It has  been a busy time at Our Lady of Good Counsel Primary School since our last newsletter to the community, our Preps have completed their first week of school and have seamlessly transitioned into school life.  We have had 13 of our students participate in the Whitehorse Division Swimming Carnival with two of our relay teams and three individual swimmers qualifying for the Eastern Metropolitan Primary Region Swimming Championships to be held on 22 March.  Our Year 5/6 students will be attending a camp at Alexandra Resort together with many other activities in the school.  

Through all of this we are continuing our focus on Lent and acting on three pillars of this season: prayer, almsgiving and fasting.  The theme of Project Compassion 2024 is ‘For All Future Generations’ and reminds us that the good we do today extends to impacting the lives of generations to come.  It invites us to make the world a better place by working together now and finding long-term solutions to global issues.

As a school we have planned for the last four Fridays leading up to Holy Week, some whole school initiatives to raise funds for Project Compassion.  We have asked the students to donate a gold coin each to participate in each of the festivities

The first Friday in March was CRAZY SOCKS DAY and it was a huge success raising $224.  We are most grateful for everyone’s contribution.  We are going to challenge that total and see if we can raise more or close to doubling the amount of money raised for each initiative.  We cannot wait to see how much we can donate to Caritas after the month of festivities, and to know we are helping those less fortunate than ourselves.

St Patrick’s Day is on Sunday, 17 March.  We will celebrate this feast day on Tuesday, 19 March and have a whole school competition to see which class can make the longest line on the basketball court made up of silver coins only!!!

By Julie McIntyre

Published: 8 March 2024