Several celebrations for St Francis Xavier, Lake Cargelligo

Leah and Sasha Hayward and Leela Jones with a student from ‘Big’ SFX planting a tree. Photo supplied.

Last week St Francis Xavier School celebrated Families Week (late), St Vincent de Paul Winter Appeal and National Tree Planting Day (early) with visiting students from St Francis Xavier College in Canberra. 

National Families Week is a time to celebrate families and share in the enjoyment of family activities. Students in Year 1/2 celebrated their families in their term assembly through presenting information about the super heroes within their families. The students also created family trees and concluded their assembly with the song and dance “Twist and Shout”.

Students came dressed to school as their favourite Superheroes to raise funds for the St Vincent de Paul Winter Appeal.

The day’s theme was actually ‘Soup – a Hero Day’ as staff put on a special soup luncheon with all funds going to this appeal; money for the luncheon and the gold coin donation for coming to school dressed up, “even staff were dressed up , though not as well as some of the students!” The school raised over $250.

To add to the celebrations, students and staff from our ‘sister’ school St Francis Xavier College in Florey, Canberra spent the day with our school community. This special relationship between St Francis Xavier Lake Cargelligo and St Francis Xavier Florey began in 2006 when Year 10 leadership students travel to visit our school each year.

This year the Year 3/4/5/6 students had the privilege of also working with IT teacher Peter Crane, who taught the students how to program microbots and some basics of coding. 

The ‘Big’ SFX students then joined with our students and helped plant some more native trees and shrubs around our school grounds for National Tree Planting Day. Together the students planted a further 30 plants, adding our contribution to the more than 25 million trees planted on this day over the past 23 years.

“A great day for all involved, students, visitors from Canberra and families,” stated Mrs Elwin.

“We enjoy celebrating and working for worthwhile causes and this day enabled us to do all of these special things together as a community!”