Newsletter Term 3 Week 7 - 5.9.2025

Principal's News

Father's Day

My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could ever give another person.

He believed in me.

Fathers and father figures play an important role in all our lives. Their example of love and faith shines brightly as they watch over us, guide us and protect us.

A big thank you to our students and to all our fathers and father figures who were able to join us on Friday afternoon, share a beverage and enjoy having some fun games and activities in the school.

We hope that all father figures will enjoy a special day on Sunday and find time to spend it with those they cherish.

We pray for fathers who are living, remember fathers who have died and are grateful for special men and women in our lives who have been like fathers to us. We celebrate the love of fathers on Father’s Day and are mindful that Jesus had such great love for God, whom he called Father.

We pray that all dads, grandfathers and father figures will feel the love and gratitude for all they give us.  

A Prayer for Fathers

God, bless all the fathers of the world.
Guide them to be good role models and loving to all their children.
Help them to be a father like You are.
Give them grace, strength, wisdom and love
to be teachers and guides
for the young who look up to them.
Amen

STEM Partnership

We are excited to announce a new partnership led by Mrs Kirstie Hawkins with our two Catholic Colleges, St Joseph's Banora Point and Mount St Patrick's, Murwillumbah, as we continue striving towards being a school of excellence in everything that we do for our children.

The aim of this partnership is to provide experiences and STEM enrichment opportunities for a group of high potential learners in Stage 2 at St Anthony’s Primary school. This will allow these students to build their STEM capacity and experience what our local Catholic high schools can offer.

In order to provide a range of experiences for students, Mount St Patrick College will focus on Digital Technologies and Chemistry experiences and St Joseph's College will focus on Physics and Mathematics experiences.

It is important to acknowledge that the students selected in this partnership for 2025 will be operating at a high school level of learning and our school identification and selection process needed to ensure that we are only sending our learners who have demonstrated the ability to work at this level. 

We will be focusing on strengthening our partnership with our colleges in many different areas, as we move forward and create opportunities for students to continue to succeed here at St Anthony's and into the future.

Parent Community Group Meeting

Thank you to all parents and guardians who were able to join us for our classroom walkthroughs and conversations at our latest meeting. At times we can reduce parent partnership and engagement to events and judge our success by how many people turn up. We know however, that as important as events can be, having our families have a voice, be engaged in their child's learning, be part of decision making and the direction of the school, is a far more powerful and important partnership to improving student outcomes.

I will share our conversations and finding in the next newsletter.

We will hold our next Parent Community Group Meeting early in Term 4 with an 8:45am meeting. Please keep an eye out for the date as it gets closer.

Acts of Kindness

So many times in life we have the opportunity to help other people. This can be in small ways like giving someone a smile, speaking nicely to people, inviting and including people in our games or group, helping someone when they are hurt or even as simple as listening to someone when they need to tell you something.

Helping other people makes you feel good and God wants us to help others just like Jesus did. When we work together and help each other we are showing the face of Jesus and we can do amazing things. Take some time this week to think about all the little things people are doing to help each other and what you could do at school and at home to help others.

2026 Enrolments

As we begin  looking at our classes and staffing for 2026, I am asking families to let us know if your circumstances will be changing.

If your son or daughter will not be continuing at St Anthony's in 2026, I would greatly appreciate it if you could let me know. Having this information now, will help us in our planning and ensure the best possible arrangements are made for all students who are currently at our school and those on waiting lists hoping for a spot.

Please contact the school office on 66741368 or email us at sapkings@lism.catholic.edu.au to advise of any changes or if you have any questions or concerns regarding this process.

MISSION NEWS

Confirmation 2025

A number of our students are looking forward to celebrating the Sacrament of Confirmation at St Anthony’s Church tonight. Today the students had a chance to meet the Bishop of Lismore, Bishop Gregory Homeming and go deeper into the Sacrament.

We are looking forward to a beautiful evening witnessing these students receive the fruits and gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The Good Ship Hope

This week our St Anthony’s Parish is hosting the Jubilee Year of Hope Boat. We are celebrating with a big Parish Mass this Sunday, 9am which will be presided by the Bishop of Lismore. All are very welcome. 

Thank you to all of our generous St Anthony’s families who donated non-perishable goods These have been collected and gathered around the Hope Boat in the Church. Donations will continue to be collected over the weekend and sent to Fred’s Place next week.

LEARNING AND TEACHING

Celebration of Learning: Gold Coast Science Competition Awards Ceremony

Last night marked a proud moment for St Anthony’s as the awards ceremony for the prestigious Gold Coast Science Competition took place. This competition provides an incredible platform for students to showcase their outstanding scientific projects to a wider community beyond our school walls.

This year, St Anthony’s entered an impressive 32 projects, created by 53 talented students. We are thrilled to announce that our school achieved Runner-Up for Best School Overall, a distinction calculated by averaging the cumulative point totals of all projects submitted. This remarkable accomplishment is even more significant considering we competed against 22 other primary schools, including some of the most renowned institutions on the Gold Coast.

A heartfelt congratulations goes to the 15 students who earned individual awards for their exceptional work. Your dedication and hard work have truly paid off! We are confident that this valuable science experience has inspired and enriched all participants.

Category: Scientific Investigation

Third Place- (Kindergarten) Koa Cowdroy - “What foods attract insects?”

Category: Environmental Action Plan

First Place- (Stage 1) Amelia Alcorn & Scarlett Hardy -“How do we recycle properly?”

Third Place- (Stage 2) Elodi-Kate Alcorn & Audrey McMahon- “The Ultimate Bee Hangout”

First Place - (Stage 3) Cate Thierjung & Rose McMahon - “Fingal Headland”

Category: Classified Collections

Second Place- (Kindergarten)- Keiley Robertson & Maya Pemberton- “Bug Survey Day vs Night”

Second Place -(Stage 1) - Lacie Campbell & Brooklyn Elworthy- “Feather Collection”

Second Place- (Stage 3) - Francine Wiseman & Camille McCann - “Shell Classification”

Third Place - (Stage 3) - Isobelle Neaves & Lola Kingston - “ I See Sea Shells”

Well done, St Anthony’s! We look forward to seeing more incredible projects in the years ahead.

The schools we were competing against were:

A.B. Patterson College, Ashmore State School, Bellevue Park State School, Biggera Waters State School

Classical Conversations Home Education group, Coombabah State School, Elanora State School, Emmanuel College

Gaven State School, Gold Coast Christian College, Guardian Angels Primary School, Hillcrest Christian College

Kings Christian College, Miami State School, Mudgeeraba Creek State School, Park Lake State School,

Pimpama State School, Saint Stephens College, Somerset College, Southport State School, St Hilda’s School and

The Southport School.

SPORT NEWS

Diocesan Athletics Carnival

The Diocesan Athletics Carnival was held in Coffs Harbour on Tuesday the 26th August. St Anthony’s had 21 students participate and represent the Tweed Zone on the day. Well done to the following students who represented our school and the Zone to the best of their abilities: 

Harrison Morley, Cleo Morley, Kahlani Gordon, Andrew De Beer, Eden Usher, Cate Thierjung, Bonnie Brownjohn, Amelia Popov, Evelyn Stewart, Samuel Jackson, Poppy Lalor, Neve Lawrence, Sammi O’Grady, Gemma Rogers, Ava Scott, Finley Smith, Xavier Stewart, Quinn Thomas, Finn Zuber, Beau Harrison and Joel Teague. 

Some of the highlights of the day include: 

• Harry Morley achieved Junior Boy Age Champion.
• Ava Scott achieved Junior Girl Runner Up Champion.
• Andy De Beer was awarded Senior boys multi-class champion.
• Eden Usher was awarded Senior girls multi-class champion. 
• Our Senior girls Relay Team came 2nd and made it through to the Polding Carnival (Cate, Bonnie, Kahlani and Evelyn). 
• Our Junior Girls Relay Team came 2nd and made it through to the Polding carnival (Amelia, Quinn, Sammi and Cleo). 
• Beau Harrison won the 1500m by 30 seconds and broke a Diocesan record for the event. He also won the 800m event.
• Cleo Morley came 3rd in the 200m.
• Bonnie Brownjohn came 3rd in the 200m.
• Ava Scott came 1st in the 1500m and 1st in the Discus. 
• Amelia Popov came 1st in the Junior Girls High Jump
• Harrison Morley came 1st in the 200m and the High Jump. 

Good luck to the following students who will be progressing to the Polding carnival to represent the Lismore Diocesan in Newcastle:

Andy De Beer, Eden Usher, Bonnie Brownjohn, Cate Thierjung, Kahlani Gordon, Amelia Popov, Evelyn Stewart, Ava Scott, Beau Harrison, Samuel Jackson, Cleo Morley, Harrison Morley, Sammi O’Grady and Quinn Thomas.

Australian Athletics Cross Country - Beau Harrison

Congratulations to Beau Harrison of Year 5 who recently attended the Australian Athletics Cross Country Championships in Ballarat.

With a slip on the start line he fought his way back to finish the race in 4th place.

He was part of the QLD team which also came in first place in the teams event. 

He will now attend the National Cross Country Championships, good luck Beau!

FLYING START

Another busy couple of weeks for us here at Flying Start.  We have been investigating music with rhythm and beat at the forefront.  We have sung songs whilst playing instruments, used small blocks to stay on the beat and listened to animal noises, then mimicked them with instruments. 

We welcomed the kindy children into our space last Friday afternoon for kindy sport, where we built obstacle courses, navigated the monkey bars and shared the sandpit to build and dig. 

This week has been all about dads and other important people in our lives.  We used clay to make pinch pots for our dads and decorated them with stones to make everyone unique.  On Thursday morning, we welcomed all to our breakfast to help us celebrate.  We had bacon and egg rolls, coffee and lots of games to play.  Making planes, building Lego and drawing portraits were all very popular.  Our Flying Start community turned out in droves, and there were lots of memories made. 

COMMUNITY NEWS

Parish Information and News

Parish Priest: Fr Paul McDonald

Finance Manager: Paul Crouch

Parish Secretary: Marty Darragh

Pastoral Assistant: Catherine Holliday

Phone: 0266741368

Email: parkings@bigpond.com

Website: http://stanthonysparishkingslciff.org

WEEKEND MASS TIMES
VIGIL: KINGSCLIFF 6:00pm
SUNDAY:POTTSVILLE 7:30am
KINGSCLIFF 9:00am

WEEKDAY MASS TIMES
TUESDAY: POTTSVILLE 9:15am
WEDNESDAY: KINGSCLIFF 8:00am
THURSDAY: KINGSCLIFF 9:00am
FRIDAY: KINGSCLIFF 8:00am

RECONCILIATION TIMES

SATURDAY: KINGSCLIFF4:00-5:30pm
SUNDAY: POTTSVILLE 7:00—7:25am

Current Office Hours: Tuesday - Thursday 9am-3pm

PARISH NEWSLETTER LINK: http://stanthonysparishkingscliff.org/news-events/

St Anthony's Parish - Care Group

Many parents may have noticed from the Parish Bulletin, that the Parish has a Care Group which, among other things seeks to provide meals to any parishoners in need.

This could include times of family sickness, new mums struggling to provide for the family in the early days of returning home, and many other circumstances of genuine need.

Please be aware that the Care Group is very willing to help out if any families find themselves in need of this service.

Contact: Parish Office: 0266 741 284 or Maree Moore 0439 174 116