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Dear Parents and Carers
The St Clare's Market Night will be held on Friday 15 November. On this day students will be dismissed early at 12pm so as to allow for the set up of the market on the school grounds. For those who are unable to collect their children early Camp Australia will be provding care.
On the 1st of November, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of All Saints. A saint is someone who the Church believes has died and whose soul is with God. All Saints day commemorates and celebrates the lives of all the baptised who have died and who lived a good life; those who have been canonised by the church, those whom we have known personally as well as those whose names we do not know. We often think of Saints as perfect, but in fact their greatest witness is how they coped with the ordinary difficulties of life and how they reflected in a variety of ways the love of God.
On the 2nd of November, the Catholic Church celebrates The Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed (All Souls’ Day). This feast celebrates the memory of all those ‘departed souls’ we have known and loved over the years; that they might pray for us and that we
never forget God’s saving love and live lives worthy of it. Traditionally on the feast of All Souls, Catholics celebrate and pray for those who have died but have not yet entered into direct communion with God. The feast of All Souls is not a feast of sadness, but one of great hope and confidence. It invites Catholics to entrust their dead to God, because of their belief that they are really God’s dead. If the dead have been loved by them, God has loved them more. They are in God’s care, and like a good shepherd God will lead them to peace.
Source: Compiled from the commentaries of Richard Leonard, Greg Sunter and Dianne
Bergant CSA, sourced from Liturgy Help.
Congratulations Riley M 6HB
Last week Riley attended the annual Rotary Public speaking competition. 16 students from 6 different primary schools spoke for three minutes on a topic of choice. Riley spoke about the work of Rotary and why community members should get involved in Rotary. He is pictured below with his grandfather (a lifelong member of Rotary) and the MC for the evening (another Rotary member).
Here are the secondhand uniform dates for the remainder of the year.
November
Wednesday 6th - 8:30-9:15am
Friday 8th - 2:30-3:15pm
Thursday 21st - 2:30-3:15pm
Monday 25th - 2:30-3:15pm
December
Wednesday 4th - 2:30-3:15pm
Tuesday 10th - 8:30-9:15am
SCHOOL FEES
SCHOOL ATTENDANCE
REPORTING AN ABSENCE
To report your child's absence please do so via PAM, email absent@stclaresofficer.catholic.edu.au or call 5940 6777
Here is the link for the St Clare's Parent Access Module (PAM)
St Clare's PAM
You username is the email address that you have registered with the school. The first time you log in we ask that you use the forgotten password feature to set your own password.
ALL parents must access PAM to receive up to date information and grant necessary permissions. Students will miss out on events if permission is not granted.
How to Help Kids Stay Safe Online
Adapted from: https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/blog Office of the eSafety Commissioner
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.