A fantastic morning this morning with our Book Week parade.  We hope that parents loved seeing all the wonderful costumes and the happy smiling faces of all the students. Thank you for the wonderful effort you all went to with the costumes, and for lining the street with your cars – the kids loved it.

We welcome James Rieger-Moss to St Joseph’s.  I know that the K/1 students are very excited to have James in their class and have been making him feel very welcome.  James brings our current enrolments up to 50, which St Joseph’s is very excited about.  Watch this space for a 50’s party which has been in the planning for some time now!  

Whilst it is lovely that the children are able to participate in a few more activities in Term 4, restrictions that impact parents are still being enforced by NSW Health.  Understandably it is a source of frustration for parents to not be able to enter the school, and 2020 has been an extremely different school year.  It is important to remember that guidelines are in place for the protection of students and staff and our parent community.  Whilst we are a small school, we are not in a hot spot or have cases in our wider community, we have grandparents, friends who may be vulnerable, family that may have serious health issues and we need to keep them in mind, but also keep them safe.  So whilst restrictions may be a source of frustration, we have much to be thankful for – our children are able to continue to go to school, in comparison to those living in Victoria and other nations where school face to face as we know has been extremely disrupted and remote learning is their new norm.  We have perhaps a lot more ‘normality’ than many from other parts of our nation or globe.  With so few distractions or interruptions to the children’s learning it is such a positive to have the children really settled with their learning and focused on their learning goals and ways they can improve and continue their great learning habits.  A global pandemic is not something that we hope to ever experience again, but I guess I urge everyone to be thankful and grateful for what we have and acknowledge how fortunate we are living where we do.

Have a great week.