Kia Ora, Ni Hao Malo e lelei and Bula Vinaka Whānau,

Welcome to our penultimate newsletter of Term 4. This newsletter reaches your inbox with just two weeks to go until the end of our academic year and while many of you are, no doubt, enjoying the final Parents Committee disco of the year! I cannot believe how quickly the last two weeks of our year have come around.

Advent This Sunday is the beginning of Advent, the four weeks leading up to our celebration of the birth of Jesus at Christmas. The Advent Season is all about reflecting on how we can prepare our hearts and homes for Christ’s birth in the world as it is today.  It is a time for faith communities and families to remember through prayer, reflections, special music, and good deeds, what the true meaning of Jesus’ birth is. Read more about Advent in our Director of Religious Studies area later in this newsletter.

Parish Connect We look forward to the celebration of baptism for some of our school aged children and their younger siblings at this weekend’s 9am Sunday Mass. It would be great to see school families at Mass in support of this special occasion. We ask for your prayers for these students as they prepare to receive this sacrament of initiation into our Church.
The Howick Santa Parade is the following Sunday, 10th December. Picton Street, Fencible Drive, Wellington and Cook Streets will be closed to traffic from before 8.00 am until around 3.00 pm. If you are planning on attending 9.00 am Mass that day then access to the Church will be via Beach Road, onto Glenfern Road or Parkhill Road. The roads should be clear again in plenty of time for the 5.30 pm Mass. For details on these road closures please visit https://howicksantaparade.co.nz/road-closures/.

Please follow this link to this Sunday’s readings.

Caritas Challenge Last Thursday our students engaged in our annual Caritas challenge with a focus this year on how precious water is in our world. This connects with our other outreach activities related to raising funds for a water tank to be installed at Khazimula Children’s Home in Howick, South Africa. The juniors went on a water hikoi where they carried water in buckets around the school to water parts of our gardens, emphasising how difficult it is when you don’t have water readily available. Years 3 to 6 ran a water shop where they were challenged to collect water by performing different activities, where the quality of their activity determined the quality and/or quantity of water they received. This alerted them to the inequity of water availability in some countries. Justine Delport from Caritas joined us on the day, speaking to children about the importance of their learning and our fundraising efforts to support those in countries who aren’t blessed with ready access to fresh water like we are.

Junior Athletics Yesterday our Year 1 and 2 students participated in their athletics day. We were so fortunate with the weather and how well the day ran for our junior children. Huge thanks to Lee Marten and her team for their organisation and effort on the day to ensure this was a successful day for our young learners.

Mission Day This morning we held our annual Mission Day. The day began (after an unexpected and very well executed fire drill!) with the beautiful celebration of liturgy together as a school. Following this was a very energetic time while our classes set up their Mission Day stalls. The Mission Day Market that ensued was a joy filled experience where our students made the most of what was on offer to purchase and the services that classes had put together to offer. Thank you to our families for their support in the preparation of the day and to our teachers for their organisation, making the market such a success. Details of what we raised will be shared in our next newsletter.

Parents Committee Disco Thank you to our fabulous Parents Committee and helpers for a great disco tonight – we are so blessed to have parent support to put on such great fun experiences for our children. Kate Smeath, Catherine Min and the team, we are most grateful!

Looking Ahead We have a very busy last two weeks of term coming up, culminating in our Year 6 Leavers Evening on Monday 11th December beginning with a picnic and sausage sizzle at 5.30 pm outside the hall, our End of Year Thanksgiving Mass at 11.00 am in our Parish Church on Tuesday 12th December and our School Prizegiving on Wednesday 13th November commencing at 6.30 pm sharp in the Sancta Maria College Auditorium. A reminder that children must wear full summer school uniform to our prizegiving and gather at the venue no later than 6.10 pm. Thursday 14th December sees our end of year outings for our junior, middle and senior teams and on Friday 15th December, our last day, we finish at 12 pm sharp. We have our final assembly at 11.15 am that day where we will farewell our Year 6 leavers with a whole school guard of honour, something new here at Our Lady Star of the Sea!

Wishing you all of God’s blessings for a safe and happy fortnight ahead.

Ngā mihi nui, Tōfa soifua, ‘Alu ā, cǐ zhì jìng lǐ and Vinaka vaka levu,

Louise Campbell
Principal

Ken McKay retired in 2014 with Carmel Platt, followed by Louise Campbell taking on the principalships at our school. Our school continues to blossom and flourish. A continuous stream of past pupils return to enrol their own children here. The outdoor spaces around the school have been enhanced over the years with visuals promoting our faith and traditions. All who enter our school know that Jesus is the reason for our school, and has been for the last 175 years. We give thanks for all people who have given support to the growth and development of our Catholic school. There are too many to name, but God knows who they are. In keeping with Catholic tradition we reach out to Mother Mary, our school patron, and say….

 Our Lady Star of the Sea, Pray for us. 

Today the children celebrated Mission day where we remembered the works of the Mission Sisters and all those who work to improve the lives of others. Thanks to the Middle and Senior Teams who organised this day. This is another way for our children to shine as Christian Witnesses. A great day was had by all. Funds raised today will go towards the school Caritas Challenge focus of Khazimula Children’s Home in Howick, South Africa.

At this time of the year we wait. We wait for warmer weather. We wait for the holidays. We wait for family time. Waiting is not something we are generally very good at today as many things, like texts, emails, tweets, facebook and of course instagram give us an instantaneous response. Gone are the days of waiting for a letter in the post to bring us news from family and friends. Waiting takes patience. Waiting takes time. When we wait we prepare ourselves, thinking about what is to come, often with great anticipation and expectation. 

Advent is the season of waiting, of preparation. There are many things we can do at home with our children during this season in preparation. Things like…

• • • • • • setting up a nativity scene
          • building a Jesse tree 
          • organising an Advent wreath
          • making an Advent calendar 
          • playing Christmas carols

… the list is endless. Each one of these activities helps to build the anticipation and excitement of welcoming Jesus at Christmas time. 

A group of our students will receive the Sacrament of Baptism this Sunday at the 9am Mass. We are thankful to the members of our parish community who are supporting them in their spiritual journey.  Please keep them all in your prayers. 

‘Baptism is the best gift we have received.
Through it, we belong to God and we possess the joy of salvation’.
Pope Francis 2019

Our parish Saint Vincent de Paul group is calling for donations of $10 – $20 gift vouchers from KMart or the Warehouse. This collection is in place of the annual toy drive and will be included in the food parcels that are given out before Christmas. Please consider donating one or two vouchers as a family Advent action. Your child can give them to their class teacher. All voucher donations received at school will be brought forward during the offertory procession at our end of year Mass of thanksgiving 11 am, Tuesday 12 December. The Mass will be celebrated in our parish church. We will also acknowledge our student leavers at this Mass and all those who have helped to ensure our school has had another successful year. You are very welcome to join us. 

Kia hari koa, ka uru tera wairua ki tena ki tena
Be cheerful and happy, generating life in those around you

Prayer Intention: We pray that during the Advent season we prepare to receive Jesus and share His love with all we meet.

On behalf of your Board, I would like to extend our best wishes to all the families moving on to other schools at the end of the school year. We also extend special thanks to the Staff for upholding the special character, learning, nurturing and development of all our children and their continued dedication to supporting families throughout our community during the year.

Your Board would like to thank and acknowledge Fr John Fitzmaurice, who recently stepped down as a Proprietor’s representative on your Board.   Fr John has been a valuable contributor to your school Board for the past seven years and we would like to express sincere gratitude for all the guidance and expertise Fr John has provided during this time.   Fr John will continue to be very much involved in the pastoral life of Our Lady Star of the Sea School.

At this week’s Board meeting, the Board received an update on the three year Strategic Plan activities for 2023. The Board is delighted with the achievements against the strategic goals during the year and are looking forward to the continued success into 2024.

Your Board also received an update on developments in the Catholic Special Character of Our Lady Star of the Sea School.  An external review was performed in June 2023 and three recommendations were made.  Your Board received the confirmed external review report in October and has formulated an action plan which is to be shared with diocesan personnel in the near future.

We are looking forward to seeing you all at the School Prize Giving at Sancta Maria College on Wednesday, 13th of December.

Sharon Yeh

On behalf of your Board

The Auckland Catholic Diocese have recently advised us of an increase to the compulsory Attendance and Special Character dues for 2024.   These have increased in total by $38 per child per year.

Keeping in mind the increasing costs of living we are all experiencing, your Board will pass on only a portion of this increase, when setting the 2024 fees.

A full letter of explanation will come home in February 2024, however we wish to advise the fees for 2024 will be increasing by $20 to $1,048 per child per year (i.e. $262 per term).

As usual, financial assistance is available if required, by contacting us in confidence.

Thank you to our Environmental team and parents Chelsea Yandell and Amy Jansen who are giving our sabbath space a tidy up before the end of the year.  They have weeded, replanted in some areas and are in the process of creating prayer rocks for students to enjoy during break times. Thanks everyone – it is looking great.  

Turning on of the tap!

Today the Environmental team celebrated the official ‘turning on of the tap’! This project to install a 2000L water tank at the back of the PE shed was the culmination of several years of learning about the importance of water.  Our students (Charlie Bongiovanni, Cavan Reilly, Zac Grant) saw the need to have a sustainable way of collecting rain water to fill our Junior water trays and water our gardens, so they approached the leadership team with a plan.  Thank you to our Board of Trustees for supporting this initiative.  Thank you to Mr Baird for installing the tank and coming up with an ingenious way to pump the water from the tank.  It will be very handy and used regularly by the Environmental Team and Gardening club.

Summer Reading

The best way to improve literacy skills is to keep practising them. This is particularly important over the long summer holidays, and it helps to keep students reading levels up. Plus, it is a fun thing to do!

Sign up notices to borrow library books over the holidays are out now (please message your child’s teacher if you would like a notice).

Children will be able to come and select their books in Week 10.

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