To the Community of Holy Trinity,

Each year on September 1, you can guarantee your social media feeds will simultaneously erupt with the news that spring has arrived.

Daffodils. Pictures of the sun glittering off a body of water. Fluffy white clouds against a super blue sky, and Sydney-siders will no doubt whack the Harbour Bridge in somewhere. 

Which is all very well and good. Spring is awesome. Spring means warmth. Spring-a-ding-ding.

Dear Creator God, 

We thank you for spring days.

We ask you to bless these flowers that may have come from our mother earth.

May they remind us of the new life you give through your Son, Jesus.

May we always remember to love and care for all your creation.

We ask this through Christ our Lord. 
Amen.

With Springtime comes a renewed sense of focus, a renewed joy, and the promise of sunshine and laughter. Everyone seems to smile a bit more, and steps are lighter as we round out the next few months together. There are still many significant events happening in our coummunity. Next week we look forward to seeing grandparents and parents at our school for Learning Journeys, the Grandparents Day Prayer Assembly, visits to classrooms and morning tea, and of course our Bi-Annaul Book Fair.  The P&F are also holding a 'spring' working bee on Friday 13th September from 3.30-6pm. Remember many hands make light work. 

LEARNING JOURNEYS

A staple of our PYP school is the Term 3 Learning Journeys. Although there are many different approaches to planning for learning journeys, generally all iterations have elements of student voice, choice and owership. This wonderful community event allows our students to hold control over the showcasing of their learning. The students will communicate to you, their parents, what they want from you during their time together. 

We welcome a new member to our family in the ELC and wish the Sherlock family congratulations on the safe arrival of baby George and Ted on becoming a big brother.

We also ask every one to please keep the Spry family (ELC) in your prayers as Vincent's dad recovers from serious surgery.

With every best wish for a warm and peace-filled week ahead. 

Katie 

Please click here to RSVP to the September Working Bee.

Grandparents Day 

Confirmation 2019

Please continue to keep the Confirmation candidates in your prayers. Next week, there are two important events that form part of our Sacramental Program for Confirmation, please see details below:

• Stole Night: Tuesday 10^th September at 6pm (Letters to your child are to be handed in also). ALL candidates are required to attend.
• Confirmation Retreat: (for all Year 6 students) will be held on Thursday 12^th September. Students can wear free clothes and are to line up at morning gathering and we will walk to the Parish Center together. 
  • Year 6 students are also asked to please bring something in for a shared morning tea. 

At Holy Trinity we pride ourselves on how we build our student's 21st century skills by using technology to enhance our inquiries.

Hands on and play based inquiry is a big focus in our Kindergarten and Year 1 classrooms. Technology is generally introduced to assist with using ICT as a tool, producing creative responses and finding information.

Currently in Kindergarten the students have been learning how to manipulate the camera function on the iPad, record audio to explain inquiries and work with their Year 5/6 buddies to use technology effectively and post to Seesaw.

In Year 1, the students have been exploring how to give and follow directions to familiar locations. They have been programming Beebots (basic robots) to follow their commands. This has been an engaging way to support the Mathematics curriculum and also an introduction to the use of coding and computational language.

Good habits start young- Part 1

A guide for parents and carers

Parents and carers play an important role in helping children to develop digital intelligence — the social, emotional and practical skills needed to successfully navigate the digital world.

As your child gets older, it is useful to keep reminding them of these basic digital intelligence principles: respect, empathy, critical thinking, responsible behaviour and resilience. These are also principles you can emphasise with your child when things go wrong.

HOLY TRINITY IS MAGIC!

Holy Trinity is having a talent show on the 20th of September. We are having a talent show so we can raise money for for Camp Magic. Camp Magic is an organisation which helps kids who have lost someone close to them like a parent or sibling. Camp Magic helps kids understand grief and supports them to deal with how they are feeling. The kids use the seasons as a guide and they connect their feelings to them. The camp helps teach them the grief cycle and how to deal with it.

The talent show will be a bit different this year. It will only be years 1-6 who will preform. Year 5/6 will have have five acts. Year 3/4 will have four acts. Year 1 and 2 will each have 2 acts. There will be a time limit of two minutes that the students will have to show everyone their talent. In the talent show the students can do a dance, a skit, sing, magic, jokes, comedy, gymnastics, musical talent and show off anything that they can do. The students must have their act ready by the end of week 8. It’ll be a gold coin to watch the talent show and five dollars per person to enter. We will have prizes. We are going to have a very special guest judge!

We cannot wait to see the talent Holy Trinity has to share!

Written by Jessica Graham, Emily Rasmussen, Erin Stilwell, Ella Swales, Claire O’Connell and Rachel Hofmeier

The worst feeling for a child

by Michael Grose

 Humans are social by nature. We are happiest and most productive when we’re in groups. The family we are born into stays together rather than disbands as can happen in the animal world. This togetherness ensures a sense of belonging. Parental acceptance and forgiveness confirms that a child belongs unconditionally to their family providing a deep sense of security and safety.

As they grow older their social world expands to include broader family, friends and others within our community. The ties that bind are a little more tenuous at the outer edges of their social circle. Unlike in a family acceptance a child’s or teen’s acceptance by peers is conditional and, as such, friendships can quickly change. Differing interests, unresolved grievances and changing personalities can lead to peer relationship breakdowns, resulting in feelings of loss and sadness for a child.

The flip side of acceptance is loss, when valued relationships flounder. This is normal. It can be heartbreaking for a parent to watch their child or teen deal with the feelings of sadness, but that’s when parents need to be supportive and emotionally present.

Worse still for children and young people is when a relationship breakdown with friends leads to ostracism, or being left out of the usual group activities. Sadness due to friendship loss is a normal part of life. Feeling devastated by being left out of a group, is not acceptable, and shouldn’t be shrugged off as normal.

Ostracism hits at the very heart of being human – the need to belong. It hits at a young person’s sense of security and safety. Continued ostracism generally leads to feelings of helplessness in a child or young person, the worst possible emotion they can experience.

Teaching kids about relationships

Psychologist and author Collett Smart in her Teach girls to build each other up webinar maintains that parents should proactively teach kids about how relationships work. She was referring to parents of girls in particular, but boys too can benefit from learning about the nature of friendships. This relationship work can be both incidental and intentional. Smart maintains that we need to be continuously talking to kids about what makes a good friend; that not all friendships last; how they can break up kindly with friends and how they can assertively and respectfully stand up for themselves rather than be dominated by others.

Learning how to argue well

Smart maintains that learning how to argue is a normal part of healthy relationships. She says, “We haven’t taught girls how to be assertive. They learn to be assertive at home. Give girls opportunities to disagree with us as parents so that they can be brave enough for them to do so outside of home with their friends.” Parents need to give kids healthy ways to express their emotions and frustrations about friendships so that they can learn to resolve conflict without taunting, being abusive or giving someone the ‘permanent cold shoulder’.

Above all, we need to let kids know that ostracism of a former friend or of another child is not acceptable under any circumstances. The conversation that parents have with children about ostracism carries a great deal of weight and needs to happen from a very young age before these relationships patterns emerge and become entrenched in adolescence.

(Source: Parentingideas.com.au)

On the weekend Holy Trinity had three teams participate in the annual Tournament of Minds (TOM) challenge which was held at Campbell High. 

TOM philosophy is to challenge the world to develop problem solving skills in Primary and Secondary students. This philosphy is something we endevour to do on a daily bases here at Holy Trinity, both in and out of the classroom. 

TOM offers teams of students the opportunity to solve authentic, open-ended challenges that foster creative, divergent thinking whilst developing collaborative enterprise, excellence and teamwork.

This is the first year Holy Trinity has competed. The students freely gave up their  lunch breaks and after school in order to prepare. On the day, they all stood up on stage and shared their response to the given challenge. Each and every student did our school extremely proud with their brilliant performances.

Challenges are set in The Arts, Language Literature, Social Sciences and STEM. 

The STEM team, which was new to 2018, a combination of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics principles provides an integrated approach for students to deepen their conceptual understanding and use their creative and critical thinking skills to solve the challenges within an authentic context. 

This team consisted of Alex H, Hugh K, Asha W, Layla W, Samuel C and Thomas O. They received the Spirit of the TOM award for their outstanding team work and being supportive of each other on the day through the long term challenge and spontaneous challenge. 

The Arts team, researched and developed a creative interpretation to the The Wizard of Oz. They included artistic expression in the form of dance, song, and other forms of the Visual Arts. This team consisted of Imogen T, Eleanor C, Madeline H, Poppy W, Issabella K,  Avalon C and Charlotte W. 

The Social Science team, took their viewers and judges on a journey through the moral and ethical issues confronting society in the 21st century. They did this through a musical and this team consisting of Harrison O,  Georgia B,  Lucy M, Charlise W, Fleur B and Alyssa M. This team has qualified for the finals (only 4 teams are selected) held in two weeks.

Huge congratulations to all the students involved and Head TOM facilitator Mrs Tiffany Fletcher. Mrs Fletcher has guided (and never helped them-due to TOM rulings) along their journey to competing in their very first TOM experience. We thank the parents involved for their support on the lead up and on the day.

We look forward to more teams competing next year and we wish our Social Science team all the luck and success as they prepare and participate in the ACT Branch Finals.

Tiffany Fletcher and Mel Punyer

Bike Program

Students from Years 3-6 have commenced the bike program in their class groups.  As students have been bringing in their own bikes for the lessons this has presented storage issues.   As a short term solution the following procedure is in place.

All students must bring in their own bike lock and lock their bikes in the racks or cage.

Once the racks and the cage are full, students are to lock their bikes to the outside of the kitchen garden fence.

Plans are in place once the childcare centre is complete to renovate the bike cage and racks.  This is a short term solution and we appreciate your understanding during this period.

TERM 3, WEEK 8 - WED 11 SEP

Team Leader: Mark Bauer, Rian Foley, Anne Hitchings, Nigel Baker, Mary-Anne Winchester