teachers and parents/guardians.

Year 4 Eucharist

Our year 4 students who are making their first Eucharist will be presented at mass this coming Sunday and will participate in a Reflection Day and Family Evening Workshop on the 9th August. The sacrament of Eucharist is indeed significant and encourages our students to enact our Catholic mission, to be Christ like in our everyday lives and the community.

The first Eucharist celebration will take place on Sunday 20th August at 10:30am mass in our parish church. All families are welcome to attend this celebration.

Events coming up this term

Science Week- Whole school excursion to Twisted Science and rotational activities in classes.

Book Week- Book dress up parade, family activity, special cross-aged activity in classes and Book Week assembly.

Feast of the Assumption Liturgy- Date and Time to be advised

First Eucharist Celebration- Sunday 20 August @ 10:30am

P & F -Father’s Day Stall- Thursday 31 August

First Eucharist  (Year 4 Students)

Important dates for your calendar

Sunday 6th August- 10.30am Parish Mass-Presentation of Candidates at St Catherine’s Mass- Family attends

Wednesday 9th August- Eucharist Reflection Day for students at school

Wednesday 9th August- 6.00pm Eucharist Family Workshop- St Catherine’s Learning Hub

Sunday 20th August- 10.30am Parish Mass- Year 4 Group Celebrating Eucharist- St Catherine’s Church

Year 1/2 Family Faith Workshop

When: 6pm Wednesday, 2nd August

Where: Learning Hub

Theme: Stewardship of Creation

Carmel Donlon- Religious Education Leader

Email: carmel.donlon@scmoorabbin.catholic.edu.au

On Monday the 24th of July, the Foundation, Year 1 and Year 2 students went to the Melbourne Zoo. We traveled by bus to arrive at the zoo by 10 o’clock where our lovely zoo expert, Fran met us to tell us all the exciting things that were happening that day.
After we broke off into our small groups, we explored the zoo! We were lucky enough to explore most of the animals. Some of our favourite animals were the elephants, the lions, and of course, the butterflies.  We had our close encounter with Fran who introduced us to a tortoise, we learned about his habitat and his diet. 

I saw the red pandas, they were sleeping on a tree. - Sienna

My favourite thing about the zoo was seeing the orangutans, they were playing! - Martin

My favourite thing was the reptile house because it is one of the most dangerous parts of the zoo! - Xander

My favourite part of the excursion was looking for the snakes because they were camouflaged. I learnt about the life cycle of a snake. - Sam

I liked the butterfly house because a butterfly landed on Jayde and stayed on her when she was walking. A butterfly landed on my hat. - Nina

I saw the snow leopard resting. I saw a lizard and I learnt that it can walk on water. - Jayde

My favourite part was seeing the lions, they were sleeping and one was walking around. I learnt elephants do 100 poops a day! - Liam

My favourite part was seeing the tigers, butterflies and lions. I learnt that tigers can camouflage in the forest. - Kimara

In 3/4JB we have been practising our spelling skills through weekly practise of playing Boggle. 

In 3/4MP, we have been learning about homonyms, homophones and homographs. We have done many activities to learn the difference between them - making posters, playing match up games, quizzes. 

It's important to be able to distinguish between homophones when writing. The results of using the wrong word in your writing can range from confusing to amusing, e.g. She washed her hare in the bathroom.

Here are some examples from our homonym match up game last week. 

Spelling in 5/6

In word study we got a list of words which is our word sort. Then we write our words in the corner of the sheet. We had a template with three columns. The first is where we write our words, in the second we write the syllables for example: invent, in-vent, and  then  you write a sentence with the word in it. Like: “I should invent a machine.” It helps us become better spellers by writing them three times and also helps learn different parts of the word, to help us spell. Once we have mastered our words, we get another list of words to practise.

By Cameron 

Week 1

Last week, the whole school was challenged to create the tallest tower they could with playing cards. The junior years were allowed tape but from the middle years onwards, no tape was allowed. This sure did test our patience and resilience! Through trial and error, peer observations and team work, St Catherine’s students sure did engineer some awesome structures.

Our winners were:

Year 5/6 - Jacob and Lachie

Year 3/4 (without tape) - Aidan and Josh Y

Year 3/4 (with tape) - Jimmy

Year 1/2 - Hannah and Isabella

Prep - Josh M

Lachie and I played around with some designs before we finally got it right. We didn’t use tape and that was frustrating as the tower kept falling. We made sure each layer was strong enough to hold the next layer and created the winning tower. Both of us were calm and helped each other. I enjoyed the challenge. It was really fun!

Jacob, Year 6

We worked on the floor because it wasn’t as slippery as the tables. Isabella came up with some great ideas so we decided to stack the cards like a pyramid using masking tape. The challenge was hard and frustrating because the cards kept falling. But we kept trying and trying and we worked together really well together.

I really liked the STEM challenge because lots of people worked hard with their partners and themselves and it was fun!

Hannah, Year 2

I had to try different ideas each time the time limit was up. I got worse and worse and then I started over. Then I knew I could build something tall. It was very frustrating at times but I kept trying and it finally measured 54cm. 

Jimmy, Year 3

I liked putting the cards into triangles so I could make a house. I knew triangles would work because I thought it was a good idea. I had fun building the card house because I liked sticking the cards together in triangles and building.

Josh, Year Prep