Dear families,

This week is National Child Safety Week, which is a very important week for all schools around Australia. As a part of this, our students took part in Australia’s Biggest Child Safety Lesson, exploring concepts relating to correct names for body parts, boundaries and personal safety to help keep children safe. Participation in this event again highlights the culture of child safety in our school. I encourage families to continue to discuss child safety concepts together.

As a part of our Whole School Approach to Positive Behaviour, our staff use reflection sheets to help students reflect on their behaviour and help them to choose behaviours that will benefit their learning and keep everyone safe. The idea of this process is that staff help  students to recognise that they have made choices that impact on their own or others learning or safety. They then work with staff to make better choices and change their behaviour. We are continuing to refine this process to ensure it has a positive impact on our students, their learning and well-being.

This Sunday our school candidates will be celebrating their First Holy Communion. This is a very special time for these students and their lives as Catholics. In receiving Holy Communion these students are making a commitment to live their lives following the teachings of Jesus. We pray for these students as they prepare for this special occasion.

I hope that all families enjoy the weekend and all students are refreshed and ready for a great last week of learning in Term 3!

Kind regards,

Julian Blackford

2nd September ~ Coco Matthews

Congratulations and thank you to Coco who decided to be proactive in doing her part to help our planet.  While Coco was at a local park, she was surprised at the amount of rubbish laying around.  Coco used her initiative to begin picking up the rubbish and encouraged her sisters to help. She was aware of her responsiblity to her environment and showed respect in acting on those responsibilities.  We all need to take this approach, we need to look after and care for not only our planet, but our wildlife that live amongst these environments.

Well done Coco!!

To celebrate student's achievements, we will be presenting children with Star Of The Week awards.  This is a self nominated award of something a student is proud of.  It could be something academic, sports related, or a personal achievement. Have you learnt to ride a bike?  Won 1st place in a dance competition?  Read a book by yourself?  Anything that makes you proud!

Forms can be found on the link below.

The term continues to be very busy with lots of sports and activities happening. 

On Friday the 26th of August we had 33 students represent the school at the Heyfield and District Athletics Carnival. All students represented the school to a high standard. Congratulations to 20 of our students who will progress to the Wellington Athletics Carnival which will be held on Monday the 3rd of October in Sale. 

On Monday of this week all our students were lucky to participate in cricket clinics run by Maffra Cricket Club. Students got to participate in a variety of games and activities relating to cricket. Thank you to Cindy Rowley, Rob Wood and the fantastic Maffra Secondary College students for visiting our school. 

Another highlight this week for all students was a visit from former St Mary’s student and now Adelaide Crows AFL player Sam Berry. Sam conducted AFL clinics with our grade 3-6 students and then spoke to the whole school about his journey from St Mary’s Maffra to the AFL. Sam is such a amazing role model and we really appreciated him taking the time to visit our school. 

Upcoming activities include clinics with Basketball Victoria and at the start of next term we will be focusing on tennis. 

Reminder....  Wellington Division for athletics will be held on the first day back of term 4, Monday 3rd October.  Athletics will be held at the Little Athletics Track in Sale.

It was great to see Adelaide AFL footballer and past St Mary's student Sam Berry at our school on Wednesday.  Sam joined students during their Sports session to have a kick of the football. At the end of the day students were fortunate to experience a meet and greet and have question time with Sam.

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WEEKEND MASSES

Heyfield:

Saturday    6:00pm

Maffra:

Sunday    9:00am 

Cowwarr:

1st and 3rd Sunday   11:00am

Newry:

2nd and 4th Sunday  11:00am

Dargo:

5th Sunday   12:00noon

WEEKDAY MASSES

Heyfield:

Tuesday      9:30am

Maffra:

Wednesday   9:30am

Thursday      9:30am

Friday          9:30am

Saturday      9:30am

TERM 3 - Monday 11th July - Friday 16th September (2:20pm finish)

TERM 4 - Monday 3rd October - Tuesday 20th December