Dear Families,

Welcome to our second newsletter of Term 3.

Parish | School Connect We look forward to the celebration of Confirmation and First Communion, celebrated by Bishop Stephen Lowe, this weekend at our Parish Church for many of our school children. Please join me in prayer for these children and their families as they take these important Sacraments of Initiation to become full and active members of our Church community. See our News From Our Director of Religious Studies section of this newsletter for more details.
Click here for this Sunday’s readings.

FEAST DAY On Monday we celebrated our Feast Day, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary. What a special day!
Our staff began the day in prayer and shared breakfast after decorating our school ready for the celebrations.
Buddy class time was a great way to start the day with shared prayer and Mary activities.
Our hotly contested Tapu-ae finals followed with Maher house taking out the tight final from McAuley house.
After morning tea we bussed the school to Mass at our Parish Church where a very special Mass was concelebrated by Fr John and Fr Terry. We blessed our newest taonga, our beautifully crafted Mission Cross which will take its place in our Information Centre reminding us of the Mission Sisters who formed such an integral part of our school history working in our school from 1904 until 1924.
After lunch we celebrated the talent of our students with our Star Idol finals. The school was thoroughly entertained by the talent on show with special thanks to Millie and Lily our MCs who did a fabulous job and to Mrs Karen Noble Campbell who coordinated and ran the afternoon.
Special congratulations goes to the winners of our Junior, Middle and Senior categories: Rosanne D’Silva with her amazing singing talent, Rhylee O’Sullivan-Bush, Olivia Rhee and Paris Kawiti for their great dance, and Mia Yandell and Sophia Gao who had the audience in stitches with their clever jokes.  And to our overall winner, Caiden Pichay with his confident and entertaining rendition of the Beetles classic 8 Days a Week.

Community Dreaming Day – Saturday 10th September 2pm to 4pm
The Board is very much looking forward to hosting you all on Saturday 10th September as we dream big for our students and our school. We are lucky to have the support of Sancta Maria College senior students who will run games on the field for the children, with the PTA providing pizzas for them, while the adults hear about activity towards our strategic goals over the last three years and share ideas about our school direction for the next three years. Save the date and be part of shaping our school direction.

Gala – let the fun begin! Last week you will have received a letter which we would love for you to send to any business connections that you have who may be in a position to donate to our upcoming gala. I encourage you to send these out far and wide! The Gala Team are confident we will be able to make use of whatever is donated!
We also sent out our one and only Gala Flyer – you will have noted on it our Container Dates– these are the dates that the containers in the top staff carpark will be open for you to bring along your donated items for stalls such as our White Elephant Stall (this includes furniture you no longer want, household items such as vases, candle sticks, art, crockery, appliances in good working order, bikes, skateboards, sporting equipment… the list goes on!), or items for our other stalls; Gently used books, toys, games, clothing, linen. You would do us an even bigger favour by bringing them along in labeled bags so we can store them in an order that is easily unpacked ready for the big day.
The same Gala Flyer also contained a list of items we are looking for the children to bring in weekly to add to our gala stalls. These items will be collected each Friday. Points given to the class for items brought in will be tallied, with a free pizza lunch going to the class that brings in the most items by the end of this term. Adding one or two items to your weekly shop would really support our efforts to make this gala a great event for our school community. We very much appreciate your support.

Lewis Eady Music Lessons at OLSOS from Term 3 We are very pleased that music lessons have commenced at Our Lady Star of the Sea. If you are thinking of taking advantage of this service please be in touch with Lewis Eady. See later in this newsletter for details of how to do so.

Staffing Update We welcome back to our Teaching Staff Kendall Evans who has returned from maternity leave. Kendall began this term working alongside Lesley Benjamin in our Year 1 | New Entrant class and has now transitioned students from this space into Room 12, leaving Lesley’s space to fill with New Entrant students between now and the end of the year. Welcome back Kendall, it is great to have you back on the team!

Looking Back Over the past fortnight we had our first PTA meeting where lots of great discussions took place related to how to support the school with community and fundraising initiatives. If you are interested in joining the PTA, be in touch with the school and we will connect you with our PTA chair. We had a very good turn out to our Year 5 and 6 parent information evening related to the delivery of the ‘Positive Puberty’ programme. Our series of ICAS assessments have begun. Last Tuesday students represented us at the HPPA football field day with great sportsmanship and this Tuesday our Cross Country team competed at the HPPA Zones Cross Country – see later in this newsletter for more details and photos. Our Year 5 and 6 students had their speech finals.

Looking Ahead On Monday and Tuesday evening of next week the OLSOS staff are hosting the HPPA Dance Festival. We wish our dance troop all the very best as they perform across these two nights alongside schools from across the Howick and Pakuranga area. We also wish Tyler Dreaver the very best of luck as he competes at the HPPA Speech Competition on Tuesday of next week. The following week our Gymnastic Team competes at the HPPA Zone Gymnastics Competition and our Kapa Haka Group shares the stage at our South East Christian Kapa Haka Festival on Thursday September 1st. We have school photos on Tuesday 30th and Wednesday 31st of August too. A very busy fortnight ahead!

Wishing you all a safe and happy fortnight ahead.

Be safe and God bless.

Ngā mihi nui and cǐ zhì jìng lǐ,

Louise Campbell
Principal

Being Church is the Religious Education theme for this term. Our young learners are exploring the relationship they have with others in their family, with their community, with their world and  most of all their relationship with God. Last week we celebrated our school Feast Day, the Feast of the Assumption, where we remember when Mary was taken to heaven body and soul. Mary is remembered as the First Disciple, the one who heard God’s call and said ‘Yes’.  Throughout the month of August we remember others who heard the call of God and lived their lives as witnesses for us. They are a model to us of Being Church.
Saint Dominic – August 4 –  After he had an apparition of Our Lady, he promoted the Rosary until the day he died
Saint Maximillion Kolbe – August 14- volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the German death camp of Auschwitz.
Saint Augustine – August 28 – an early Christian theologian. One of his well known sayings is “When we sing we pray twice.”  Each one of them helps us to come to know Christ through their words and deeds. Each one of them are examples of ‘Being Church’ to others.

Last month a group of our young learners received the Sacrament of Baptism. Tonight a group of our young learners will receive the Sacrament of Confirmation, then on Sunday at the 8am and 10am Mass will receive their First Holy Communion. We congratulate the following students:

 Receiving the Sacraments is a milestone in their faith development. Please keep these students in your prayers. 

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 will be Church to each other

Detta Fairweather
Deputy Principal / Director of Religious Studies

HPPA Cross Country

A great afternoon was had by all runners at the HPPA Cross Country event. It was a tough course that really pushed everyone to their maximum. Every student tried their absolute best and worked well as a team.

Congratulations to Luke McLaughlin who placed 3rd in the Y6 boys race and Isais Chan-Mow who placed 9th in the same race. Isobella Evans placed 7th in the Year 5 girls race. Matthew Bastian placed 6th in the Year 5 boys race and Jack Hunter placed 5th in the Year 4 boys race. 

Matthew Bastian, Ethan Crouch, Grayson Shaw and Charlie Faulkner took out the title of second team in the Year 5 boys.

Senior Speech Final

The Senior speech final this year was themed “Discover” or “Te Kite”; seek and discover, discover and know, know and become enlightened. We had two different genres this year; a prepared speech and a flash talk.  The overall winner was Tyler Dreaver who spoke about Discovering Dinosaurs.  In second place was Kish Bassi who delivered a flash talk about Discoveries that changed the world and in third place was Gareth Mclay who spoke on The discovery of the mobile phone.

Here are Tyler and Kish’s thoughts from the day…

“When I stepped on the stage my whole body was shaking in excitement and fear. I could hear my heart beating like a drum. I started to read my first few sentences, my body was stiff and numb. Reading my speech was the longest and most terrifying 3 minutes of my life. But when it was over I couldn’t help myself but to put a large grin across my face.”   Tyler Dreaver

“The speech competition was awesome.  It was fun to research about new discoveries and I learned that most things are discovered by accident. I enjoyed listening to all the other speeches- it taught me so much about so many different topics. I was so proud to come second. Thank you, judges and teachers. Can’t wait to do it again next year.”       Kish Bassi

We thank the following sponsors of Skool Loop which allows us to use this app at no charge.

Environmental Team

Our Lady Star of the Sea are ready to take the next step towards zero waste! As a school we have been making good steps towards our target.  In 2019 we were sending an average of 26 kg of rubbish to the landfill each day, with education around recycling and awareness of waste, we have now reduced our rubbish to around 4 kg a day.  This is great!  But we feel there is still work to be done.

For several years now we have been asking children to take their lunch box rubbish home, whilst this helps us here at school, it doesn’t address the overall problem that too much waste is sent to Auckland landfills each day.   Therefore we are hoping that you will join us in our RUBBISH FREE lunch box challenge.   At assembly on Monday we will be launching our lunch box challenge and there will be a competition to see which class has the most rubbish free lunches.  Our very enthusiastic enviro team have been busy making videos to give you some easy ideas of how you can go rubbish free.  Here are some ideas to get you started.

• Ditch the glad wrap! Instead try beeswax wraps or put food into a reusable container.
• Use glad plastic bags.  These can be used many times and can also be recycled here at school.
• Try a bento box style lunch box.  Small compartments keep foods separate and fresh all day without any packaging.
• Make homemade snacks! Our enviro team will be sending home recipe ideas for tasty snacks and lunch ideas that have no packaging.
• Think about your purchases.  Instead of buying a bag of ten treats with individual wrappers, buy one big bag and place some in a reusable container.
• Leave the wrapper at home.  If you can’t eliminate the packaging, help us out by leaving it at home.

Thanks for your support! Charlotte Erihe, Millie Berry and Miss Marten

Environmental Team leaders.

Congratulations to Tamia Tavita-Falesiu from R18 who has been representing our school at the 3×3 girls basketball competition run by Youth Basketball each Monday night.

Tamia only started basketball this year. This competition is really improving her basketball skills and she is loving being on the court – people are even asking her if she plays full time! Congratulations Tamia! Thanks for shining for Star of the Sea. We are proud of you.

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Big Buddy is an organisation matching adult male mentors with fatherless boys. We work with the simple philosophy that boys need good male role models to become good men.

Unfortunately, some boys do not have a father or other male role model present in their lives. Big Buddy finds these boys a well- screened volunteer male mentor, fostering a long-term relationship similar to that of an uncle.

It is as simple as a good man turning up regularly in a boy’s life, going out into the world and doing activities together, being available to listen to him, modelling what it means to be a good man. The boy’s sense of self develops; he does better at school and is less inclined to crime and abuse. The statistics on positive mentoring are clear and compelling.

If you are interested in this for your boy, contact Martin Hosking – 027 207 8662 or email, [email protected]

More information and stories are available on our media sites:   www.bigbuddy.org.nz  and  Facebook

 Thanks