With students returning to their classrooms, St Joseph's Primary School is getting ready to welcome a new group of kindy kids through their doors.
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This year the school has welcomed 20 new kindergarten students into the school's community of 149 kids, principal Lisa McNeilly said.
"We've got about 149 children this year with a nice kindergarten class of 20, which is a nice size for our school," she said.
"The children will be involved in a program called 'Successful Foundations' for the first six to eight weeks where they explore through play and the teachers get a good handle on the best way they learn.
"The last couple of years we've had kindergarten classes of around 20, 24, so we're pretty pleased.
"We've got eight new students starting in other year groups that have come in from other places."
St Joseph's kinders have had a new home set up for them in the school's parish hall while their new classrooms are being constructed.
The hall is set to be the children's new hub for learning for the first term of the school year.
This marks the first time that the building has been used as a classroom since it was repurposed as a parish hall in the mid 90s.
The start of the year has also brought a series of new programs for St Joseph's, including a new swimming program at Dungog Swimming Pool.
As well as this, Ms McNeilly hopes to use Dungog's new library facilities by planning excursions there.
Another series of programs aims to bring Indigenous culture to the forefront of the school.
"We're going to be doing more work with our culture groups. Uncle Leon comes and visits once a term and he's going to do some dances with the boys," she said.
"We're going to be hopefully setting up the junior Aboriginal Education Consultative Group."
St Joseph's Aboriginal education and pastoral care officer Karen Tucker said that this is just one way that the school is engaging with Australian culture and heritage.
"We plan on going into Frank Robinson Reserve and having a day there.
"We got monoculars last year so I'll be taking them down there with the students and they'll be learning to use them," she said.
Another big goal of St Joseph's for the new year is connecting with local businesses in a more significant way.
Ms McNeilly said that she hopes to work with local businesses to showcase students' projects.
"We're looking at moving up into town and perhaps doing things in the main street.
"We really enjoyed, at the end of last year, going up to the Visitor Information Centre and singing Christmas Carols," she said.
