Dear Parents and Carers,

After his first day at school one of the kindergarten children remarked to me- “he’d had a great day, but did he need to come back tomorrow?”

Starting school can be a tricky time for children and we all need bucket loads of patience and understanding during life’s big transitions. Sometimes the move from a more play-based pre-school structure provides its challenges for our little people. 

The pressures on parents and families can be overwhelming and it is sometimes difficult to know how to cope with our children’s behaviour. There are some good parenting strategies to use based on experience and research. Michael Grose has been a great advocate for assisting parents for many years. One of the strategies he uses is to refer to behaviours as choices. By doing this we can separate the behaviours from the child and we can also focus on positive behaviour choices.

We need to call our children out for ‘inappropriate’ behaviour by describing it as a poor choice and helping them to understand what may be a better choice in a given situation.

“Parents can reinforce the idea of choice by consistently referring to a child’s positive or negative behaviour as a choice. “Good choice, sharing your toys with your brother.” “You could make a better choice and come home on time when you visit a friend.” https://www.parentingideas.com.au/blog/micro-habits-to-parent-better-every-day/

At St Michael’s we are here to support you and working together we can teach our children of all ages and stages the skills they need to cope with transition and change.

Farewell Mrs Monro

Next Friday 4^th March will be Mrs Lisa Monro’s last day at St Michael’s. We are planning some special surprises at school with further information in the newsletter for parents/friends who would like to say goodbye on Saturday night 5^th March.  

Community Council Nominations

A note went home via COMPASS yesterday explaining about our wonderful Community Council and calling for nominations. The forms and information are also attached to this newsletter.

Wet weather pick- up

Our new afternoon pick up for parked cars has worked really well and I thank all our parents for helping us to keep everyone safe. In the event of wet weather at afternoon pick up time, all children will come to the library to be collected at the drive through pick up point. Best options are to drive through to avoid families getting drenched. We will keep cars moving quickly and are repainting the area for visible stop and collect spots.

We really appreciate your patience during a wet weather pick up as everyone needs to come through the one spot and we are trying our best to ensure the children enter cars quickly.

Thank you for all you do to support St Michael’s and have a great week,  

Many Blessings

Judy Egan