2024 Term 1 - Week 9 - Newsletter

Prayer of the Week

During Lent this year, we will continue to share the same Lenten prayer in the newsletter each fortnight. This is a prayer that classes are using in their daily prayer at school and a good reminder of this special Church Season of Lent. 

From our Principal

Next Week, the Christian community will embark on what is called ‘Holy Week’. Holy Week for Christians is a time of special meaning. It is a week during which we do things that we don’t usually do and hear things we usually don’t hear. Holy Week has been held in great reverence since the very early years of the Church and no other Christian observance has interested the world so much. The rituals of the Church are complex and laden with meaning.   

Passion Sunday, also known as Palm Sunday, commemorates Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem where He is proclaimed King, as many people of His time were seeking a political leader. We, like those who greeted Jesus, use palms to show our willingness to accept Jesus as our leader and to follow Him. 

In the three days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, the Church gives us a dramatic, intense and symbolic expression of the very heart of Christian belief. By participating in the liturgical ceremonies of these three days, we can deepen our understanding of what it means for us to be a Christian. 

There are Christian people who find it difficult to come to Church any more. They have had experiences with the Church that have been hurtful to them or they feel the Church has little or nothing to offer them. Such people are closer to Jesus than they might have imagined. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, He was entering the holiest city of the Jewish religion, the city of the Great Temple a place so revered that only the High Priest was allowed to enter it. 

Yet, it was in Jerusalem that Jesus was betrayed, falsely accused, humiliated and handed over to an occupying force by the senior religious leaders, so He could be tortured and executed. 

Like everything that happened in Jesus’ life there is something to be learned from this experience. Jesus’ belief in Himself and the purpose of His life was being tested to the extreme. Even though things did not seem to be working out the way He might have expected, the events that followed were totally momentous. 

For people who have suffered religious hurt, Jesus’ experience is saying yes, there is real hurt, yes, it can be confusing but it is possible to rise above it all and to come back again to the beliefs you once had. Maybe Holy Week is a time for quiet reflection and to be reunited with your faith. 

Holy Week is definitely a week with a difference and spiritually rewarding for those who willingly take part.  

As this will be the last newsletter for the term, I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to all who have volunteered their time in some capacity over the term.

Term 1 certainly has flown by. However, it was a great start to the year and it has been very rewarding to see how quickly the children have settled into routine and the level of school work produced in a short period of time has been exceptional. 

Have a very happy and safe Easter break and I look forward to seeing you all back for the beginning of Term 2 on Tuesday 16^th April!. 

Thanks for reading.

God Bless,

Duane Wann

Principal

Student Protect

From our APRE

Welcome to Week 9! Can you believe we have entered the last two weeks of this term? I guess it is true that time flies when you are having fun!

A big thank you to both 3 Red and 2 Blue for leading STM in prayer over the past two weeks.

On Friday, March 8, 3 Red shared an International Women’s Day Prayer Celebration with the Upper School and some visitors from the Lower School. They did a wonderful job sharing their thoughts on the women who inspire them.

Last Friday, 2 Blue led the Lower School in prayer to celebrate St Patrick’s Day. They shared some interested facts about St Patrick and some wonderful new St Patrick’s Day songs with us as well. Both classes, Mr Barnes and Mrs Jones are to be commended on their fantastic preparation for these special celebrations.

Harmony Week

This week, STM joins with schools and workplaces across the country celebrating Harmony Week. The theme for Harmony Week this year is ‘Everyone Belongs’. Our 2024 theme is the same as the theme over the past few years, but I cannot say I am disappointed by this! I think the concept of belonging is such an important one to keep in active dialogue with our young people. At STM, we have a very strong passion for social justice as a school community and the idea of everyone belonging is key to this.

During the week, all students will engage in Harmony Week lessons in class and create an individual artwork for our annual Harmony Week Hallway of Hearts. Keep your eye on our social media for updates on our hallway project!

As well as these special lessons and our art project, we will also be celebrating Harmony Week with …

• An ORANGE Free Dress Day on Thursday March 21. This is not a fundraiser, so no donation is needed. Orange is the official colour of Harmony Week, but if you don’t have orange clothes, feel free to wear something bright and colourful instead.
• A Harmony Week Prayer Celebration on Friday March 22. On Friday, 4 Blue will lead the Upper School in prayer to celebrate what Harmony Weeks means to them. I look forward to hearing from 4 Blue and Miss Berry about their thoughts on this special week.

Sacramental Program

Our Sacramental Program has been going well. Students have nearly finished their preparation to receive their Sacrament of Penance, which Father Nathan will share with the students before we break for Easter. In Term 3, students in the Sacramental Program will begin their preparation for their Sacrament of Confirmation. Please continue to keep these students and families in your thoughts and prayers.

Stations of the Cross Prayer Celebration

This year, we will once again welcome Holy Week with a Stations of the Cross Prayer Celebration. Students from Year 5 will lead this celebration, which will be shared by the whole school from 1:45 pm on Thursday, March 28. All family and friends are most welcome to join us.

The Stations of the Cross are a staple in any Catholic Church, but it is in the lead up to Easter that the story behind them gets to take centre stage. The Stations of the Cross introduce believers to Jesus’ passion, retelling the story in 14 parts. While the stations we see in churches uses imagery to achieve this, our STM Stations of the Cross Prayer Celebration will use visuals, words and music to share this story with our school community. In addition to the 14 Stations (outlined below), our celebration this year will also commemorate the miracle of Easter and share the story of Jesus’ resurrection as well.

First Station: Jesus is Sentenced to Death.

Second Station: Jesus Carries the Cross.

Third Station: Jesus Falls for the First Time.

Fourth Station: Jesus Meets his Mother, Mary.

Fifth Station: Simon Helps Jesus to Carry the Cross.

Sixth Station: Veronica Wipes Jesus’ Face.

Seventh Station: Jesus Falls for the Second Time.

Eighth Station: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem.

Ninth Station: Jesus Falls for the Third Time.

Tenth Station: Jesus is Stripped of His Clothes.

Eleventh Station: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross.

Twelfth Station: Jesus Dies on the Cross.

Thirteenth Station: Jesus is Taken Down from the Cross.

Fourteenth Station: Jesus is Laid in the Tomb.

While classes will be exploring the Stations of the Cross together before our Prayer Celebration on the last day of term, it would be beneficial to have a discussion about this at home as well. Some of our young people can find the retelling of the stations to be quite an emotional and confronting experience. If you would like any resources to support you in this space, please feel free to reach out.

Musical News

Last week, I visited students in Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6 to share some further information with them about the main cast characters in our Lion King Jr Musical this year. We discussed the characters that students could audition for and the nature of each of these roles (how much singing, dancing, speaking etc.). Audition packs are available for collection over the next two weeks from my room. Students will need to discuss their auditions with adults before returning the audition form to me. All forms need to be returned to school by Thursday, March 28. Auditions will be held in early Term 2.

While our main cast is rather small, with only 25 characters, all students in Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6 will be part of our musical, with our Upper School classes sharing a number of songs and scenes throughout the play.

Further information about our musical will be shared early next term, but mark Term 3, Week 10 in your calendar as Musical Week! 😊

As this is our last newsletter for this term, I want to thank our whole school community for a wonderful term and for your support for our Project Compassion Mission this term. Your support and generosity mean the world to Service Club and I; and to CARITAS, who use your generous donations to support people all over the world. Our Easter Raffle winner will be drawn at our final assembly for this term on Thursday, March 28 in the Sportscentre starting at 8:40 am.

God Bless

Kris Byrne

Assistant Principal Religious Education

Term One Important Dates

Prep 2025 - Make sure you register for upcoming events

From our Sports Department

2024 STM Cross Country Program 

• Tuesday 19thMarch 
• Andersen Park 
• Starting Time   11:00am 

The program for the day is below.  

All students require water bottles, sunscreen, and hats. Asthma puffers ( if required ) to be carried at all times. If any students have reactions to insect bites or any other allergies, please ensure the required medication ( epi pens ) has been given to teachers so that the required action can be taken. 

If students are going to absent on the day, or parents wish to take them home at conclusion of the cross country, then teachers must be notified either by note, email or seen in person on the day, as official rolls need to be marked. 

*War Cries through out the afternoon* 

Futsal 

Congratulations to our St Thomas More’s futsal team who won the South West Futsal Carnival last week. They played amazingly. Well done Tyrell, Nicholas, Darcy, George, Rhythm, Fletcher and Jacob.  

Year 4 T-Ball Gala Day 

Next Tuesday 26th March, all Year 4 children will be participating in a T-Ball Gala Day. This day is a fantastic opportunity for children to begin preparing themselves for interschool sport in Yrs 5 & 6. Games will be played against other Catholic schools from across Toowoomba. Children will be bused to and from the venue during school time. The bus will be leaving school at 8:40am. Please wear sports uniform, bring a hat, water bottle and food for the day. The bus will return to school at approx 1:15pm.  

DATE: Tuesday 26th March 2024 
VENUE: Kearney's Spring Touch Football Grounds, Ruthven St Toowoomba 
STARTING TIME: Opening - 9:15 am - Competition Commences - 9.40am 
FINISHING TIME: 12:50pm (approx.)  

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact myself or your child's classroom teacher.  

Rugby League 

Congratulations to Hamish and Jonathan for being selected in the TSS U11 Rugby League team. Well done boys, good luck!  

God Bless.

Stacey Hancock

HPE Teacher 

From Our Library

From our Student Representatives

Our Minute to Win It Challenge has been a great success this term! This week is our last Minute to Win It challenge. We have decided to bring back Pom Pom Breath for our last challenge. Come along on Thursday at First Break to win points for your team.  

Students from the winning team for the challenge this term will receive a sweet treat ... a Zooper Dooper! We will let you know which team has won at assembly next week and share our sweet treats at First Break next Friday in the Quad.  So far, MacKillop has the lead but one more week can make a difference to our leaderboard!

On Friday March 8, we celebrated International Women’s Day. This is a special day to celebrate the contributions of women to our local and global communities. Thank you to all the women who make our STM community such a wonderful place. We hope your IWD flower brightened your day … just as you brighten our days!

Over the weekend, we celebrated St Patrick’s Day. St Patrick lived in Ireland and brought the Catholic faith to believers there. St Patrick is a special saint for Toowoomba as our Cathedral is named after him. People all around the world celebrate St Patrick’s Day and wear green on March 17. Everyone looked fantastic with their green accessories on Friday last week for St Patrick’s Day. 

Eva and Audrey have been out in the playground again looking for joy! When they look for joy, they search for big smiles in the playground.

Have a great week,

God Bless

Flynn and Audrey 

From Our Service Club

Kindy visits are going well. So far Indi and Arlia have shared their stories with the Kindy kids. This week, Matilda is sharing her story and activity.   

Our Easter Raffle is going well too. So far we have raised over $130 for our raffle. Thank you to all members of our community who have donated Easter Eggs and Easter Items for our raffle. We have a great number of hampers to raffle off at the end of this term. If you would like to, families are still able to donate Easter Eggs and Easter items. Please send in what you can. All donations can be dropped to Miss Byrne’s Room any time before the end of the term. Raffle tickets are on sale each day at Second Break Eating Time for 50c each in Miss Byrne’s Room. 

Our Project Compassion person for this week is Leaia. Leaia’s story teaches us how our donations for Project Compassion are used to help people around the world.  Check out a video about Leaia below.

Leaia lives in Samoa, and she has 5 children. Her biggest concern is having access to clean drinking water. Before Project Compassion stepped in and helped Leaia’s family, they had very little clean drinking water. They collected their water from a water collection point near the rubbish dump. This meant the water was not always clean.   Sometimes they even collected rainwater in old freezers. It was also not very clean or safe to drink.   

CARITAS helped Leaia’s family by donating a water tank to help them collect and store clean drinking water. They also installed these tanks in schools as children cannot go to school when there is no water.  Having access to clean drinking water gave Leaia’s family a brighter perspective for the future.  

As well as buying tickets in our raffle, children can still bring in money to place in their classroom Project Compassion Boxes. Well done to 2 Red who collected the most money in Week 7 in their Project Compassion Box. We didn’t get a chance to check boxes in Week 8. Keep those donations coming in.  

Have a great week. 

God bless, 

Isla, Matilda, Grace, Arlia, Indi and James from Service Club  

Student Awards

Well done to our students who received awards in Week 7 and Week 8. Keep up the great work! 

Week 7

Week 8

Cooking Corner

Dont forget to send us photo's of your cooking adventures, cant wait to see what you are baking at home.

P & F News

Tuckshop News

Opening Wednesday, Thursday and Friday

Order via Flexischools App.  If you need help to navigate the App, please feel free to pop into the tuckshop and chat to Jemma or email on jemma@archerscateringandevents.com.au 

Cut off of Online orders...
Order before 3pm Tuesday (for Wednesday), 3pm Wednesday (for Thursday) & 1pm Thursday (for Friday).

NEW Tuckshop Menu

REMINDER - IF YOU CHILD IS SICK, PLEASE CONTACT THE TUCKSHOP BEFORE 9AM TO POSTPONE YOUR ORDER TO THE NEXT DAY!

From our Uniform Shop

From Our OSHC

Good Morning St Thomas, Mores Families,

I hope you have had a wonderful week and are looking forward to the weekend with loved ones.  

Our themes this week have been chosen and voted by the children of Taylor Swift and All about Horses.  These were chosen in a group meeting last week.

Monday

BSC- The children made horse bookmarks with Miss Laetitia.

ASC- The children made Taylor Swifts friendship bracelets.

Tuesday

BSC-  Miss Gemma had a horse activity sheets for the children to complete

ASC- Miss Halle had a Taylor Swift Bingo Game ( children’s choice activity)

Wednesday

BSC- Miss Gemma had planned to do a OSHC era poster, but the children were more excited about cooking berry pancakes for breakfast.

ASC- Miss Gemma held a Taylor Swift Karaoke competition with mainly the girls. That was a lot of fun.

Thursday

BSC- Miss Halle had a ‘find the word’ horse activity sheet for the children to compete all about horses.

ASC- Miss Debbie assisted the children to make their own horse heads and hang them on the wall. We also watched a video about Arabian Horses and Miss Debbie showed pictures of her horses and took questions about horses and how to care for them .

Friday –

BSC- Miss Debbie was going to facilitate the same horse head activity form yesterday  , however found these wonderful horse head stickers and 4 just happened to be green horses.  Which seeing as it is St Patricks Day, the children thought it was fitting to complete the green horses.  We also watched a short video on what was St Patricks Day as asked by a Prep child.

ASC-  Miss Gemma will be holding a Taylor Swift Trivia game to see who knows the most about Taylor Swift. For afternoon tea the ladies will make some green cupcakes for St Patricks Day.

At St Thomas Mores we also have many outdoor activities for the children who are not inclined to want to do arts and crafts or even be inside . Some of the games on offer are usually child directed for example, Soccer within teams and one on one, Dodgeball, Totem Tennis, Hula Hoops. Handball, Running laps on the oval, basketball in the hall, Lego on the deck, and cars in the dirt.  

Staffing :

Miss Jannali will return next week.

Miss Hannah has been unwell all week and has not been here, we hope she has a speedy recovery.

I would like to thank Miss Laetitia for stepping up as Responsible Person while Jannali has been away. Miss Laetitia will return next week.

Mr Morgan will be on shift this afternoon whilst Miss Laetitia is absent as Responsible Person.

Mr Laurent ( the children call him Mr E) has been a great asset to the boys and loves to get them playing teams sports. I will attach a blurb from Laurent below, and a picture , so you can recognise him when you see him in the playground or inside.  Laurent has been greeting parents on arrival at pick up; however he may have missed some parents who pick up after 5:30pm.  Blurb below.

My name is Laurent Epetahui, students call me Mr E. I originally come from French Polynesia, indeed French and Polynesian both at same time. Married to my Australian wife who comes from the Darling Down, we have 2 grown up daughters, one is going into university. 

We were working and teaching in the Singapore and Malaysia. We just moved back to Australia 4 months ago. Education is and will always be my passion. 

Sharing my experiences and work to unlock the great potential that is installed in children and youth is my passion. Working and playing with young kids at St Thomas is just wonderful. 

Reminders:

• We are now taking bookings for Vacation care from 2^nd April until 12^th April, on the 15^th April we will be open as it is a Pupil Free Day and will be running a vacation care program.  
• I have emailed all Permission forms for the 3 excursions and have some hard copies on the sign in table for your convenience.
• Please ensure that your child is wearing sun safe clothing, wide brimmed hat, and have closed in shoes when attending vacation care.
• We will be providing lunch on the 5^th April in the way of a BBQ lunch .  You will not need to provide lunch on that day. All other days we provide morning tea and afternoon tea only.
• On tech days children will need their own wifi or data to access their games.
• We still have quite a lot of lost property from last vacation care period. Can you please check on pick up/drop off and see if anything is your childs.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you next week where children’s choice theme is Elvis Presley , would you believe 😊 thank you Pippa, and Katy Perry.

When Elvis was chosen, and voted on, I was surprised, and quietly pleased that he is still remembered after all this time. So your children may be humming some Elvis tunes by the end of next week.

Kind Regards

Debbie and the team

Thank you!

A huge thank you to Westridge Fruit and Vegetables for their continued support with the donation of fresh fruit every week for our students!

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