Term 4 has begun and there are lots of exciting things happening at St Bernadette’s. This week, we welcomed 27 new Reception students for their first transition visit before beginning their schooling next year in 2025. It was lovely to see how our existing students welcomed these little people into our community and supported them throughout the day. We look forward to welcoming these children back each Wednesday over the next 3 weeks and then seeing them for the first school day of 2025!
Starting from next week, the school calendar is filled with a range of engaging and educational activities for our students. The Year 1H class have a SAPOL Road Safety Excursion next week where they will visit the SA Police Road Safety Centre. This road safety education plays a vital role in reducing road trauma through enhancing the awareness, knowledge and skills of all road users through lifelong learning. This excursion complements an incursion that is taking place later this term, which is an RAA Road Safety education program that each class will participate in. Given our school’s proximity to South Rd and other busy streets, including the Kiss & Drop area on Ragless St, this type of education for our students is paramount in ensuring student safety.
On the sporting front, we have over 30 students from Years 3-6 selected for the upcoming SACPSSA Athletics Carnival in Week 4 at SA Athletics Stadium. These students will be competing against a number of other Catholic primary schools in a range of track and field events. This promises to be a great day and we look forward to sharing these results with you in our next Newsletter! The Year 3/4 classes will be involved in the Tennis Hot Shots Carnival in Week 5, which is the first time our school will be participating in this carnival.
As a school, we have our first religious celebration next week as we observe All Saints Day. All Saints Day is observed on November 1 and All Souls Day on November 2. These days are important in the liturgical calendar as they are Catholic remembrance days for those who have passed. The Year 2M class will be leading the liturgy next week. Parents and family members are more than welcome to come along to the Commons at 9:15am on Wednesday October 30 to be part of this celebration.
We are also busy planning a special farewell Mass for Ray Higgins that will occur at the end of the year. There will be an opportunity at the end of this Mass to thank Ray personally for all he has done for the St Bernadette's community with a morning or afternoon tea in the courtyard. Keep an eye out for an invitation to this special event in the coming weeks!
Bring on Term 4!
Michelle & Matt
As part of our HASS and Art topics this year, the year 1 class has been learning about the Indigenous tradition of sharing of stories through symbols in artworks.
Many of the symbols used in the Central Desert were developed through sand painting, where stories and Dreamtime legends were marked out on the sand as a means of teaching each new generation. Many of these stories revolved around Creation Ancestors who travelled the land and created important sites in the landscape, which were often associated with totemic animals. To tell these stories, traditionally elders used the same types of symbols as Aboriginal artists use today in their contemporary paintings.
For ceremonial use the symbols were also painted onto the bodies of dancers who performed the stories, and this reinforced the links between the people and the timeless stories of the creation of their lands.
After the holidays we wrote our own recount texts outlining some of the fun things we got up to. Then using our knowledge of Indigenous art we used symbols to represent the events, people we were with and places we went.
As you can see, as a result we created wonderful artworks which use symbols to reflects our holiday recounts.
Attention and Awareness
Attention is our ability to focus, whether on inner aspects of self, such as emotions and physical sensations, or an external stimuli (e.g., the teacher’s lesson in a classroom). Awareness refers to the ability to pay attention to a stimulus as it occurs. Wellbeing is improved when individuals are aware of, and can consciously direct, their attention. In 4L we have had fun doing:
Guided meditation
Yoga
Thai Chi
Brain breaks
Mindful body scans
Breathing exercises
Mindful colouring
Grounding with the 5 senses
Attentions games
Social