Excursion to St Joseph’s Church on Wednesday 29th May 2024

The Year 2 unit of work in Religious Education is all about ‘Participation’ this term so we hopped on the bus and went down to our church. We really enjoy traveling on the bus and chatting with our friends from other classes. We attended the weekday mass with parishioners and participated through songs and responses and listened well to Fr John. Everdeen and Alice had a special job of taking the bread and wine up in the Offertory Procession. 

After Mass we went on a discovery tour to learn all about our church building and grounds. We were able to explore inside the church, around the grounds and heard about the Soup Kitchen. In the Church Fr John showed us around the Sanctuary and we were able to examine the Altar and the Reredos. Fr. John opened the reredos and we recognised the pictures from stories we know about Jesus. 

We had a closer look at the baptismal font, paschal candle and the holy oils that we have been learning are used for the sacraments. We were interested to look at the stained glass windows and to see the Stations of the Cross. Fr John showed us in the sacristy and it was interesting to see the different coloured vestments. We have been learning about the seasons in the Church year and knew the vestments matched our prayer cloths in the classroom. 

Mrs Hyland took us up the steep and windy stairs to the choir loft where we were amazed to see the size of the pipe organ. We loved having a go of the organ. We couldn’t believe that it was 132 years old and had 2012 pipes! 

In the gathering space we heard from Mary Lancaster about outreach in our parish supporting people in the community. This area is a nice place for people to gather and chat. We found out about the soup kitchen and how there is a need in Warrnambool to provide a hot meal and company. It was fun walking around the grounds with Pat. We saw the workshops where they fix things. 

We know where Fr John’s house is now and we even went into the offices and saw things like the safe and archives room where they showed us some old photos. 

We learnt a lot on our excursion.

Mrs Gabe Ewing, Year 2 Learning Leader