We respectfully acknowledge the past and present traditional owners of this land on which we are meeting – the Algnith people. We also acknowledge the contributions of First Nations peoples to the education of all children and people in our country Australia, in which we all live and share together.

A Blessing for Mothers

Bless all who ‘mother’ and bring new life in any way, these ‘mothers’ who teach and guide, who encourage and heal.   

Invite them to the table of your eternal feast, these ‘mothers’ who feed and nurture the life that has been entrusted to them.  

Embrace them warmly in the intimacy of your love, these ‘mothers’ who embrace with affection those who are helpless and dependent.   

Bless them today with all good things: with health, with laughter, with joy and with love, with pride in their ‘children’ and the support of many friends.  

May all ‘mothers’ who have nurtured life in others be themselves nurtured one day in your strong embrace, there, for all eternity, to rejoice with their families and friends. 

Happy Mother’s Day

Yesterday we celebrated God’s treasured gifts to us; our mums, grandmothers, aunties and special women in our lives that care for us and love us.  They do so much for us. They help us, protect us, teach us new things, take us places and love us.  Our special morning of fun, food and laughter celebrated the love and light they bring into our lives.  We thank you for always being there to support your children and our school community. 

Mums you are our sunshine!  

We thank God for these special women who raise us. Mums teach us many lessons. There are so many important values and ways of living that I have learnt from my mother. Some from the things she says but more from the way she has lived her 85 years. 

So many people who come together to make this a wonderful experience for our mums. St Joseph’s has always had a long tradition of ‘never seeing a need without doing something about it’, so thank you to the teachers, staff and parents who put in so much time and effort to make our Mother’s Day celebration such a success.

It was lovely to see and hear our whole school performance of John Burland’s ‘A Song for Mum’. Our Year 2’s did an outstanding job of retelling the Gospel of St Luke in such a meaningful and different way, using a technique called ‘liquid pictures’. Our readers selected from across all grades were outstanding. All our hearts melted when Prep, dressed as sunflowers’, sang along and did actions to “Covered in Sunshine”.

Thank you to Mrs Gear our APRE for putting together the power point of all the photos of our mums and thank you to our special guests from Cairns Catholic Education who put together such a beautiful display for the liturgy.

Our Senior Student Leaders did an excellent job as Waiters and Waitresses. They showed initiative, pride and responsibility, as they served food and drinks to our mums. This opportunity let them shine and they certainly did.

Our beautiful photobooth was created by Rachael, Kim and Kate. Thank you to Rachel and Kim who did overtime on Wednesday night to help me prepare the Charcuterie Boxes and paint the backgrounds for our Flower Painting on Canvas activity.

Thank you to the many mums who also gave the time with preparations, brought back fabric paint from Cairns in our hour of need.

Thank you for our teachers, staff and CES visitors who supported our mums and children with the craft activities provided and to everyone who helped with the clean up afterwards.

Thank you also to Matt Wallace who volunteered his time and talent to set the mood for our Morning Tea and activities. Having such great live music was amazing.

Special thank you Kate Backhouse who stayed behind even longer after finishing costumes for the Prep Song to help me finish preparing craft activities and for the day.

We thank God for these special women who raise us. Whether birth mum, adopted mum, foster mum, older sister, aunt, grandmother, stepmother or someone else, we wish you a wonderful Mother’s Day. 

“Mothers hold their children’s hands for a short time, but their hearts forever”

“Author unknown”

Mother’s Day Stall Our Mother’s Day Stall is such an important tradition in our school. It fills my heart with joy to see how each child takes such care in choosing the perfect gift for their mum, grandma’s or other special people who are like mothers. Thank you to our P&F and parent volunteers who provide this special opportunity for our children each year.

Under 8s Day 2023 This year, we celebrated the early years of schooling with our Under 8s Day today 12^th May. Last year it was our turn to host so this year we go over to Western Cape for the activities. Prep, Year 1 and Year 2 will enjoy a fun session, complete with lots of exciting activities planned by the teachers from both schools.  Thank you to our Parent helpers were very much needed to ensure supervision of lots of small groups experiencing lots of different activities.

PHOTO DAY!  PHOTO DAY!  PHOTO DAY!

Next Tuesday 16^th May is our school Photo Day

• Photo money can be handed to the photographers on the day or pay online.
• Please ensure children are in formal school uniform, neat and tidy.

Mums..... Because you are our Sunshine!

Happy Mothers Day!

We hope that all the special ladies that attended had a lovely morning.  

This week the MTSS-E focus was on being Respectful and Responsible when using the library space. This space is a calm, quiet area of the school that is open at lunch times. We need to make sure that students return books to the correct place, put all their pencils, games and paper away when finished and remember that it is not a place for playing. Teachers gave out extra Joey’s tokens in the library this week to those students who were able to use the space in a respectful and responsible manner. Great work! 

Welcome to week 4!  

Another amazing fortnight of learning and fun.  We have created wonderful craft for Mother’s Day and had lots of fun wearing our sunshine hats while singing for our special mothers, grandmothers, aunties, and carers. Another highlight of our last few weeks was learning more about Saint Joseph and enjoying pizza on Saint Joseph’s Feast Day. 

We are looking forwards to all the activities at Under Eight’s Day tomorrow at Western Cape College.  

The last two weeks we have continued with our learning in Literacy, Math, Science, Geography, Dance, AUSLAN, Music and our Social and Emotional Skills learning and are loving our PMP program in the morning. 

We look forward to another wonderful term with you all and again if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Mrs Backhouse or Mrs Hamilton. 

Mrs Backhouse 

 kbackhouse@cns.catholic.edu.au 

Mrs Hamilton 

dhamilton@cns.catholic.edu.au 

Many thanks,  

Prep.  

Dear Parents and Guardians, 

Welcome to the Year 1 Newsletter and what a busy couple of weeks we have had. This week the Year 1 Curriculum note for Term 2 which details what we will be learning this Term and the days and routines of the Year 1 Classroom has been sent out. 

On Thursday the 11th of May we celebrated as a school how special our Mums are by holding our annual St Joseph’s Mother’s Day Celebration themed ‘You are my Sunshine’. It was a morning of fun, food, laughter and activities. Whatever your Mother’s Day looks like this weekend, we hope it is spent sharing love and gratitude. 

On Friday Prep to Year 3 students attended the Under 8’s Day at WCC. The theme this year was ‘PLAY - You, me and our communities’. The children in Year One had a fabulous morning, playing, making, eating with all the children from the Weipa community. What a great event run by Western Cape College.  

Science  

This week the students reviewed and discussed the changes that they can see in the sky and landscape between day and night. We completed the ‘A-Z Challenge’ by writing something that is in the sky or landscape for every letter of the alphabet.  

We read the story ‘Little Cloud’ by Eric Carl, the students went outside looking at the different types of clouds and discussed the shapes that they make and how the wind makes them move. 

Religion  

This week we have been looking at the Scripture of when Joseph and Mary found Jesus in the temple. There was lots of discussion around the words Jesus used when he said, “I wasn't lost, I was in my Father’s house” The students have been making connections with Jesus’ life and our school values of Humility, Justice and Compassion.  

Maths  

In Maths over the last 2 weeks we have been learning about length and measuring lots of different objects and comparing lengths. We have been using different units of measurement including glue sticks, our hands, paperclips and unifix cubes to predict and measure length. The children are getting better at marking and moving objects to make sure they are accurate when measuring. 

Just a gentle reminder that: 

• Homework is due in every Tuesday 
• LibraryBooks are due back on Wednesday 

• P.E. Sports Uniform is worn on Thursday 
• Assembly is held on Friday Morning 
   

If you have any questions please feel free to make contact with us at  a convenient time that suits. Our email addresses are: 

Michelle Gear mgear@cns.catholic.edu.au 

Melanie Turner mturner@cns.catholic.edu.au 

Kind Regards, 

Michelle Gear and Melanie Turner. 

Hello families and friends of Year 3, 

Thank you to everyone that was able to come and celebrate Mother’s Day with the school yesterday, it was great to see so many smiling faces. 

Moving into the middle of term 2, the students are busy learning about new concepts and consolidating previous learning. In English we have been looking at describing characters and how we structure a narrative. Across maths the students are now looking at the measurement and space aspect of the Australian Curriculum, and we have been measuring the length of different objects and using metric units to calculate the capacity of various containers.  

Gentle reminders: 

• School photos are next week – 16th May 
• Homework is given out Monday and returned Friday 
• Library is Friday 
• Music is Wednesday 
• PE uniform is Thursday 
• Spanish is Friday 

I hope you all have a great weekend! 

Emily 

Hello families and friends of Year 3, 

Thank you to everyone that was able to come and celebrate Mother’s Day with the school yesterday, it was great to see so many smiling faces. 

Moving into the middle of term 2, the students are busy learning about new concepts and consolidating previous learning. In English we have been looking at describing characters and how we structure a narrative. Across maths the students are now looking at the measurement and space aspect of the Australian Curriculum, and we have been measuring the length of different objects and using metric units to calculate the capacity of various containers.  

Gentle reminders: 

• School photos are next week – 16th May 
• Homework is given out Monday and returned Friday 
• Library is Friday 
• Music is Wednesday 
• PE uniform is Thursday 

• Spanish is Friday 

I hope you all have a great weekend! 

Emily 

We have been super busy in Year 4 these past two weeks. Students are loving learning about estimating and rounding in our Math lessons. There is even a focus on 10, 000’s and 1000’s. We have looked at how we round money to the nearest dollar or fifty cent. We will move into mass and how we measure accurately in grams and kilograms.  

We are starting to tie up our Religion unit on The Trinity with students recognizing symbols and scripture where The Trinity is evident. Our next unit we will visit our church and have many discussions with Fr Dariusz about the mission and ministry within the church. We will also look at the sacraments of healing- penance and annointing of the sick.  

Our Information reports are coming along with students completing some research on a chosen animal. We are learning how to write paragraphs with correct structure using the PEEL method.  

We are so excited to celebrate Mother’s Day with our mums and we wish you a restful day

Newsletter week 4 

This week in the Hub we have started a new unit on People that change our world. The students have been interested and engaged in conversations about Australia’s history timeline and the inventors that changed this. We have started to explore Huygens, Galileo, Dr. Karl and Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and Telsa. Students had an opportunity to learn new things about these inventors and start sharing with the class. This will extend into our science lessons where we will be recreating and experimenting with inventors past investigations.  

Over the past week we have also been practicing and developing our skills in AFL. This will come in great use at the Crusaders Cup on Friday when we verse lots of other students from Weipa. Last years seniors won, well see how Friday goes. Will we come back with a win? 

We hope you have a lovely Mothers Day, 

From the Senior Learning Hub.