St Peter’s Cultural Interchange

80 instrumental and vocal students from St Peter’s and Verdon Colleges joined forces for a “Cultural Interchange” day at First Church, Invercargill at the end of Term 2. The students took part in choral and orchestral workshops throughout the day and presented a short, informal concert in the early evening.

Music Festival

The 2007 Music Festival involved about 200 students taking part in House Choirs and individual instrumental and vocal solos. This is a competitive event and the students perform to an adjudicator and an enthusiastic audience from our school community. This has become an increasingly popular inter-house event in the school’s calendar.

Journey of the Cross and Icon

As part of the World Youth Day 2008 celebrations we were privileged to have the World Youth Day Cross and Icon of Mary in our school grounds today. World Youth Day is actually a series of events, culminating in a final mass in Sydney on 20 July 2008. The Journey of the Cross and Icon began its New Zealand trip on 10 June, and will make its way northwards over the course of this month. It will leave our shores for Sydney on 30 June.

The cross was gifted to the youth of the world by Pope John Paul II, and has travelled far and wide – it has been throughout Europe, the United States, Canada, South America and The Philippines, to Poland and Prague, to the German Parliament and even to Ground Zero in New York. The Icon of Mary joined with the cross in its travels in 2003.

After the celebration at Verdon College, the Cross and Icon left for Bluff and Stewart Island.

Bishop’s Shield

The Annual Bishop’s Shield competition was held at Verdon College this year. St Kevin’s was the overall winner this year.

J Rock

Year 7 and 8s from Verdon College entered J Rock (Junior Stage Challenge) which was held at the Civic Theatre on Friday 27 April. Each school had to perform a 5-8 minute performance based on an original theme. We chose Sports Day. This involved many practices directed by Mrs Mason. Our dance scene was choreographed by Emily Lough. Emily was helped by Meg Prendergast and Brianna Parkes at practices.

When the performance day came we had to go to school and get on a bus at 9:20am. We had a fun filled morning with music, dancing and fun sports activities. It was then time to put our costumes on and ‘settle down’ ready for our stage performance.

Before we went on stage we had to get our faces painted in our house colour. Then it was our turn. Everyone was so excited and nervous but we did incredibly well and got 6 awards of excellence for performance skill, stage use, choreography, visual enhancement, soundtrack and concept.

Photos of the performance can be found by clicking the picture above.

Lucy Heenan and Greta Melvin

Annie

Annie was this year's school production, and you can see pictures photos from the performance by clicking on the picture to the right.

Catholic Schools’ Day

Verdon College had a mass today to celebrate Catholic Schools’ Day. Invercargill has had Catholic Education since 1867, when the first school opened in Conon Street. In 1882 Dominican Sisters arrived to support the work, and in 1897 Marist Brothers joined them. Verdon College opened its doors in 1982.

Photos of the mass can be found by clicking on the photo above.