Dear Parents and Carers

St Clare's Feast Day is Monday 11 August and we are busy making plans for how we will celebrate.  There will be Mass at St Patrick's Church on Saturday 9 August at 6pm which will be followed by pizza in the Parish Hall.  We invite and encourage all families to join us for Mass and pizza afterwards. A survey will be sent to all familes to complete by Monday 4 August so we can arrange the catering.

On Monday 11 August the students will be placed in multi aged groups to participate in a range of activities led by Kaboom Sports.  Parents are invited and welcome to join us from 11.15am.  After Lunch the students will receive a Zooper Dooper which have been provided by Camp Australia for all students. 

YEARS 3-6 ATHLETICS CARNIVAL will be held on Monday 4 August.  There are further details in the newsletter regarding times. Parents and family are welcome to come along and cheer on the students as they compete.

PARKING - we remind everyone to please be mindful of where you park and not impacting our neighbours including SFX.  SFX has reported that there are vehicles parking in the bus bay creating an issue for their buses. 

PARENT TEACHER MEETINGS - are being held on Tuesday 5 and Wednesday 6 August. Bookings for these can now be made via PAM. These are opportunity to catch up with teachers and discuss the semester 1 reports.  If you need any assistance with accessing PAM please contact the school office.

PUPIL FREE DAY - Monday 25 August is a pupil free day, there is no school for students on this day while staff particpate in Professional Development for the day.

Key Dates for First Holy Communion

A reminder to parents of students who are preparing for their First Holy Communion.  These students are required to attend a weekend parish mass on the weekend on the 2nd and 3rd of August.  Please refer to the information collected upon enrolment to see what needs to be brought to the mass.

This term in Year 2 Religion, we are learning how people come together to celebrate as part of the Church community. We are learning that through Baptism, individuals are welcomed into God’s family, and we are exploring the special symbols and actions used in this sacrament. We are learning about our local Church communities and the important seasons and celebrations in the Church’s year, such as Easter and Christmas. We are also being introduced to the Sacrament of Penance (Reconciliation), understanding it as a time for saying sorry and receiving forgiveness. Throughout the unit, we are learning about the importance of celebration, belonging, and shared traditions in the life of the Church.

To begin our unit of learning, students were encouraged to bring in photos of their own celebrations to share with the class. We have created a Celebration Wall in the Junior Learning Space to display all of our celebration photos. 

Our annual House Athletics Carnival will be held on Monday, August 4 (Week 3) at St Clare’s Primary School.

• Year 3 & 4: 9:00am – 11:00am
• Year 5 & 6: 11:30am – 1:30pm

Students will rotate through events, including track races and field events. House points will be awarded for both results and positive sportsmanship.

The top performers in each age group will qualify for the district athletics carnival at Casey Fields on Friday, August 29.
Ribbons will be awarded after the results are calculated at the Week 5 Senior Assembly.

Students are to wear their sports uniform and may add a touch of their house colour.

There will be designated spectator areas for families to come along and show their support.

St Clare's Feast Day is Monday 11 August

Our celebrations will begin with Mass on Saturday 9 August at 6pm at St Patrick Church in Pakenham.  We invite everyone to join us for Mass followed by pizzas in the Parish hall.

On Monday 11 August the students will be placed into multi aged groups to participate in a range of activities led by Kaboom Sports.  All students are to wear sports uniform on this day.

Families with kids of varying ages struggle to keep screen time in check

In this edition of SchoolTV - Managing Screen Time

Families with multiple children are struggling to keep their screen time within the recommended limits, new research has found, with calls for more resources to help families navigate the issue.

Current Australian guidelines recommend no screen time at all for children under two years of age, one hour per day for those aged two to four, and two hours daily for children aged five to 12.

But research from the University of Queensland suggests parents of children across multiple age ranges are failing to meet those guidelines.

UQ maternal and child health expert Leigh Tooth led a study looking at almost 2000 mothers and 4543 children aged under 12 to see how they handled screen time.

They found that a little over half the families with two or more children in the same age bracket managed to keep their children to the recommended screen-time limits.

That dropped to just 23 per cent for families with children in multiple age brackets.

Professor Tooth said the results showed many families were struggling, especially when they had children whose recommended screen-time limits were different.

"If a parent has two or three or four kids of different ages, and the iPad is on and so is the TV and the XBox, it's hard to remove their two-year-old from that," she said.

"Kids aged two to four, we found around 92 per cent of them are exceeding the guidelines, so they're just doing the screen time of their older siblings, which is two hours or more a day."

Professor Tooth said the finding was not necessarily surprising, but this was the first time anyone had quantified exactly how bad the problem had become.

National screen-time guidelines are based around preventing children from having sedentary lifestyles, rather than specific harm from watching screens.

Professor Tooth said the issue was complicated by the fact that more educational and enriching content was now available via screens.

"It's not black and white, but for kids under five, they need play-based activities – they need to be in the sandpit, falling over, exploring their surroundings – to develop their cognitive abilities," she said.

"But screen time has evolved a lot over the years, and a lot of the early research on the subject was based on just parking a kid in front of a TV. The reality today is a lot more complex."

Pandemic lockdowns further complicated the issue, with children forced to do both schooling and recreation at home, although the data used in this research predated the pandemic.

Professor Tooth said national health authorities needed to do more to ensure parents could proactively meet the guidelines, rather than just stating them and letting parents figure it out for themselves.

She said in the same way that there were many resources to help people meet diet and exercise recommendations, similar resources should be available to help parents navigate a world in which their children are increasingly exposed to screens.

"There need to be more parenting resources showing how to juggle screen time between multiple kids," she said.

"I would love to see the guidelines themselves tweaked or changed to reflect the reality of the modern world and having multiple children, rather than the black-and-white thing it is now."

Article by Stuart Layt




Published by The Sydney Morning Herald

Immediate Crisis Support in Australia:

1800RESPECT - https://www.1800respect.org.au/

Kids Helpline - https://kidshelpline.com.au/get-help/webchat-counselling 

Liz Hunt

Mental Health in Primary School Leader

lhunt@stclaresofficer.catholic.edu.au

Here are the dates the secondhand uniform shop will be open this term.

A reminder it is cash sales only

July
Tuesday 22nd 2:30-3:15pm
Thursday 24th 8:30-9:15am
Monday 28th 2:30-3:15pm

August
Friday 1st 8:30-9:15am
Wednesday 6th 2:30-3:15pm
Tuesday 12th 8:30-9:15am
Tuesday 19th 8:30-9:15am
Wednesday 27th 2:30-3:15pm

September
Friday 5th 8:30-9:15am
Tuesday 9th 8:30-9:15am
Thursday 11th 2:30-3:15pm
Monday 15th 2:30-3:15pm
Wednesday 17th 8:30-9:15am

Here is the link to access PAM

Your usernsame is the email address you have registerd with the school.  If you have forgotten your password please use the "forgotten password" feature to set a new one.

How to Help Kids Stay Safe Online

Adapted from:  https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/blog    Office of the eSafety Commissioner

1. Start the chat

It’s not possible to be at your child’s side every second of the day, so it’s important to talk with them about online safety issues to help develop their critical thinking and ability to make good choices. It’s also good to let them know they can come to you for help if they have any concerns. You may feel they know more about the latest technology than you do, but you have more life experience to guide them.

• With primary school aged children use online devices in the open living spaces at home to make parent supervision part of the expectation for your child.
• Take the opportunity to set some boundaries around when and where they can use devices  like tablets, smart TVs and gaming consoles, to help limit potential tech tantrums — you could even fill in an Early Years Family Tech Agreement 
• Screen free time before bed is important for good sleep. Consider charging devices in a central location at a regular time each night to allow an hour screen free before bed.
• While you are all at home more, it’s a great time to co-view and co-play with your kids, so you can understand what they are doing and experiencing online.
• Learn about the games, apps, social media and platforms they are using at The eSafety Guide, including how to protect their information and report inappropriate content or conduct.

2. Use parental controls and safe search options

Parental controls can help block your child from accessing specific websites, apps or functions. They can also monitor your child’s use of connected devices and set time limits. But beware! You cannot always rely on them — they should be used in combination with other online safety strategies.

• Parental controls are available on most tablets, smartphones, computers, TVs and gaming consoles.
• You can also download family safety controls or buy robust filters out of the box. 
• You can set up child-friendly search engines, or select safe search settings on digital devices, to help prevent your child from stumbling across inappropriate sites and content.

3. Check smart toy settings

It’s surprising how many toys or devices can connect online these days, from drones and smart teddies to tablets and wearables. While they can be both entertaining and educational, they can reveal your child’s personal details and location — and allow other people to contact them without you knowing. You can help keep them stay safe by:

• setting strong passwords
• turning off location settings 
• limiting the amount of personal information shared.

The eSafety Gift Guide has advice on what to check for and how to stay safe.

4. Look out for unwanted contact and grooming

Unwanted contact is any communication that makes your child feel uncomfortable or unsafe, even if they initially welcomed the contact. It can come from a stranger, an online ‘friend’ or even someone they actually know. At worst, it can involve ‘grooming’ — building a relationship with the child in order to sexually abuse them.

You can help by:

• making sure their accounts are private — including chat functions on games
• encouraging them to delete requests from strangers and any contacts they don’t know in person
• checking in with your child as they use online devices in the open living spaces at home
• reporting and blocking anyone suspicious on a website or service 
• remembering that if suspicious online contacts become aggressive or threatening you should contact your local police.

5. Know the signs of cyberbullying

Kids who are bored by long periods at home can pick at each other, and that happens online too. So it’s important to keep an eye out for cyberbullying. It can include mean posts, comments and messages, as well as being left out of online group activities like gaming. 

• Remember, when they are away from school, kids have less access to their usual support systems, including friends, teachers and counsellors. 
• eSafety research shows that girls are more likely to be affected than boys and the person doing the bullying is generally someone they know from school.
• Watch out for signs such as your child appearing upset after using their mobile, tablet or computer, being unusually secretive about their online activities or becoming withdrawn.
• Cyberbullying can make social isolation worse and the longer it continues, the more stressed kids can become, impacting on their emotional and physical wellbeing.

What to do if your child is being cyberbullied

As parents, our first instinct may be to ban our children from social media, disable the wi-fi or turn off the data access. But this can actually compound the problem, making your child feel as if they’re being punished and heightening their sense of social exclusion.

There are four simple steps that can help minimise the harm:

• report the cyberbullying to the social media service where it is occurring
• collect evidence of the cyberbullying material
• if the material is still public 48 hours later, make a report to eSafety — we work with social media platforms to have the harmful content removed.
• block the offending user.