What a wonderful few weeks we have had - working bees, cooking sessions, Leavers dinner, Year 8 Principal’s Day out and of course our official blessing and opening of Te Aroha Block. It has been full-on but we have been blessed by the support of community and whånau to ensure that our tamariki are engaged and learning as well as having fun. 

Official Blessing and Opening of Te Aroha Block & Thanksgiving Celebration

We were delighted to have Cardinal John come and officiate for us to open our renovated learning space. We now have Te Aroha & He Atawhai Blocks - Love and Kindness with our gospel focus being:

‘Three things will last forever - faith, hope, and love - and the greatest of these is love.’ 1 Corinthians 13:13

Likewise, it was a wonderful time of thanks as the students showcased their thanks through song, poetry and music. We particularly acknowledge our St Anthony's Band who have practised tirelessly all this term in order to lead the school in music. No easy task and one we were all impressed by. A special notes of thanks to the team from Dynamite Music who have enthusiastically taught these children the keyboard, guitar or drums over the year and from the group of learners a band was formed. The team from Dynamite Music are a wonderful asset for our school and we look forward to even more students enrolling in their sessions in 2020.

Working Bees

Our grateful thanks to the many families and staff who joined together (some on both days) to work through a large list of chores. We are so delighted to see how tidy our school is now looking. A special note of thanks goes to Miriama Williams who worked tirelessly to organise and coordinate the whole project. Your enthusiasm and passion for our school is amazing Miriama - we thank you!

Learning in Te Aroha

Special thanks to the work of all the parents that help organise the FOSA events. It was these funds that purchased the oven and hob for Te Aroha and it is certainly a popular place for learning. Nearly all classes have now had a cooking session there so a huge thanks for the fundraising efforts!

Our Graduates 

At St Anthony’s over the 8 years that your tamariki are here, we inspire to support our learners to obtain the following attributes and attitudes:

A graduate from St Anthony’s will:

• Have confidence in their own ability and know their strengths
• Be Respectful Excelling Aware Learners, founded in faith.
• Have a love of learning for both physical and academic pursuits.
• Be strong independent learners who are aware of the next learning steps
• Show resilience to cope with all life experiences.
• Be self-managers.
• Follow dreams and aspirations.
• Display leadership skills.
• Contribute to their own and the wider community.

With these, the foundation has been laid for students to have strong well-being and ready to go onto college as confident connected learners. 

To celebrate these 8 years we have a series of events to acknowledge the journey of learning and growing that our graduates have achieved. Helen Revill was supported by staff, previous and current younger students to transform Tui Room into a destination- India as we embraced the culture and food of that country - an amazing result that the Year 8s loved. A huge thanks to Helen for her tireless effort in leading this. Special thanks to Vince McArley who cooked the Leavers Dinner for 18 - our first full dinner from our wonderful new kitchen space! 

While everyone actioned the plan and prepared for this wonderful night, I had the privilege of taking the Year 8s out for the day. A time of laughter, reminiscing, activity and food. Of course, being blessed with a beautiful day was an absolute bonus!

End of Year Assembly and Mass

We look forward to seeing you at our End of Year Assembly at 5 pm on Tuesday. This is our formal assembly that acknowledges our tamariki through a series of awards - the most active Learner; most progress made and most consistent effort made. These are awarded across all year levels. There is also a range of other awards to celebrate student success for 2019. Our graduates will also share their highlights of their time at St Anthony's. We ask that the students come in school uniform and are seated in the church by 4.50 pm. 

Our school year concludes (Wednesday, December 18) with the End of Year Mass at 9 am followed by a morning tea. We look forward to having all our whānau gather for this time of prayer and kai as we bring to a close our academic year. As is tradition, it is a mufti day on Wednesday. Should your child/ren wish to wear mufti it is for a gold coin donation which will be donated to the missions. School finishes at 1 pm. 

Calendars

Thanks to all those who have supported this fundraiser. If you haven’t already collected yours, please pay online or bring cash to the office and collect your calendar. 

I wish you and your family a holy and happy Christmas. All the best for a wonderful start to 2020. 

Ngā manaakitanga

Denise Johnson

For our final newsletter piece this year we’d like to start with a heartfelt thank you to our staff for the amazing job they have done in teaching and caring for all of our students over the past year. The final term has been a particular challenge for our staff after the resignation of our Principal. Thank you, Denise Johnson, for taking on the role of Acting Principal and providing a seamless transition through to the end of the school year. Thank you to Francesca von Lanthen and Jeannine Winton for taking on additional leadership roles to support Denise, and of course the rest of the staff who have also taken on additional work to take us through this transition period. We also acknowledge the difficulties our staff have endured this year being displaced during the renovations and we thank them for their patience and adaptability. We truly have a wonderful team of staff who have banded together to ensure our students have had every opportunity to be their very best. We send them our prayers for a well-deserved restful Christmas break.

We congratulate our departing year 8 students who are leaving our school but are still very much a part of our community. The memories each of you take from St Anthony's will be special, unique and yours to cherish. We wish you all God's blessings as you complete your primary schooling and transition to college. Take with you that "strong spirit" that you developed in your "small school".  We look forward to hearing from you in the future and sharing your successes and aspirations.  We will miss you.  

A quick update on the principal recruitment process. Applications closed on 12 December and we will schedule the interviews for late January to early February. We are working hard to ensure that we recruit the right principal for our school. Thank you again to Denise for agreeing to continue in the role of Acting Principal to take us into the new school year 2020 and beyond and to the rest of the staff for their continued flexibility and dedication.
A sincere thank you to our St Anthony’s parents and whānau. There are so many families that do so much for our school, from supporting school events and teams, sharing their skills and knowledge with the students and staff, helping to maintain the school gardens and grounds, fundraising, and of course continuing the education at home through simple tasks such as reading with your children each night. We value and appreciate every single contribution that our families make to our school community. We hope to see as many of you at possible at the End of Year Mass and End of Year Assembly next week.

May the blessing of peace rest upon you this Christmas.

Vinnies Christmas Drive

Thank you to the people who have already donated to the Vinnies Christmas Drive, we are looking forward to seeing more donations come in. Please do bring them in as they are much appreciated and needed by the Vinnies community. The gifts are for children ages 0-16 and in new or near new condition.

Faith Reflection

A promise is something we tell someone we will definitely, absolutely do. You should only make a promise you intend to keep.  The Advent wreath goes around forever and ever, and it reminds us that God made a promise to love us forever and to send God's Son to save us.

Sometimes people break the promises we make because we aren't perfect. But God is perfect, and God keeps all God's promises. When we light the Advent candles around the wreath, it reminds us that God promised to send God's Son Jesus, and God did send us Jesus just like God promised. So we know that God will keep all God's promises, and come to save us again, and will love us forever and ever. Let's thank God for that.

We were walking in the hot sun to the bus stop. Why you ask? Well, the Year Eights were taking a trip into town with Mrs J  for Principal’s Day Out! We had been looking forward to this all week and were all excited when we finally arrived at Chaffers Marina to go on Crocodile bikes. Mrs. J rented three- two big ones and one small one. Most of the boys went on one while the girls rode on another. We often stopped to swap places on the bikes and to swap to the small bike with Mrs J. It was really exhilarating to go so fast and even a little scary when we had to fit in between a couple of bollards! 

After having a fun time riding around the wide, sunny footpaths of the waterfront, we stopped back again at the rental shop and started to head off to Dragons, a Yum Cha restaurant in town.  A lot of us had never experienced Yum Cha before and I for one really enjoyed it. Some of the foods we tried were pork buns, sweet and sour pork, steamed and fried dumplings, eggy rice, calamari and sweet coconut buns for dessert. It was such a wonderful experience! 

Then, before we went home, we all bought ice creams at Waitangi Park and had a play on the equipment. It was really refreshing! We were so grateful to have had such an awesome day! 

Olivia Napp

Year 8

I really enjoyed the dinner and was happily surprised to find that the theme was Bollywood. The bright colours, lights, facial gemstones, music and overall vibe made the room feel like 

We had been transported!

The Bollywood dancing, Hena, fortune-telling and spending our final night with the Year 8’s really made the night feel special. All the year 8’s are so grateful to have parents, teachers and other various helpers take the time out of their day to make the night special for us leavers. Thank you. 

Lauren St Just 

Year 8 

School Lunches for 2020

We have been very lucky to have had a dedicated group of parents volunteer to help with school lunches every second Friday in 2019. Looking ahead to 2020 it would be great to have some new volunteers. If you are able to help for 1-2 hours on a Friday just once a term, we would really appreciate it! Helping with school lunches is a great way to meet other parents within our school and the students are always extremely grateful to have school lunches available. It is a very straight forward order system and you would be paired up with another parent to help. We will need to put a new roster together over the school holidays ready for the beginning of term 1 2020 so if you are able to help out, please email Debbie at debanded65@outlook.com. Thank you!

After months of preparing and enjoying the fun of Theatre Sports, the Year 7 & 8s competed for the Oral Presentation Cup today. Congratulations to Elise McArley who came first, Lauren St Just: second and Ollie Williams: third place. Congratulations too to Glen Keresi who took the cup for the student who made the most progress. 

An amazing effort by everyone and special thanks to Susan Fogarty who leads the learning for Theatre Sports each year for the seniors - You are a star! Thanks too to our old boys Harry and Murphy Bartle for being the judges. 

Just a reminder to please bring in all library books by this Monday 16th December.  Many thanks, Kirsten