Kia Ora Families,

Welcome back to Term 3 and our first newsletter of the term. I trust you all had a restful holiday time. It is certainly great to see energetic and enthusiastic children returning to school ready to learn. Thank you for all you do at home to have our young learners well rested, well fed and ready for learning each day. As I walk around on duty at lunchtime, it is great to see the attention to good nutritious lunches and so many lunchboxes that help support our litterless lunch initiative. The compartment-type lunch boxes have done so much for our ability to reduce the amount of waste each day, thank you for all you do to support our drive towards being a rubbish free school.

Parish Connect At Masses over last weekend Fr John asked for an indicator of people who are interested in attending the ‘drinks and nibbles’ event hosted in our school hall from 5pm to 7pm on Friday 11th August to begin our 5 days of 175th Jubilee celebrations. We are keen to learn a rough idea of numbers so that we cater appropriately. If you are keen to come along and connect with past pupils and families as well as parishioners, please email [email protected]. Thank you in advance for helping us out.

Please follow this link to this Sunday’s readings.

Connected Curriculum This term we continue our focus from Term 2, learning more about our local history and in particular our school and parish history through the concept of Stories. The students will continue their exploration of the stories of the people, places and groups of importance to our local area, school and parish. By the end of the concept students will be able to share the stories that are particular to either our House Patrons, our school history or the history of Howick and its connection to our school, depending on their year level. This learning culminates with our 175th Jubilee celebrations that will be held in a few weeks.

175th Celebrations at School On Friday 11th August we will have a ‘step back in time’ day where children and school staff will dress in olden-day clothing and engage in olden-day lessons without the use of devices. On Monday 14th August we will be having a school open day, where parishioners, families and people who have traveled to be part of the 175th weekend of celebrations will have the opportunity to visit the school and see a variety of modern day lessons being undertaken. After lunch, visitors and families are invited to our Star Idol talent competition which will be held from 1.20pm in the afternoon. On Tuesday 15th August, The Feast of the Assumption of Mary, our school and parish feast day, we will bus our children up to our parish Church for Mass which will take place at 11.00am. We will also have our annual, hotly contested house Tapu Ae competition. On top of Friday’s drinks and nibbles event mentioned earlier in this newsletter, Saturday’s memorial Mass and official luncheon and Sunday’s Mass at 9am celebrated by our Bishop and picnic from 1pm at our old school site in Granger Road, there is a full 5 days of celebrations ahead. School families are invited to be part of any/all celebratory events.

Grandparents Day On Wednesday, the Feast Day of Jesus’ grandparents, Anne and Joachim, we held our first Grandparents Day celebrations. It was a real pleasure to welcome Grandparents for a special liturgy after morning tea and then have them spend time in their grandchildren’s classrooms. There were a few picnic lunches produced at lunchtime for grandparents and grandchildren alike to enjoy. Following the success of this day, we look forward to doing the same next year.

Parent/Student/Teacher Conferences Thanks to all our families who attended these important mid year learning conversations last night. Thank you also to the more than 100 families who came through the Information Centre to help with our Health Consultation. Your voice in this process is important to help us understand where you would like emphasis to be placed in our health curriculum delivery.

Covid Notifications We have been largely free from covid cases since the beginning of the term, however, over the past couple of days a few cases have begun to surface. Please continue to notify us if your child tests positive so that we can alert those close to that child to monitor closely for symptoms.

Morning Drop Off and Afternoon Pick Up information There have been a couple of queries lately about school drop off and pick up times. Here is the updated information for you from our website:

Staffing News
It is with much sadness that we bid farewell to Mrs Helen Burger, class teacher in Room 19, at the end of next week. Helen has worked with us here at Our Lady Star of the Sea since 2020. Helen has won a position in the special needs department of Pakuranga College which is an exciting new challenge for her. We wish her all God’s love and blessings as she prepares to embark on new adventures. We will miss her very much.
Mrs Helen Penney will take over from Helen from Monday 7th August, continuing the strong programmes in Room 19. Mrs Penney is a very experienced teacher who has a long association with our school. It is great to have her rejoin our staff.

Looking Ahead We are very much looking forward to our School Cross Country next Tuesday in preparation for the HPPA Zone Cross Country the following Tuesday. The Senior Speech Competition is coming up in two Wednesdays time. In two weeks we will begin our 175th Jubilee Celebrations, as mentioned above, with a ‘step back in time’ dress up day on Friday 11th  August – start getting your costumes ready now! For full information about the celebrations please follow this link to our website

Ngā mihi nui, Tōfa soifua and cǐ zhì jìng lǐ,

Louise Campbell
Principal

After four months of the orphanage relocating to Granger Road, it was destroyed by fire early one morning in September 1929. Four Mercy sisters sleeping in the building were awakened by the crackling of flames and had just enough time to rush the 50 little girls sleeping in the dormitory to safety. Forty residents from Howick fought the blaze but as there was no water supply on the property little could be done to save the buildings. Some of the furnishings were salvaged and the sacred vessels were rescued. The children were taken to stay at the orphanage in Takapuna until their home could be rebuilt.

The Feast of the Assumption is two weeks away. It is our school and parish Patronal Feast. It is the day we honour Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Mother of us all, as we remember how she was assumed into heaven, body and soul. Pope John Paul II presented Mary as a model of what it means to be a faithful disciple. She heard the word of God and acted on it. We too are called to do this as followers of Jesus. Her life would not have been an easy one. Like many today she knew hardship, poverty and heartbreak. Yet she also knew love, joy and peace. Her life story is a model for us of maia, manaaki, tika, awhina, and ngawari. We will reflect on the many aspects of Mary’s life at our school Mass, Tuesday 15  August, 11am in the parish church. This will be an extra special Mass for us as part of our parish school 175th Jubilee celebration. Join us if you can.  

The word Catholic translates as all embracing or universal. We know wherever we go, overseas or at home here in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Catholic Mass will be celebrated somewhere in one of many languages. Here at Our Lady Star of the Sea parish church on the third Sunday of every month at 2:30pm, Fr Peter Choy celebrates Mass in Mandarin for the Chinese community. For more information contact David Wu [email protected]  or go to the Auckland Catholic Chinese Community website http://accc.org.nz/

我们知道，天主教是包容的和无所不在的。 无论我们走到哪里，无论是在海外还是在新西兰的家，天主教的弥撒都会以各种语言进行庆祝。 每个月第三个星期日（下一次是8月20日）下午 2 时 30 分，Peter蔡神父会在Howick的圣母海之星教堂为华人社区用国语举行弥撒。

希望您和您的家人能一同前来，与主共荣。欲了解更多信息，请访问奥克兰天主教华人社区网站 http://accc.org.nz/或联系David Wu，[email protected]。

  Reminders …

… the Alpha programme has begun with options for both English and Mandarin speakers. More information is on the parish website
https://howickcatholic.org.nz/alpha-course/

… Our parish school 175th Jubilee celebrations will be held between 11th and 15th August.

Ko te aroha o te Atua kua whiwhi whanau a tatou Katoa
The tender mercy of God has given us one another

Prayer Intention: We pray that we are strengthened by the Holy Spirit’s gift of courage to give witness to the Gospel and share our faith with others.

Hi, Star Family members!

We are entering Term 3 now and your board hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing holiday.

Yesterday we had the Parent/Teacher/Student Conferences, after recently receiving our children’s mid-year reports. Let us cheer for the progress our children have made. Your board viewed the mid-year school data for reading, writing and maths this week and were pleased to see that compared with the same period last year, our children have made great progress in all subjects. This progress is fantastic to see, and is a credit to the hard work put in by the entire school team.

As a board we undertake continuous review and improvement of our school policies to ensure we are continually operating in alignment with our values, as well as regulatory requirements. The policy framework is divided into two parts: governance policy and operational policies. If at any time you would like to review our policies you can do so here:https://www.starofthesea.school.nz/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/OLSOS-Policies-.pdf.

It’s hard to imagine that in two weeks we’ll be celebrating the 175th anniversary of Our Lady Star of the Sea parish and school, a festival for our community, and we hope you’ve already saved the date for events during that weekend. The celebrations are so exciting, please save the link below,https://www.starofthesea.school.nz/175-years-of-catholic-education/ to be sure you will not miss it.

We are looking forward to more activities in the next two weeks, such as the school cross country on the morning of Tuesday, August 1st.  We hope to see you there cheering all children on!  Coffee with the Principal before the end of school on Monday afternoon, August 7th, is also a great opportunity to come and chat with our principal!

Hope to see you all at our exciting school events! 

Kind regards,

David Wu
on behalf of your Board

Statements have been emailed this week to all families.  Attendance Dues for Term 3 are due on 30 August.   If you have outstanding amounts owing and have not been in contact with Sue Yandell this year, please make a time to meet and discuss a payment plan for the remainder of the year.

Assistance is available for families who are experiencing financial strain.

Chess Competition

Congratulations to Emma Zshornack who represented our school at a girls only chess competition run by the NZ Chess Federation in the latter part of Term 2. Emma was the only girl from our school and she did incredibly well on the day, placing 18th out of 74 participants. Emma won 4 of her 6 games.

Congratulations Emma, we are very proud of you!

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Hi, I’m Briella and I am a year 4 student in Mrs Bailey’s class.  Last weekend I represented our school in Karting at the Auckland Area Schools Championship, and I came 7th place overall in the Cadet division.  On the Saturday I spent some time practicing with the actual competition being held on the Sunday.  On Sunday, I arrived just after 7.00am and throughout the course of the day competed in 5 races.  One of our races had to be re-run as there was a crash and that race was red flagged and postponed until later in the day.  Prize giving was at 5pm and I didn’t get home till about 6.30pm, so it was a very long, tiring, and fun weekend.

I have been Kart racing now for 2 years and spend most of my time practicing and racing out of my home track Kartsport Auckland, Giltrap Group Raceway in Avondale, but do travel to other race tracks around the country. My Kart is powered by a 60cc 2 stroke Vortex Mini Roc engine getting me up to speeds of 80kph, there are 5 girls that race in my division and the rest of the group is made up of boys.

Anyone from 5 years old can join Karting.  If you’re interested check out the Have a Go Days on the https://www.kartsportauckland.org.nz website for details.

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Term 3 Our Lady Star of the Sea School Year 3 – 6 Basketball Session Info:

Week 1 (18th Jul) – Week 10 (19th Sep);
Tuesday 7:30 am – 8:30 am;
Term Fee: $112.50 (10 sessions);
New Players Enrolment steps:

New Players: Please click the enrol link: https://forms.gle/c3jfuHq1LrYsZgxq9. Fill up the form, choose the school programme – Our Lady Star of the Sea School;
Each player will need to pay $112.50 to enrol in Term 3, Please transfer the money to our bank account: 02-0108-0531348-000 (Reference – “Child’s Full Name + OLS”, example James Smith OLS);
Once we receive your payment, you will receive a confirmation email.

You may have heard the news that it is Plastic Free July – this is a personal challenge as well as a global effort – this means that every little bit counts.  Here at Our Lady Star of the Sea we are doing our best to eliminate single use plastics in our lunch boxes. Last week we started the ‘lunch box challenge’. Every day your child brings a rubbish free lunch to school they will win a house point. The winning house will receive a special reward in week 5! Here are some easy ways you can say goodbye to lunch box rubbish for good.

Thanks for your support of this important campaign.  Please note that it is our sincere hope that even once the challenge is over, everyone will continue to keep lunch boxes rubbish free.  Our gardens, drains, oceans and environment are so much healthier without it.

A special thanks to our wonderful volunteer parents Chelsea Yandell and Amy Jansen who have been helping our Environmental team in the school gardens and maintaining our worm farm every second Wednesday morning.  We really appreciate your help and the team have loved learning from you.

THANKYOU, THANKYOU – last week we had our first collection for our upcoming GALA.  What a huge haul of chocolate we received for our chocolate trailer attraction.   This week has been Lucky Dip items, again thankyou.

Each Friday this term we will send home a notice to advise the following week’s collections.  We do appreciate your support with these weekly collections.   If you miss a week then do feel free to send in the following week.    You have been sent a calendar of the weekly collections coming up in case you wish to get organised in advance.

GALA RAFFLE TICKETS

On Monday we will send home in a named envelope, a book of four (4) gala raffle tickets.  Please sell these tickets at $5 each and return the butts and the $20 back to school in the named envelope they came home in.  If you wish to order more raffle tickets to sell, return the first lot and request by a note with the sold tickets or by emailing:  [email protected].

Raffle prizes:    1st prize – $1,000.00 – yes one thousand dollars
2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th prizes – $100.00 each.

Pastoral Services Group Administrator & Communications Officer

The Catholic Diocese of Auckland is seeking a methodical, cheerful, dedicated, and highly efficient person for the role of PSG Administrator & Communications Officer to provide administration and operational support to the Leader Pastoral Services Group and providing communications support for the Diocese.  This is a part-time role of 25 hours per week with flexibility of hours between 9.am and 3.pm.

Excellent interpersonal, verbal and written communication skills, along with proficient IT competency in Word, Excel, Free Source Design e.g. Canva and knowledge of websites (WordPress), social media, Facebook. Can work under own initiative be creative and have a can-do approach to work and is efficient, accurate and organised.

For more details, and a full position description, please visit the Diocesan website:
https://www.aucklandcatholic.org.nz/staff-vacancies/

Applications close on 18 August 2023.

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