The Power of Gratitude

Gratitude refers to noticing and appreciating the good things that happened. It’s very easy to notice and focus on all the bad things happening, which can add to feelings of sadness and worry. Purposely looking for things that are good and right helps shift our perspective. Each day may not be good, but goodness can be found in each day.

There are lots of ways of practicing gratitude, such as reflecting on what went well or hunting for the good things in the day.

With your children you can help them create Gratitude Scraps. Take a bowl and create scraps of paper. During the day, look for things that you can be grateful for. Add to the bowl. At the end of day/ week, read through and appreciate the positive things that you experienced during the day/week.

We know from our work with the  Resilience Project in the past that practicing gratitude for 21 days actually makes a difference and you will start to see positives before a negative thing.

The Resilience Project taught us the values referred to as GEM. G-Gratitude E-Empathy M-Mindfulness 

Practicing these values daily will make a big difference and help develop resilience in yourself and your children. 

Gratitude Questions you can use:

What was the best thing that happened to me today?

Who am I most grateful for and why?

What am I looking forward to most about tomorrow?

Wear Orange on Friday

SAVE THE DATE

We will be having an WOOF - wear orange on Friday 15th September when students will be able to wear a touch or more of orange for Story Dogs. We will be raising funds for Story Dogs and you can donate via CDFPAY, now open.

We are very excited to have Story Dogs as part of our school Community.  St. Joseph’s has joined Story Dogs as part of a National Story Dogs program that reaches over 390 schools nationally. 

Story dogs involves a reading session of 20 minutes each, for 4, year 2 students, each week with our Volunteer Deb, and her dog Sadie. Susie Alexander is the coordinator for our school program.

Please see the Story Dogs website at www.storydogs.org.au for more information and read about the success of the program. 

Foodshare

Thank you to Warrnambool Foodshare.

Foodshare is now providing a basket of fruit each week for students who do not have any fruit for fruit time or just an extra snack for after they have finished their lunch.