Sacred Heart Primary School Pearce eNewsletter

AROUND THE SCHOOL

Congratulations to our Year 6 students on receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation last week. Drawing on the gifts of the Holy Spirit helps us to find peace and contentment, as well as the strength and courage needed throughout life.

A special thank you to Fr. Richard and Megan Loughlin from Mary Help of Christians Parish. Also, to the staff and families for supporting the students in preparing for the Sacrament of Confirmation.

Stage 3 Leadership Experience

On Friday 18^th September Stage 3 students and their teachers participated in the ‘Swing into Life Program’ at B.Firm Activity Centre. The students were put through some challenging individual and team building activities by completing a range of obstacle courses.

The day provided the students the opportunity to learn to communicate positively with their peers and important life skills like problem solving, listening, leadership and creative thinking.

The teachers were very proud to witness the comradery, teamwork and encouragement displayed by all the children. Their positive attitude and willingness to overcome the obstacles revealed their self-confidence and determination.

Dance

For the last five weeks of Term 3, all classes have experienced one dance lesson per week. Kindergarten have been focusing on fundamental loco-motor movements through lessons on dinosaurs, Australian animals, and fairy tales. In Stage 1, there have been some delightful examples of creativity in the students’ sea creature shapes and movements, as well as dance ideas from countries such as China, Japan, and South Africa.

Stage 2 experimented with the elements of dance and demonstrated great imagination in choreographing movement sequences about volcanoes, sport and body percussion.

The Stage 3 students have tackled choreographic devices through topics such as the Olympic Games, musical theatre, and some cultural dances. It has been wonderful to watch this group complete self-choreographic tasks with such enthusiasm and ability.

STAGE 2 Excursion to Birrigai

On the 14^th September, Stage 2 went on an excursion to Birrigai. We had a fantastic day learning about the Ngunnawal people and European settlement.

When we arrived we were given some really tasty Birrigai cookies to eat with our morning tea. We then met in the hall so that we could get organised into our family groups. We were pretending that we were early settler families and we had to build our own farms from scratch. It was extremely hard work. Even Governor Macquarie turned up to inspect our work at the end. We all passed the test.

In the afternoon we went on a really long bushwalk walking towards the hills looking at all of the significant Ngunnawal sites around Birrigai. One of the caves that we looked at had been used by the Ngunnawal people for at least 26,000 years. We also found out that Birrigai was a meeting place where many indigenous groups travelled long distances to eat bogong moths at Christmas time. They are meant to taste like peanut butter, however, we didn’t try any.

When we arrived back at school we were exhausted. We all had an excellent time together at Birrigai and we can’t wait for the next visit.

Spring

Mr Mitchell has been getting into the Spring vibe this week.

STEM

Over the last term the children have been engaging in various STEM based activities. They have been using Mindstorm, Robots, Spheros, Coding and Critical Thinking skills. Tomorrow is the culmination of their four week project.