Kia Ora, Ni Hao, Fakaalofa lahi atu, Malo e lelei, Kia Orana, and Bula Vinaka Whānau,

Welcome to our third newsletter of 2025. This newsletter is landing in your inbox as we are enjoying our Parents Committee Colour Run this evening. We are so grateful to our Parents Committee for organising such a fun and engaging fundraising event. We will have images to share in our next newsletter.

Last week, we began our Lenten journey with Ash Wednesday, a time of reflection and renewal. As a Catholic school, Lent is a particularly important season, a time for us to draw closer to Jesus through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
Lent is a 40-day period of preparation for Easter, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. It’s a time for us to examine our lives and to strive to become more like Christ.
How You Can Help at Home:

• Talk to your children about the meaning of Lent and why it’s important.
• Encourage them to participate in prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
• Attend Mass together as a family.
• Create a simple Lenten prayer space in your home.

Lent is a time of grace, an opportunity to grow in our faith and to deepen our relationship with God. Let us journey together with Jesus as we prepare for the joy of Easter. May God bless you and your families during this holy season.

Parish Connect
Please keep the children preparing for first reconciliation on Friday 21st March in your prayers;

Please  follow this link to view this Sunday’s readings.

Curriculum Insights: Professional Development in the new Mathematics Curriculum
At our Teacher Only Day last Friday, Ministry of Education PLD providers presented to our staff with further insights into the new curriculum that was launched late last year. They led us in further understanding of the structure of the new curriculum and the sub-strands that it contains. The learning experiences are arranged to align with student year levels. Accelerating practices i.e. filling in the gaps, and leaving nothing to chance to support student readiness for the next year level is also a focus of the new refreshed curriculum.
Our teachers are currently using the Maths No Problem resource as a tool to support the teaching of progress outcomes at each year level of the refreshed curriculum. Teachers will be using the progress outcomes of the New Zealand Curriculum to make their overall teacher judgements for reporting purposes.

Upcoming Parent Teacher Student Conferences Next Thursday, our teachers are very much looking forward to the opportunity to meet with families to talk further about student learning and progress as well as identifying goals in literacy, numeracy and dispositions for the first semester. At the end of last year, your previous teacher will have recorded goals as next steps in your child’s report, which, now that we have new curriculum content, may no longer be a good fit. At your conferences you will be guided by your teacher as to goals that are appropriate to work on in relation to our new literacy and maths curricular.
Please allow an extra 5 to 10 minutes before or after your conference to visit the Information Centre where you will be able to see the new maths resources and find out more about the new curriculum content.

Looking Back Our cricket team experienced a great day representing our school at the HPPA cricket competition last Wednesday – this competition continues next week – we wish our team well as they continue through pool games. Our Senior Team Swimming Competition was a fabulous day of fun and competition on Wednesday of this week, with thanks to Denise Bailey for all of her organisation and to the Year 4 to 6 team teachers for their support on the day. Successful competitors will go on to represent our school at the upcoming HPPA Swimming Sports on Wednesday 26th March – we wish them well! Today, our Year 1 to 3 students participated in Cricket Taster sessions run by Michael from Auckland Cricket, a great experience for all involved.

Looking Ahead On Monday next week our Enviro leaders and Student Council will be traveling out to the Botanic Gardens to participate in their ‘Eye on Nature’ programme with a view to bring their learnings back into our school community. As mentioned above, our staff are very much looking forward to Parent Student Teacher goal setting conferences next Thursday. Room 20 and 21 will travel out to the Chelsea Sugar Factory next Friday with Rooms 22 and 23 going the following Thursday and Room 18 and 19 the following Friday as part of their ‘Matter’ Science learning this term… Lots to look forward to!

Wishing you all a happy, safe and blessed fortnight ahead, before we share more news in our next newsletter.

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

Louise Campbell
Principal

                                                                          JUBILEE YEAR OF HOPE

Pope Francis emphasizes that the Jubilee Year of HOPE is a time for everyone to “begin again” and embrace a new start. He describes it as a moment of grace and an opportunity for renewal, rooted in the transformative power of God’s Kingdom. Pope Francis continually highlights the importance of HOPE, which, as a gift from God, encourages Christians in their journey of life. 

Christian Witness – Putting Our Faith into Action

The Liturgy Team and Student Council recently attended a Caritas Justice Chat.  Schools from around New Zealand joined the session. The aim was to inspire and support students to become active leaders of social justice, peace and change in their schools and to use the principles of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) in the process. Collectively, the students shared ways their schools promote CST giving inspiration to each other.  The Liturgy team is considering some of the ideas to use for our Caritas Challenge towards the end of the year. 

                                       Lenten Challenge  – update

Our school Lenten Challenge of ‘We Can Bring a Can’ continues through Lent. The foodbank requires in excess of 140 tins of food per week. 

Every Thursday the Liturgy Team collects the donations from classrooms and works out how many families our school will feed. There are so many people in our immediate community and the wider area that are in desperate need of support. Donating items to the parish foodbank is a simple way of showing your children how to put their faith into action.  This week we fed 12 families. Thank you all for your support.

“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did to me.” (Matthew 25:40).

Stations of the Cross.  

The Stations of the Cross is a form of prayer used traditionally during Lent. Each of the 14 Stations retells part of Jesus’ Passion (his suffering and death) through images and words. The outdoor stations and boardwalk around the school are a wonderful resource for our school community. You are welcome to bring your family, extended family or prayer group to school over the weekends or after school to pray the stations together. Each Friday at 7pm during Lent in the parish church, the parish gathers to pray the Stations. Father John has extended an invitation to each and everyone of you to do this as an extra spiritual exercise that we can stick to during Lent.                                                                          

“We are a Christ centred community
fostering belonging (whanaungatanga)
and outreach
through selfless giving (manaakitanga)
in Mary’s Way”.

News from the Parent Committee

We hope everyone is enjoying Frozen Fridays—it’s been great seeing the kids cool off with a sweet treat!

As this hits your inbox, our Colour Run is in full swing, with families having messy, colourful fun. A big thank you to everyone who has supported the Colour Run so far! Remember, sponsorships can be made until March 21st, so there’s still time to contribute. Funds raised will go towards the new fitness trail on the upper field, benefiting all our students.

To make things extra exciting, we’re offering:
A pizza lunch for the class that raises the most
Fantastic prizes for the top individual and family fundraisers

Check out our new website olsos-pta.co.nz to sponsor a student and stay up to date with all Parent Committee events!

Thank you for your continued support—we couldn’t do it without you!

Our next meeting is 31st March at 7pm. Everyone is welcome.

Just a quick reminder that Term 1 fees were due on March 10th. Also, please note that all donation payments received before March 31st will be issued tax receipts in the first week of April. Thank you!

Room 4 enjoyed their RE lesson last week, learning all about Shrove Tuesday. The tradition of using up all of the food staples in our pantry such as eggs, milk and butter to make a pancake batter to be cooked and eaten before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. 

Room 8 had our first cricket lesson last week. We all enjoyed developing ball control skills, practising hand-eye coordination and embracing our sportsmanship. It was a great start to our cricket journey, and we are looking forward to having more fun and learning in the coming weeks!

Amazing writing from Room 20 about our Swimming Sports

My heart froze in time. I couldn’t bear to watch it all. It felt like a tiger was on the prowl. Emotions filled my head as I didn’t know what would happen next. It was time to swim.  By Kobi 

I was focused on my breathing, not hearing the roar of the crowd. Without my goggles, I couldn’t see. “On your marks, get set, GO!” BANG! My feet pushed against the wall. I was doing my windmill arms as fast as I could. The wind brushed against my arms. As my head hit the rope constantly, I got closer and closer to the finish line. All my fears were chasing me at once. After an eternity, I touched the wall. Finally I’m safe. I gave my time nervously to Mrs Robertson. I went to my seat, drying endlessly, alone. By Caiden 

As the crowd roared with excitement I felt a shiver go down my spine because my race was going to be next. I had mixed emotions. One second, I am full of nerves and the next second, I couldn’t wait to start. As the noise of the crowd got quieter, I heard my name getting called out. I got anxious. I walked down to my place as I was going to start my race. By Jacob 

Senior Cricket HPPA Day 1

Our senior cricket team had a fun day on Day 1 of their HPPA cricket competition. Some of the students had never played cricket before but embraced the challenge and tried their best, displaying our values of courage and resilience. The team played 4 games across the day and while they only won one game they were winners in themselves because their improvement from game 1 to game 4 was outstanding. We were even complimented on our behaviour and sportsmanship – that is Star of the Sea winning!

Thanks to Mr Campbell for coaching the team in preparation for lending support on the day and to Mrs Shaw for transporting the students to and from the event. We look forward to Day 2 of the competition.

Senior Swimming Sports

Our senior team took part in our senior swimming sports on Wednesday 12th March. What a great day! The Star of the Sea values shone from every student. There was courage and resilience by the bucket load. Our students should be commended for the respect shown to the staff of the pools and to each other. No matter the race, whether it be competitive or not, there was cheering, encouraging words, a kind smile, a helping hand and aroha shining through our students. Well done senior team! 

Congratulations to the following students who placed in the top 3 in their event:

Walking or Wheels Wednesdays

As a part of reducing our Carbon Footprint and creating cleaner air we are starting Walking or Wheels Wednesdays from next week (19th March).

Each Wednesday students are encouraged to walk into school from at least 200m away (ie from Orangewood Drive or up the hill on Stella Maris Way), bike or scooter to school, carpool with another family or catch a bus to school. 

Each Wednesday teachers will total up the numbers of students who did not park at the school gate and walked in at the following Monday morning prayers. The winning class will be announced and an award given to the winning class. The award will be based on a percentage of students that walked or wheeled into school rather than the actual number of students to make it fair for the smaller classes. To that end we encourage you to either drop your child away from the school gate and get them to walk into school, ride or scooter to school with them on their bike, if they are in Years 1-3, or get them to ride or scooter on their own, if they are in Years 4-6, encourage them to catch a school bus or car pool with another family. We thank you for making our air cleaner and reducing congestion at the school gate. You may even find that the students would like to do this everyday which would be fantastic for our environment. Thank you in anticipation for your support.

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Tuesday After School Art Class

Drawing, Oil pastel, Sketching, Painting…

Classroom – Room 3

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