Posts By St. Emilie's CPS
THIRD WEEK OF ADVENT: JOY
This week we light the pink candle – this candle represents JOY.
Bright pink, pale pink, rose pink are all shades of pink painted into a sunrise. Like these different shades of pink, the way we express joy can be so different.
Joy can be exuberant when we experience God’s faithfulness in our lives. It can be a calm confidence in His power, or an absolute delight in His unconditional love.
Joy has many shades. It is not determined by how we feel, but on who our God is to us. The joy of the Lord can excite us – make us resolute in the secure knowledge of God’s presence. Jesus tells us “With God all things are possible.” This truth should help us be joyful each day.
Dealing with Big Feelings – Teaching Kids How to Self-Regulate
Read more at:
http://www.heysigmund.com/how-to-self-regulate/
The Silly Season with Kids – How to Reduce Stress During the Holidays (For You and For Them)
As much as we love the holidays with our kiddos, there are way too many ‘opportunities’ to practice every trick/ bribe/ desperate parenting maneuver clever parenting strategy we know, in order to smooth the edges and make everything, you know, magical. This can bring more than a reasonable amount of stress during the silly season.
As well as the regular routine, new things get added to the ‘to-do’ list. There’s that magic-making thing to attend to, different routines to work around, expectations to manage, and the mammoth effort needed to avoid arguments and sugar-induced, or exhaustion-induced meltdowns. And then there are the meltdowns from our kids.
Things can get hectic. Happy, but hectic. If only we could box up the presents, the food, the stress, the queues at the checkout, the gladiatorial battles for car parks, and the military level of organisation needed for the silly season, and sprinkle it more evenly throughout the year so the other eleven months can take their share of the load. But we can’t do that, because then the silly season wouldn’t be the silly season. There wouldn’t be the looks on their faces, the squeals of pure joy, the countdowns, the excitement when the magic comes together, the stories when it doesn’t, and the ‘Santa’s watching’threats reminders that supercharge our parenting toolkit for a while. What would be perfect, is if we could keep the good and take the stress back down to small enough. Here are some ways to do that …
Read more…
http://www.heysigmund.com/the-silly-season-with-kids/
With Many Thanks!
As we reflect on the year that has been, we are grateful for the wonderful sense of community that has seen us through the many good times and those that have challenged us to the core.
We have been honoured to have witnessed the true meaning of courage, strength, faith and hope through the actions of a young mother and father who faced such immense tragedy and heartbreak yet, in their own suffering, were able to look to the needs and offer comfort to others. Their legacy is a gift we will all cherish forever.
Together we have supported and encouraged, shown thoughtfulness, been generous, shared good humour and offered kindness and cooperation. The positive contributions made by each and every one of you have been greatly appreciated.
To those who have sent a positive email or dropped in a card, chocolates or cake after one of the many different class or whole school events throughout the year, or simply recognised the care and effort that a teacher/staff member has given to your child in one way or another – MANY , MANY THANKS!
Your words, or acts, of encouragement and thanks are valued and remind us that the extra things we do – really matter and make a difference. The staff of St Emilie’s work very hard to provide many wonderful learning opportunities and experiences. They give much time and effort to all that they do, often quietly ‘behind the scenes’, in their own time, before school, after school and on weekends. We are very blessed indeed to have such dedicated and caring professionals in our school!
In the busyness of the season, please find time to connect with the Christmas story – to emphasise the importance of Christ in Christmas! As parents, you hold the key to teaching your child that while receiving is fun, the real joy of Christmas is to be found in giving … that Jesus spent his life teaching us that to find true peace, we must be willing to forgive and to love without condition… for we are called to be His hands, feet, eyes, ears and heart in this world. This isn’t always easy, but is definitely worth striving for!
Emails will be sent and posts placed on the website in the final week of school and in the week leading up to the start of year, providing you with important information and reminding you of the important dates and times for the start of the year. Please make sure that you check these spaces regularly! The first day of school for children will be Wednesday, 1st of February.
Please take care and stay safe.
We wish you all the peace, love, joy and hope of the Christmas Season and look forward to seeing you all in 2017!
Tania, Stuart & Anne
To Our 2016 Graduates…
Last Tuesday’s Graduation was a time to pray, to be grateful, to celebrate, to laugh, to cry and to remember. Due to time constraints, we were not able to present our speech to the 2016 Graduates. Please view an outline of what we had planned to say via the link below.
May God continue to hold each of you in the palm of his hand,
Mr Munro & Mrs Aquino
A Special Welcome…
At 5,37pm on Friday night, while we were gathering together for our Christmas Concert – dedicated to big bother Philip, the beautiful and precious Claudia Philippa Lombardo made her entrance into the world.
On behalf of all St Emilie’s families, staff and children, we send much love and blessings to Trish and Tony – and to their loving families. We respect the coming days and weeks will be a time for them to be together, as a family and with those closest to them.
Should any St Emilie’s families wish to send cards etc. please drop them to the office and they will be delivered to Trish and Tony. We have sent flowers on behalf of the whole community.
What a lucky girl you are, Claudia Philippa, to have two amazing and loving big brothers to watch over you!
Second Week of Advent – Peace
The theme for the second week of Advent is Peace. Too often our understanding of the word “peace” is limited to thinking only of worldly peace – the absence of war. But the word peace – as proclaimed by the angels to the shepherds at the birth of Jesus – has a much more spiritual significance.
We all have too many things in our lives that need to be maintained, repaired, insured, replaced, cleaned, used, worried about, etc. Too many people in our lives to deal with. Too many things to do.
To people who don’t have peace – everything seems to be noise. Everything seems to be urgent. Everything seems to be important. It becomes overwhelming.
We can be running around thinking things are getting done when they’re not and find ourselves tired and confused.
Therefore we need systems of thinking in place to deal with the things that come into our life. We need a filter to maintain peace.
Start by asking important questions. Do I really need this in my life? Is this person going to bring something positive to my life? What’s really important to do that will help me move forward with my goals?
It is wise to have routines that take care of the day to day activities of life – cooking, laundry, cleaning etc. so you can focus on the more important things.
If we can take a few minutes out every day to connect with ourselves and just be still, we will be able to gain perspective and feel comfortable—irrespective of the goings-on around us.
All this is necessary for finding peace in our life and when we have that peace, we are able to move forward, more good things start to happen, deeper peace is enjoyed, and a much more higher quality of life is experienced.
WHAT A WONDERFUL NIGHT!
St Emilie’s Christmas Concert 2016
Thank you to all families and friends who supported our children and staff at last night’s Christmas Concert.
The night was dedicated to our beautiful Philip, who we know would have been rocking it with all the other angels!
From the start of the opening act, it was obvious that St Emilie’s really has got talent!!
The children were certainly the stars of the show, with their incredible dance moves and angelic voices. From our smallest Kindy children to the graduating class of 2016, we were absolutely ‘wowed’ and thoroughly entertained by performance after performance.
Through the adventures of our Superheroes and Nativity Characters, we were reminded that without Christ – there is no Christmas and that the birth of this very special child, over 2000 years ago, changed the world forever.
Thank you to our outstanding staff who worked tirelessly to ensure the night was such a successful one. Special thanks to our Producer- Directors: Miss Louise Corkhill and Miss Ruby Carroll for their vision and creativity – and for bringing it all together so beautifully.
We are extremely grateful to Mrs Sharon Audino who came to our rescue (just like Super Woman) by sewing and altering costumes so our main actors would look so fabulous. We are very aware that Sharon is extremely busy and we thank her for generously sharing her special talents with us.
We know at the end of a two hour concert – the last thing anyone wants to do is stay back to help – so we sincerely thank the mums, dads, older siblings and grandparents (and students) who assisted with taking down and packing away the backdrop, lights and props, dismantling the stages and choir risers and making sure everything was in order before they headed home. The gift of time is priceless and it is generosity such as this that makes our school community such a positive, caring and cohesive one.
Well done, St Emilie’s, on sharing in this beautiful celebration of God’s greatest gift to each of us!
If you have one special pic from the night that you would be happy to share with us, please send it via the admin email.
First Week of Advent – HOPE
During one daily Mass Pope Francis reflected on the virtue of hope, stressing that it is a gift which does not disappoint, and warning of the false attitudes that can appear to be the virtue.
He told those present of common attitudes which often get mistaken as the virtue, “Hope is not optimism; it is not that ability to look at things with good cheer and move on. No, that is optimism, that is not hope.”
“Nor is hope a positive attitude in front of things. Those shiny, positive people,” he noted, stating that although this attitude is good, “it is not hope.”
“It is not easy to understand what hope is,” he reflected, emphasising that out of the virtues of faith, hope and love, hope is often said to be the most humble because it “hides itself in life.”
“One can see faith, one can feel it, one knows what it is. You do charity, one knows what it is. But what is hope? What is this attitude of hope?”
“To get a bit close to it,” the Pope said, “we can say firstly that hope is a risk, it is a risky virtue…”
He then stressed that because Jesus renews all things, hope is a constant miracle, “.. the miracle of what He’s doing in the Church; the miracle of making everything new: of what He does in my life, in your life, in our life.”
“He builds and He rebuilds. And that is precisely the reason of our hope.”
The Pope then asked, “Are we anchored on the shore of the ocean so far or are we anchored in an artificial lagoon that we have made ourselves, with our rules, our behaviour, our schedules… ?”
“Are we anchored there? Everything comfortable, everything secure? That is not hope. Ask yourself, where is my heart anchored?”
“Christ is the one who renews every wonderful thing of Creation,”
“He’s the reason for our hope. And this hope does not delude because He is faithful. This is the virtue of hope.”
Pope Francis concluded his homily by turning to Mary, recalling her attitude after the death of her son until his resurrection three days later, saying that “Hope is what Mary, Mother of God, sheltered in her heart during the darkest time of her life: from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning.”
“That is hope: she had it. And that hope has renewed everything. May God grant us that grace… so we too can be people of hope”
taken from CNA – Pope Francis: anchor your heart in hope, not false securityhttp://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope-francis-anchor-your-heart-in-hope-not-false-security/