Good evening everybody and welcome.  For those who don’t know me my name is Martine Mathieson and I am the Religious Education coordinator at St Michael’s.  I’d just like to take a couple of moments to talk about the RE program at the school.

We are unashamedly a Catholic school.  The vision and mission of the Catholic church are at  our very core. You have chosen to send your children to a Catholic school, so, in many ways you are also saying that the Catholic ethos and the teachings of Christ are very important to you and your family.  Every day in every classroom the person and teachings of Christ are made known to your children both formally and informally.

As a Catholic school there are many, many times throughout the year when we come together to celebrate the rich heritage as well as the more personal aspects of our faith.  Tonight I invite you to be a part of every celebration we have, beginning with our Ash Wednesday celebrations next Wednesday. If you’ve been away from the church for a little while, please come along.  There is something very special and very beautiful about the masses and liturgies we celebrate together.

In partnership with you as parents, we help prepare the children to receive the Sacraments of Reconciliation in Year 2; Eucharist/First Holy Communion in Year 3 and Confirmation in Year 6.  It is an expectation that parents attend the information meetings and reflection prayer evenings if you wish your child to receive a sacrament. Times of prayer and reflection allow you to fully prepare yourselves and your children for receiving these sacraments. These are the particularly special Catholic celebrations, but alongside this very rich sacramental program there are class masses celebrated nearly every week on a Friday- please check the newsletter for your child’s class mass. Grade masses celebrated one Sunday of each month during term: as you have chosen to send your child or children to a Catholic school we invite you and your family to join us to celebrate mass. Each grade only has one Sunday mass for the year. It will begin on Sunday 1 March for Kindergarten. We would love to see you all at mass and afterwards join the St Michael’s Parish Community for morning tea and meet other parents from your child’s class.

During the year we also have special school liturgies and masses.  There will be a Year 6 Mini Vinnies Team who organise fundraising activities such as our Café coming up later this next term; we have project compassion during Lent and later in the year we support St Vincent de Paul Winter Appeal along with giving to the missions during Mission month. We celebrate our mums and dads close to Mother’s Day and Father's Day and our grandparents on grandparents day.

Every day we pray together, we sing together often and we do this because we all want our children to hear and live the message of Christ.

Now to keep yourselves up to date with all of the great things happening in the school regarding RE, please refer to the newsletter – there is an overview of events in there every week; classroom teachers will also send home notes closer to events. 

In closing I’d just like to reiterate … We are a Catholic school, we do the Catholic things really well and we’d love to have you come along to everything we do… come along…. Your kids will love to see you there.

Thank you.

Martine Mathieson

Religious Education Co-Ordinator