In this issue

We have lots of exciting events coming up.  We would love to see you there!

TRIVIA NIGHT

Our Trivia Night is coming up on 24 July.  Grab your friends and join us for a fun night. Tickets go on sale 11 June.

 BACK TO GRACE

Our next 50th event is our ‘Back to Grace’ evening on 20 August.  If you would would to join us for this evening, please RSVP here.

SAVE THE DATE

TWILIGHT CARNIVAL WRAP UP

OH WHAT A NIGHT OUR TWILIGHT CARNIVAL WAS!

WOW what a gold and glittering night we had on Friday 30 April – even the rain didn’t put a dampner on all the fun! Since then we have been busily cleaning up and packing away everything from our first ever Twilight Carnival. There have been flash sales at school to sell leftover pizzas, excess plants and pots were successfully added and sold on our Mother’s Day stall last week, we have been compiling photos – if you have any to share please email them through to events@glps.qld.edu.au, thanking our sponsors, and our business office team have been number crunching to see how much we raised to go towards our school pool project.

Overall it was a HUGE team effort from so many people, particularly to our stall convenors (many of who were staff or Pool Project committee members this time round), set up and pack down crews and all the stall volunteers and we whole heartedly say THANK YOU! It is teams like these that make magical community events like our Twilight Carnival happen. And it was a big success regardless of the weather or how much money we raise, as we noticed even when we were super busy we were all still smiling and everyone stayed safe and importantly the children were all having lots of fun, creating lifelong childhood memories… they are still raving about it here at school, so to our team here that equals success.

Shout Out To Join Our Events Committee

Thank you to all our volunteers for Twilight Carnival. We couldn’t have done it without you! A big thank you to our Mothers’ Day Stall helpers too… you were amazing and brought joy to our students.

We have many more sparkling events coming up to celebrate the remainder of our 50th anniversary and we are looking to pull an events volunteer committee together to help us make Grace sparkle and shimmer at these golden events.

It takes a team to pull memorable events together and our past volunteers all agree that it’s so much fun and firm friendships are made along the way.

The type of activities we may need help with at times include set up and pack down, sponsorship and donations, and working at the event. If this sounds like YOU, to register your interest to join our events team please email us at events@glps.qld.edu.au

50TH TOGETHER WITH SERVICE
On Sunday 16 May, we celebrated our 50th at a ‘Together with Service’ at Grace Lutheran College.

Thank you to our students who performed on the day. It was a beautiful service.

The highlight of course were our special guests, past Principals Mr Matuschka, Mr Smyth, Mr Hammer and Mrs Gregory and also Mrs Bateson (the 1st teacher at Grace).

It was lovely to see many familiar faces of past staff, parents and students.

Karen Misso & Jessika Cameron
Marketing and Events

SAUSAGE SIZZLE – rescheduled to Monday 14 June

If you did not order last term, you can order here by visiting our School Shop.
Ordering closes on Wednesday 9 June.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
If you can help at our Sausage Sizzle 14 June, please email events@glps.qld.edu.au

TEAM SPIRIT DAY

Dress in your favourite team sporting outfit (including sleeves, sports shoes and a hat) and bring a $2 donation.

Order your meal deal now, via our School Shop by clicking here. Ordering closes Monday 7 June.
thank you for your support in helping us raise funds for our School Pool.

PERFORMING ARTS

EXPRESSION OF INTEREST
Is your child interested in joining Prep Dance?
Due to the popularity of our prep dance troupe, our performing arts department are looking at pulling together a second dance troupe if numbers are met.
The cost per term is $135.

If you are interested, could you please email performingarts@glps.qld.edu.au by next Friday 4 June.

CHARIS COFFEE SHOP

Did you know you can now text your order ahead of time?

GLPS Cross Country

We had an awesome school cross country carnival on the first Friday back this term, students demonstrated their talents on the running track and highlight a lot of hard work leading up to this event. Well done to all students who participated in the fun event, a special mention to all students who placed in the top 4 of each race.

District Cross Country

We were able to take the top 6 runners from the 9-12 years students along to the District Carnival last week, which was held at Muller College along a very muddy track on Thursday on 6 May.

Congratulations to all Grace students who did a great job representing their school at this event, Grace Primary finished 4th over-all, which is a great achievement coming up against a lot of other schools. Special mention to the students who placed at this event.

Individual Placings:
Isaac B (Year 4) – 10 Boys 3rd Place

Team Awards:
9 Girls 2nd Place – Christiana C (Year 3), Poppy P (Year 3), Evie B (Year 3)

10 Boys 3rd Place – Isaac B (Year 4), Will L (Year 5), Will B (Year 5)

11 Boys 3rd Place – Hayden P (Year 5), Cooper B (Year 5), Darcy M (Year 5)

And all those who made the district team, good luck at the regional trial in June:
Darcy M (Year 6), Isaac B (Year 4), Lucas S (Year 6)

NISSA Cross Country

On Friday the 7th of May, the Grace running team travelled to The Lakes College to again compete in another cross country event. Well done to all our fantastic runners, Grace Primary finished 3rd over-all and came away once again as winner in the percentage award.

A special mention to students who placed at this event:

Christiana C (Year 3) – 3rd Place
Isaac B (Year 4) – 3rd Place
Zach O (Year 6) – 3rd Place
Lucas S (Year 6) – 2nd Place

Running Club
Now we are finishing the running season and quickly preparing for the athletics season coming up, running club will scale back to one day a week on Fridays and we will now hold an Athletics Club on Wednesday mornings for students interested in developing specific skills of hurdles, block starts, and high jump. This will be held at Dalton Oval from 7:30am.

Mr Denny
Director of PE & Sport

Parents and Friends Annual General Meeting

In two recent surveys, parents have mentioned that Grace Primary does not have a Parents and Friends Association and the desire to reinvigorate this group. In 2019, the P and F executive requested of our School Council to put into recess the association due to lack of attendance at meetings and lack of available volunteers to help out with various events.

I am most happy to host an AGM this year though due to the recent interest and have marked Wednesday, 28 July at 6p.m. as the time for this meeting. If you are keen to participate, nomination forms are available from Joelene Gledhill at the school office for the positions of President, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer. (JoeleneGledhill@glps.qld.edu.au)

Parents and Friends Associations are wonderful groups in schools which provide voluntary support for the programs of the school and a place where parents can come and discuss school issues each month. Please note, there is already a vibrant parent representative group which meets each term and these parents organise year level and class events throughout the year. They were also instrumental in organising support and practical aspects of our Twilight Carnival which of course was a huge success.

Staffing News

Please be advised that I am on sabbatical leave from 28 May until 12 July. As this is the fifth year of my service at Grace, I am asked to do some further study and take some leave to do so. Of course, normally Principals go overseas and do all sorts of interesting things but due to the current Covid situation with borders shut, I am very pleased to be staying home. I have enrolled in a Leadership and Management Course with Harvard University and look forward to having the time to delve deeply into modern leadership qualities and techniques. I will be having a one week holiday with my daughter and husband also as part of my leave and look forward to this family time immensely. If you need any support while I am away, Mrs Kathy Stock, Mrs Jasmine Deighton or our Business Manager Mr Cedric Laverdure are all available to answer any queries you may have. I look forward to seeing everyone again in Term 3 and continuing to work towards the best outcomes possible for our students at Grace Lutheran Primary School.

Grandparents’ Day 2021

We have decided to cancel Grandparents’ Day for 2021. I am sorry for any inconvenience this may cause but I hope you will understand that with ongoing risk of Covid restrictions, we do not want people traveling in for this event and perhaps having immediate disappointment. I appreciate your understanding with this matter.

Early Learning Centre 2022

After much planning and discussion, Grace Lutheran Primary School will be opening an Early Learning Centre in early 2022. I am hopeful of a January commencement but of course this will be dependent on the building program which will begin in August, 2021. The Early Learning Centre will cater for 64 children each day and be placed on the spare block which is near our current shed. (Some parents currently use it as a carpark – apologies it’s going soon!) There will be three rooms in the centre – the first room will be for 2 – 3 year old children and there will be two Pre Prep rooms for 3 – 5 year old children. It is anticipated that we will commence taking enrolments for the centre during Term 4 for 2022 and because the architect’s final work will be done by the time I return to school after my sabbatical leave, I can give you much more information then too. It is intended we will have a peep hole fence which will join our school play area so siblings can say “Hi” to each other during the day. It is hoped that this will give much convenience to parents who have a child enrolled at our school and also in Long Day Care. Our Early Learning Centre will be licensed and attract all government fee relief which is currently available to parents.
Trudy Moala
Principal