Newsletter T3W7

Acknowledgement of Country

Today we acknowledge and pay our respects to the First Peoples, the traditional custodians of the lands and waterways and thank them for their continued hospitality.

We acknowledge and celebrate the continuation of a living culture who have lived with Creator God through creation of land, sea, waterways and life.

Prayer

A Father's Day Prayer of Hope

Loving God, We thank you for the gift of Dads in our lives. We pray to you, our loving Father.

We pray for your blessing, over every father figure in the OLHC community.

Especially for those who are seeking to walk closely with you in darkness and for those who just need to be reminded that your love is real. 

We ask for your renewed courage, for your boldness, for your Spirit to fill them. 

May our fathers always be aware of your presence in their lives.

May they see your love and blessing through the lives of their children. 

We ask that they be the model of the “Loving Father” for their children. 

We ask that their actions be guided by faith, hope and love. 

And that their hearts be filled with love, compassion, joy and great peace.

Amen

Leadership & Stewardship

Principal's Message

Dear members of the OLHC school community,

On Tuesday I  participated in the Deakin University Bachelor of Education (Primary) ‘Panel of Principals and Grads’ session. The panel’s purpose was to allow the students to ask questions about both the job-seeking process and what it’s like to become a graduate teacher. I offer my services for two reasons, one to support the local trainee teachers and two to ensure OLHC has a foothold and presence amongst prospective teachers. Young teachers offer so much to a work force and when surrounded with the right type of support and guidance the return for the school and the children they serve is enormous. OLHC will host mock interviews for some of the local 4th year students later in the year.

School Fee Reminder

All School Fee statements are sent monthly.  If you are on a direct debit or credit card payment plan, please ignore the following.

All school fees for 2024 are to be finalised by 20/09/2024, please make contact with Christine Cook if you wish to discuss school fees.

FYI: Christine will be on leave from Monday 2nd to Friday 6th September.  

A huge thank you to Woolworths East for their generous donation of fruit each week.

Important Dates 

Term 3

Friday 6th September - Yr 5 Shared Lunch

Friday 6th September - OLHC Disco 

9th - 18th September - Yr 5 Swimming Program

Tuesday 10th September - PFA Meeting

Thursday 12th September - Yr 6 Soup Shared Lunch

Friday 13th September - Footy Colours Day

Friday 13th September - Secondhand Uniform Sale

Monday 16th September - Foundation Art Show & Shared Lunch

Thursday 19th September - Grandparents/Special Persons Day

Thursday 19th September - Assembly FNM

Friday 20th September - Staff Maths PD - Student Free Day

Teaching & Learning @ OLHC

Father's Day Breakfast

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Yr 6 Basketball

Last Friday grade 6 students represented OLHC in the district basketball Competition.

It was a great day for all involved, with a boys team, a girls team and a mixed team playing students from St Josephs, East, Warrnambool and St Pius.

The mixed team had a successful day, not only on the scoreboard but with the way they played. They moved the ball very well, bringing everyone into the game. It was a team effort.

The team went through the day undefeated winning the day.

The girl's team also started the day well, playing some very good basketball to win the first three games. The last game was against St Josephs, who were also undefeated throughout the day. It was a great game, unfortunately, St Joseph were too strong, to claim the win and the day.

The boys were a carbon copy of the girls, winning the first 3 matches and coming up against St Joseph in the last game. Again it was a great game and again unfortunately St Joseph were to strong taking the win and the day.

Thanks to Mr Bidmade and Eva Murphy who coached the boys and girls teams.

AFL 9's

On Thursday some Grade Fives competed in AFL 9’s against other schools around Warrnambool. St Joesphs, St John Dennington, East and St Pius. After a big day, competing in five games both teams all together won two out of five games. It was a tough, wintery, long day, but we are very proud of every Grade Five who competed and every other school that competed to make this competition happen. Grade Fives were great at showing leadership and were humble towards all oppositions. We would like to thank Mr K, Scarlett, Miss Watson, and the volunteered umpires from Emmanuel College. 

-Andi Orr, Indi Pickford, Bella Warburton and Lilly Harris

Technology Toolkit with Mrs Fitzgerald and Mrs Murfett

New technology updates, cyber safety tips and snapshots of the learning experiences happening in the digital classroom. Let’s work together to make the online space a positive space! If you have any questions or concerns please contact us: 

Mrs Sarah Murfett: smurfett@olhcwarrnambool.catholic.edu.au

Mrs Ellen Fitzgerald: efitzgerald@olhcwarrnambool.catholic.edu.au

Phone Privacy for our Children

Smartphone ownership among younger children is increasing rapidly. Some primary school children now own smartphones and they have become the norm in high school.

Parents of younger children may occasionally (or routinely) look at their child’s phone to check it’s being used responsibly and safely.

But as children mature into teens, parental inspections will likely feel like an invasion of privacy. Many would not ask for a high schooler’s diary, yet phones hold even more personal information.

So, what do parents need to consider when making the “phone rules” for their children as they get older?

This article goes on to discuss: 

• Early smartphone ownership
• A phased approach: laying the groundwork early
• Adapting the approach as children mature
• Alleviating fear and worry

You can access this article from ‘The Conversation’ here.

Classroom Awards

Foundation

Tilly Kawade

Makenzie Haberfield

Dusty O’Keeffe

Sam Chapman

Yr 1

Sully Dickson 

Milly Dolphin

Liam Moloney

James Gaffy

Yr 2

Ellie Ryan

Amelia Murphy

Lincoln Pickford 

Xavier Cunnington

Yr 3

Sophie MacDonald

Mia Goss

Lucy Gaffy

Ruby Conn

Yr 4

Sienna Grant

Oliver Vorbach 

Presley Moloney

Arlo Drew

Yr 5

Meredith Holmes

Evie Dillon

Zane Palmer

Yr 6

Ruby Skene

Maya McLeod

Olive Carr

Marley Gannon

Lawson Chow

Layla Turner

Spirit of Our Lady's Award

Stacey Fleming

Murphy Castle

Ollie Romaniszyn

Ned Busuttil

Angel Karunarathne

Taylah Turner

Mason Dimauro

Archie McCullogh

Faith & Culture

Parish Office Hours: 9am - 4pm Monday - Friday

P:    5562 2231

E:    southwestcoast@ballarat.catholic.org.au

webpage : https://www.southwestcoastparish.com.au/

Weekend Masses

Saturday Vigil

6:00pm OLHC, Warrnambool East

Sunday Morning

9:00am Infant Jesus, Koroit

9:00am St Pius X, Warrnambool West

10:30am St Joseph’s, Warrnambool

10:30am St Patrick’s, Port Fairy

6:00pm St Joseph’s Warrnambool

*11:00am St Anne’s, Purnim

2nd Sunday of the month (Eucharist)

Weekday Masses

NB: MASS OF THE DAY IS REPLACED WHEN A FUNERAL IS HELD AT THAT CHURCH

Tues 10:00am St Pius X

Wed 10:00am St Joseph’s

Thu 10:00am OLHC & 11:00am Mercy Place

Fri   10:00am St Joseph’s

Sat   10:00am OLHC

Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Pilot (CRISP)

A group of Star of The Sea Parishioners embarked on the Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Pilot (CRISP) process at the end of 2022. What a privilege it was to welcome a refugee household to our country & our community. We are now fundraising to welcome a second refugee household to Warrnambool Please be part of this exciting journey with us.

CRISP is overseen by Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia (CRSA), in conjunction with the Department of Home Affairs and the UNHCR.

The Star of the Sea Parish CRISP group undertake the required background checks & training & are now fundraising to enable the provision of initial housing & essentials prior to the household accessing government support & seeking employment.

The household will be flown to Australia & come to Warrnambool with permanent humanitarian visas. We will meet them at the airport, provide transport to Warrnambool & then 12 months of support as they transition to independence. This will include linking with government services, language assistance & looking at education & employment options.

CRISP is an innovation in refugee resettlement in Australia and we are excited to be part of it. When only one percent of displaced people globally is permanently resettled each year (UNHCR figures) we are proud to be taking our small part in giving a future to one household at a time, for the first 12 months of their life in Australia.

https://shoutforgood.com/fundraisers/StaroftheSeaParish2 

Be Doers of the Word
(Mark 7: 1 -  8, 14 - 15, 21 - 23)

Jesus answered, “Isaiah was right about frauds like you, hit the bull’s-eye in fact: These people make a big show of saying the right thing, but their heart isn’t in it. They act like they are worshipping me, but they don’t mean it. They just use me as a cover for teaching whatever suits theirfancy, ditching God’s command and taking up the latest fads.” (Mark 7: 6 - 8)

We invest so much in appearances, it’s hard to imagine they don’t matter. We’re taught to believe that having the right face, clothes, and hair is what counts. We want to drive the cool car, have the proper schools on our resume, be seen with the beautiful people. When it comes to religion, we’re tempted to go for the right look, too. We want to keep the proscribed days holy, observe the designated observances. We impress ourselves so well with this, sometimes, it’s hard to imagine that God is not equally impressed.
 
We look on the outside of the cup; God looks within. No matter how we pretty up the outside, what’s in our hearts is obvious at a glance. If we have no love, our obedience to the forms of religion is meaningless. In religion, appearances count for nothing. Bending the knee when our hearts do not bow gets us nowhere. Clasping our hands in prayer when we don’t open our hands in charity betrays us. Speaking of God’s love when not practising God’s justice is a kind of blasphemy. Rituals are only as good as what they stand for.  If there’s nothing to confirm them in our living, they collapse like a house of cards.
 
What are the rituals of your religious practice? How do you support them in the way you live?

Know Yourself
(Mark 7: 1 -  8, 14 - 15, 21 – 23)
 
When I was a young teenager my friends and I formed the Eddie Haskell Fan Club. Eddie was the smarmy kid on the Leave It to Beaver television show who acted sweet and nice in front of parents and other adults but was selfish with his peers and mean toward kids younger than him. For some reason we got a kick out of watching this two-faced jerk of a character try to put one over on the parents. I suspect his appeal was partly due to the fact that we recognised the Eddie Haskell in ourselves.
 
Growing up spiritually means understanding what our real motives are in any action. Perhaps the reason teenagers are so quick to label and ridicule hypocrites is that adolescence is the time we become aware of our own duplicity. We get attuned to how our outside actions try to camouflage our true motivations, all in a usually futile attempt to look good to others. In the end, the truth will always come out.
 
Jesus makes it abundantly clear that if our inner motivations are sound, they flower into wonderful outer actions. Every human being is susceptible to the lure of hypocrisy. The remedy is not to polish the outside, but to come to know one’s inner self with no illusions. Are you helping your kids get to know their real selves?

Wellbeing

If you want to learn to ride a skateboard or get better at maths, you need to practise. It’s the same when you want to feel happier!

Here are some easy ideas to give Gratitude, Empathy, Mindfulness and Emotional Literacy a try every day. Because the more you practise, the better you will feel.

Let's Practice!

A Family That Walks Together

The myriad benefits of walking are well-documented, for health and happiness. But if we force the kids to tag along, is it still a good walk?

My grandfather was a person who could disarm a kid and charm a room with a laugh, but he was also a man who had been to war. His sense of military precision was ever-present, whether in pressuring an adherence to manners, the (mostly) disciplined way he showed anger or frustration, or the insistence on an order of operations. Every social function at his house followed a schedule.

Around Christmas, the day started early with his infamous Milk Punch, paired with cheese and crackers, followed by still more appetizers, beer, and ginger ale (for the kids) — all of which got us to the holiday feast. We sat down and ate, and then the illusion of leisure would set in. We’d all bask for a moment in the idea that a free and unstructured afternoon yawned before us, and then, like clockwork, the whole family would get up and go for a walk.

It was an aimless walk — or at least one that followed its own course. When at my parents’ house, we’d follow a loop that edged the woods and maybe continue on around the bordering horse farm. At my grandparents, in eastern Pennsylvania, we would walk through their small town, or, if we were lucky, up to the playground where I tried to sneak in a quick slide and monkey-bar traverse before the adults meandered on. In Maine, where my grandfather had a cabin, we would walk up the incredibly steep gravel-and-mud driveway and then down the dirt lane.

None of these were hikes you’d put on a bucket list, or even walks you’d tell a visitor to take. They were simply walks. Together, as a family. I never really thought of it as a tradition — until I had my own kids. Now I recognize the tradition for what it is, and I want to keep it alive.

When you’re walking, there’s something about the pace and the breathing that smooths the mind.

“When you’re walking,” says Ben Shattuck, the author of Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, “there’s something about the pace and the breathing that smooths the mind. Thoreau talks about the dust on the trail settling like thoughts in your mind settling. There’s really something about that. In 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes, you start to feel different. I would wager that your kids experience that after a while and you can become addicted to it.”

Six Walks is a book as joyful as it is deep, following a lone Shattuck as he follows Thoreau on aimless walks only a carefree (read, younger) person has the time to fully indulge. Now a father to 3-year-old Ida, who he cares for with his wife, Jenny Slate, Shattuck can no longer walk with abandon — at least not in the way he documented so beautifully just a handful of years ago.

Thoreau considered the solo walk to be a radical act: “If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again,” he wrote in “Walking,” which ran in The Atlantic in 1862, “if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk.”

That doesn’t sound very realistic to this dad. If walking is the act of departure into the world for the lone wanderer free of entanglements, what’s the parent of a young child to do? Like Shattuck, I’m a dedicated dad who likes to walk — but dragging a whining kid along doesn’t exactly sound like freedom. With all respect to Thoreau, quiet solitude might not always be the point of a walk.

If you are ready to leave … wife and child and friends, and never see them again … and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk.

For some of us, fatherhood is the introduction to the aimless but purposeful family walk. After all, walking with your baby strapped to your body is among the first one-on-one bonding experiences dads get to have with their children.

“It’s like a special thing that dads can do,” says Shattuck, who is fresh off the time when you strapped a newborn into a sling or pack or wrap and took off. “Mothers have such a close sweet connection with a baby. I felt so good to have a warm little baby strapped to my chest and the perfumed scent of her head. Her first tradition was a walking tradition.”

“I’ve taken so many walks and I wrote a book about walking,” says Shattuck. “But those walks with Ida, I can almost remember every building we passed.”

I, too, remember these walks — five years ago now — with my son slung across my body in a long beige wrap. Though we were wandering the streets of Brooklyn, our walks were more like idyllic nature hikes, in which I was so present I can still recall odd details — a snake statue blocks from my house, which I’d never noticed before; the emptiness of the plaza near the entry to the park; the architectural curves of Maple leaves that caught the attention of my snug but alert infant.

But good luck getting wholly lost in your thoughts and forgetting your debts when your child is attached to your body. The infant strapped to you might be, as Shattuck puts it, “more like a spirit than a person,” but it’s a spirit that you are responsible for — forever. Walking with our infants fosters presence, but that presence is much more grounding than freeing. In this sense it’s a responsible walk — the heart and soul of the family walk.

The fight against being sedentary is worth having for parents — and the family walk is our greatest tool.

After my kids got legs, so to speak, we kept the walks going. They’re different, of course, now that a kid is no longer strapped to my body, sleeping as I saunter. Leaving for a walk now includes clawing the children away from whatever it is that entices them to stay sedentary — LEGOs, books, or all too often screens. This is where I could easily dive into a “kids these days” rant. I could say that kids don’t like to walk or even move anymore and the stats bear it out to an extent. According to a survey conducted by the Physical Activity Alliance, some 42% of 6- 11 year olds and 15% of 12-17 year olds meet (in my opinion, wildly modest) physical activity guidelines. But at their core, kids want to move. I think the fight against being sedentary is worth having for parents — and the family walk is our greatest tool.

I’ve grown rather insistent about the family walk. I usually don’t think much about where we go, so long as we’re walking. There are often waypoints, like a playground or a fun wooded area, but there’s rarely a destination. We usually walk around blocks. We observe things out loud. We talk or play games (we have this one at dusk that is a sort of tag/hide-and-seek mashup where all the shadows are base). But at its core it’s all about the walk, putting one leg in front of the other and seeing what happens. (I used to get the “Where are we goingggg?” entreaty, but that has faded with time; my kids seem to understand that a walk is a walk). Shattuck seems to agree that this is the way to do it: aim for “open aimless sauntering.”

He has some guidelines for walking that I take to heart, things I now keep in mind as I continue my family’s walking tradition. First of all, a walk should have a low barrier to entry. A hike is not a walk, says Shattuck. “If you want to Walk with a cap W, you need your gear, and go to LL Bean,” he says. But this “outdoor culture and atmosphere can really be impenetrable and turn people away from walking. You don’t have to go to a wild Western place”

The joy that you can derive from walking comes from that sense of letting whatever that landscape is unfold.

Parents & Friends Association

Term 3 PFA Events

• School Disco Friday 6th September
  
• Second Hand uniform sale Friday 13th September

Happy Father’s Day!

Happy Father’s Day to all the dad’s, male guardians & mentors within our OLHC community.

Once again it was wonderful to see everyone come together for our annual Father’s Day
breakfast which was attended by over 550 people.

Thank you to all staff, parent volunteers, students & families for contributing and supporting
us this morning. 
The PFA would like to extend a special thanks to:
o Steve & Naish for being up bright and early and cooking the BBQ.
o Woolworths East Warrnambool and Bakers Delight East for supporting us again
o And to Browns Bakery & Mark Kirchner Food Services saving the day and for sourcing
eggs for us!

Thanks to everyone who joined in footy tipping this year.  A fun little fundraiser for the school.
This year's winners are;

1st The Chisholms 142 (635) 

2nd Ross Levett 141 (640) 

3rd Mick Ryan 139 ( 1171) 

Community

Birthdays

This Weeks Birthdays

Foundation

Olivia Merrett

Yr 1

Henry Bowley

Edith Wilde

Yr 2

Harper Holloway

Thiveyn Herath

Charlie Loft

Yr 3

Brooklyn Suridge

Yr 5

Luca Chisholm

Yr 6

Mira Brightwell

Marley Gannon

School Sponsorship

School Forms & Policies

Mobile Phone Policy & Form

Medication Administration Form

Asthma Action Plan

Camps, Sports & Excursions Funding Form

OLHC Lunch Order Menu 2024

Please clearly label your child's Name, Class, Order & Total Cost on a brown paper bag with the correct money inside.

Country Bus Travel Application

Jill Burgess - Administration/Bus Coordinator @ Brauer College

P: 5560 3888

E: Jillian.Burgess@education.vic.gov.au

TheirCare Before & After School Care - plus Vacation

& School Closure Day Care

WCC After School Care Information

LOWES Uniform Price List

OLHC 2024 Prospectus