The R/1 Students from JM and MR have been talking about what is in their community. Today, to develop oral language skills and to have an opportunity to express their ideas in a different way, students were asked to draw a picture about their community. This is some of the things they included:
These two weeks’ focus language is Hindi, a language spoken by over 400,000 million people, most of them in Northern India.
Once again, we travelled vitually to this beautiful place and ‘looked’ at the amazing landscape, fauna, cities and people.
Our Hindi speakers are familiar with more than two languages. We have missed two of them; one just returned from India- Tanvi Chauhan- and the other one still away holidaying- Shivdeep Chhabra. 
Riya Waghela ( below)
Keerat Ghotra
Dhyana Patel
Jinisha Mistry
Mumbai
Holi is an important celebration for all the Hindus
Tiger is India’s national animal
Dance is synonymous with India
At the first assembly for the year, we had a Dragon Dance to celebrate the Lunar New Year. This is always popular with our children and staff.
Ms Hong prepared a bowl of fruits you will find in a Vietnamese home at this time of the year.
Welcome back students and families!
We hope that you all had a restful break.
This year, the EAL Team will continue with the Language of the Week, but we will make it Language of the fortnight so that the students will be able to look into more depth at the different languages and cultures within our school and not only.
The first cultural celebration for this year is the Lunar ( Chinese) New Year on Feb 8th. We are entering the Year of the Red Monkey! Chinese New Year is celebrated in countries and territories with significant Chinese populations, including Mainland China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritius and the Philippines.
Interesting fact
The Chinese New Year holiday, also known as Spring Festival ( not quite spring; they had the coldest winter snap in 30 years!!), shuts down the world’s second-largest economy for a week. While officially starting the weekend of Feb. 6 this year, the rush for travel bookings began when tickets went on sale in late November. More than 2.9 billion passenger trips, including 332 million on the country’s rail networks, are expected to be made over the New Year period.
In Adelaide, the festivities will take place in Chinatown.
At this Friday’s assembly, our students will talk about the significance of this important celebration for so many of our families. We hope you can make it. 
Buongiorno,
In week 7, we learnt a bit of Italian. Most of our students are a third generation Italians, but they are very proud of their heritage. Italy is a such a beautiful country with a mesmerising landscape, amazing history, food, cars and fashion. Rome is one of the cradles of our civilisation.
Nicky-Rose Italiano, R/Yr1 
Chloe Papillo, yr 7
And we have quite a few teachers with an Italian background.
Mr Trimboli
Mrs Imbrogno
Mr DePalma
Mrs Robeiro, Ms Batifuocco, Mrs Pineri, Ms Pettet, Mrs Tropeano, Mrs Ciccarello, Ms Canala
Some of the Reception/ Year 1 classes have been looking at their own family history and what Past, Present and Future means.
We heard some great stories and the students enjoyed talking about what their family means to them.
3/4 MN and 3/4 KC/NP have been working on poetry. But not the ordinary kind! It’s prepositional poetry! The students were provided with a setting e.g. a haunted castle and some images from the book, “Where the Forest Meets the Sea”. They let their imagination run wild by pretending they were actually there!
Each line is essentially a prepositional phrase. Can you spot the metaphors?
Some amazing work Year 3/4! Please read some of their poems below.
THE OLD TEMPLE
Towards the horrible, black tunnel
In the deep, carved walls
On the faded, dusty stones
Against the door of mysteries
Below the old, rusty vines
Beside a small rotting chair
Alongside the lonely, dead tree
Above only the bright blue sky
By Jessica
HISTORY
In the roots of the rotting trees
on the tip of the palace
through the deep, dark scary entrance
between the mossy, stone walls
inside the lost house
near the darkened entrance
above the palace doors
on the webbed, stone walls
By Judd Harrison Edward Jackson
HALLOWEEN
Across the crooked bridge
Through the noisy door
up the wonky, cracked stairs
in the haunted bedroom
inside the dark, unwelcoming wardrobe
through the hidden door
below the giant, crashing rocks
above the never ending floor
towards the ladder of doom
on the wobbly balcony
past the dead graves
near the resurrected zombie
By Riley Stam
Namaste!
This week’s focus language is Nepalese which is spoken in Nepal.
Nepal is a small country landlocked between India and China. It is home to the highest mountains in the world- the Himalayas- and the birthplace of Buddha.
There are 28 million people living in Nepal, 80 different ethnic groups and 123 languages. Amazing!
At Holy family we have four students:
Osi G, 2EQ
Aashna P 6/7 EH
Advar A, R/1 MC
Shivansh P 3/4 DP
Janaki Mankir Temple (above) Buddha statue ( below)
The majestic Himalayas
Happy Diwali to our Hindu families,
The Indian Festival of Lights, is the most widely celebrated festival of the people from the Indian sub-continent and across the whole world. Deepavali means rows of lights, it is the festival symbolising victory of good over evil, light over darkness, and knowledge over ignorance. Though there are many mythological explanations to this wonderful festival, however, in the current world what the festival of lights really stands for is a reaffirmation of hope, a renewed commitment to friend ship, religious tolerance, spreading the word of peace and harmony and above all, celebration of “simple joys of life”.
This week’s language of the week is three languages: Ma’di, Bari and Kuku. They are all spoken in South Sudan and in the northern neighbouring Uganda. We put them together because they are related in the Nilotic family of languages. Kuku is in fact a dialect of Bari.
Happy children 🙂
Girl wearing traditional head gear.
The South Sudanese love to celebrate with dance and music!
Beehive house made of young branches and twine.
South Sudan experiences the largest animal migration in Africa.
Our Holy Family students
Ruth and Nathan Amale (Dennis Amale not shown)
Paul Yata, Steve Mori, George Geri and Patience Mori ( Grace Kwaje not shown)
Arnold Wani