Dear Parents,

We celebrated St Bede’s Day on Tuesday and it was wonderful to see so many families represented at Mass as we honoured St Bede, the scholar and historian. This is one of my favourite days of the year and it was lovely to have people ale to attend Mass again as a community. We are very lucky at St Bede’s that Mass is available for the community to attend and we especially thank Father Trenton for being available and speaking so beautifully to everyone. A big thank you to Mrs Trow and the Kindergarten class for leading the mass so well. The students were also involved in a mini school fete organised by Year Six students in the afternoon. This was tremendous fun and all the children loved it.  

Last week, I was fortunate to witness our students in Years Five and Six make their Confirmation at St Peter Chanel’s, Yarralumla. This is always an important event in the student’s lives and this year was the first time we have celebrated the receiving of the Sacrament at our sister church. This is due to a number of reasons but to me it was more intimate and Father Trenton focused on making the students feel comfortable in what can be a very daunting event. It really was a wonderful night! I would like to personally thank Katie Horsburgh, Breen Fox and Ben Macintyre for preparing the children so beautifully and Nikki Dwyer for organising and preparing the Mass.

Our very successful enrolment period comes to an end at the end of this week. We have at present 21 enrolments for Kindergarten 2022. A couple of enrolments are out of area and, as mentioned at the last town hall, will be discussed with other Principals. This meeting takes place in June and we are hoping to be able offer a place next year to all. We have a number of other prospective enrolments across the school for next year and at present our intake stands at 151 students. We have five new students starting next term which is marvellous. I really believe that the media coverage of recent weeks has gone in our favour. We have been inundated with inquiries which is a wonderful problem to have at the moment. Coming home tomorrow is one stamped postcard per family for students to write to anyone they know telling prospective families what they love about our school and inviting them to come and see St Bede’s if they are interested in enrolling.

We applied for a Floriade grant to enhance our school for the spring and was successful! This means that the students will be planting lots of bulbs in the school grounds during the next week. The school will certainly be a picture in early September. Thank you Mrs Fox for being the instigator of this initiative at our school.

We are having a few issues with uniforms. All students should now be in full winter uniform. This includes pinafores or long trousers, a shirt/skivvies with navy tights or white socks for girls and long trousers with a shirt/skivvy for boys. The fleece top is school winter jacket worn over these. On sport days, students wear their school sports uniform with either the school tracksuit or the old school sport jumpers. Students may wear a coat, beanie, gloves and scarves in navy, on cold mornings. Hats are off during playtimes from next week due to UV threat being low during June & July. Please store the children’s hats in a safe place for the spring. Hats will be back on from early August.

Winter has certainly arrived with very cold mornings and unpleasant winds. If any day is particularly cold, we will make sure that the children are kept inside. The library is open at lunchtimes on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for activities.

Next week is Sabbatical Week. Enjoy spending quality family time together. 

Have a lovely long weekend. How nice to have two in three weeks.

Kind regards

Julie

 The cupcake decorating stall at the Year 6 fete!