Principal's Weekly Update

Dear Families,

How fitting it is that we held our picture day on World Smile Day! Our students did an excellent job displaying their pearly whites!

We were happy to have an exciting morning announcer. Graham, from Grade 8, who presented the morning announcements in both French and English. Our French teacher Monsieur Raymond helped prepare him. Some of what he announced in French included his introduction, the date, and the weather. Excellent job Graham!

Please note that Coffee with the Principal has been postponed from Tuesday, October 10th to Wednesday, October 11th! Our assistant principal, Mrs. Enrique, and I look forward to having a conversation with you all to foster community and collaboration and to build upon our home-school partnership.

Have a restful long weekend!

October 9th

• No School (Columbus Day/ Indigenous Peoples' Day)

October 10th

• Reschedule Coffee with the Principal- moved to Wednesday, October 11th 8 a.m. in the school cafeteria

October 13th

• Make Up Day for Pictures

October 15th

• Protecting God's Children Training: 12-3 p.m., Parish Hall

October 20th

• Progress Reports Released (K2-8)

• Discovery Day

October 27th

• Costume Parade at 8:15 a.m.
  
• Trunk or Treat from 4-6 p.m. EDP ends at 3:30 (see below for details)
  

October 30th

• Progress Reports Released PreK & K1
  

November 1

• All Saints' Day School Mass at 12:10 p.m. (All (PreK-8 students and families invited)

November 3

• Bring Lunch From Home

We are thrilled for you to help us host another amazing Trunk or Treat event. Be on the lookout for an email from your room parent with more details and information on how to get involved.

For more details on volunteering and FAQs, click on the following link:

https://forms.gle/iyissgMSy1La1uKq8

To celebrate the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi - patron saint of pets - families were invited on Wednesday to bring their pets to school at 8 a.m. for a blessing by Fr. Jonathan. We had a few cats, a multitude of dogs, and even a fish! St. Francis' love for animals reminds us of the dignity that lies in being a creature of so great and loving a God.

Four of our students were altar servers on Monday morning during the Feast of the Guardian Angels Mass. After training with Fr. Bobby and Mr. Antonacci, they assisted the priest and the community with great reverence and prayerfulness. Fr. Bobby's homily emphasized that in the same way that superheroes protect the city and the world, guardian angels are like our personal superheroes. They protect us spiritually and physically. If any other students are interested in altar serving, please let us know!

After a long period of waiting, our St. Mary's outdoor basketball hoop is finally set up! The students have been enjoying healthy competitions at recess. Pictured here is Fr. Bobby practicing his lay-ups and a 5-on-6 game with Mr. Febesh and Mr. Antonacci. Thank you for your generous donations to last year’s Annual Fund. With your support we were able to purchase a basketball hoop for our students!

We are thrilled to see so many of our students taking part in the incredible after-school clubs we offer here. A few clubs captured in the pictures below include Empow Studios' 2D video game design club and Puppet Club. In the video game design club, students are exploring art and architectural design in the context of the Minecraft video game. In Puppet Club, students created squirrels using crayons, cardboard, fur, and glue. It is amazing to see how many of our students look forward to learning in hours beyond the school day!

This week begins our 4-week series on nutrition for our K1-Grade 6 students, led by nutrition specialist Monica Matczak. Ms. Matczak is a nutrition educator in the Center for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment. Students focused on various categories of MyPlate - fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy, etc - to understand what well-rounded healthy eating habits look like.

This week in Art, students finished their spooky Halloween scene paintings! To begin, students first used white and black colors to sketch an outline that included a house atop a mountain, birds, and a withered tree. Then students learned to paint with light colors first for the sky, followed by darker colors for the hill below. These impressive paintings are setting the mood in the school for Halloween coming up soon!

As a reminder, visit our new "Family Resources" tab on the St. Mary's school website. There you will find the FACTS family portal, the Student-Parent Handbook, information on Protecting God's Children, and the Parent Volunteer Hours Log. Please click the link below to familiarize yourself!

https://stmarys-brookline.org/family-resources/

Ms. Crapo's class was introduced to Handwriting without Tears curriculum which focuses on letter shapes of big lines, little lines, big curves, and little curves. They helped wipe the shapes clean, sorted and played with them and they began to talk about using these shapes to build letters!

Also in Ms. Crapo's class this week, Pre-K celebrated the Feast day of our classroom saint, Saint Francis! Students matched letters to write out Saint Francis and learned that St. Francis loved all animals and worked hard to care for all animals he met. Each student was given a special stuffed animal and said a prayer to keep all animals in our lives safe! Then, everyone gave suggestions of animals to make a list of as many animals as we could think of!

In Ms. Curley and Ms. Creamer's K1 classes, students put on their science goggles and began their investigation on a familiar fall-themed object: an apple. Students measured various qualities of the apple including shape, color, size, and buoyancy. They especially enjoyed using the magnifying glass to investigate the detailed colors and the water bin to observe whether it floats or sinks.

World of Words under the Sun! Ms. McAuliffe's class (K2) enjoying a summer-like day outside with 8th Grade Reading Buddies. Our 8th graders enjoyed sharing these fun stories with the K2 class, and the young students were engrossed in both the material and the older mentors!

Grade 1 has been practicing reading and spelling cvc words this week. They played memory match, roll and spell, and did their first write the room as well to practice this. They also learned 6 new trick words and had their first word of the day.

Mrs. Fragola’s Grade 2 students participated in a writing and social-emotional learning lesson to fill a paper potion bottle with positive affirmations. A student explained how to use a positive affirmation: “if you don’t feel brave, you say I am brave over and over and then you will believe that you are brave”.

Grade 3 completed their plant life cycle unit by creating a life cycle wheel. In the past weeks, they germinated seeds, planted the seedlings and nurtured them with water and sunlight. They’ll be bringing their seedlings home to care for them. They are excited to watch them grow into plants.

Father Bobby presented grade 4 students with an introduction to the Beatitudes. They learned that the word “blessed” means happy and that the Beatitudes are a road map to ultimate happiness: Heaven. Students reflected on what makes them happy and the meaning of eternal happiness, and they read the Beatitudes in the Book of Matthew.

In Math, 6th graders split into groups to prepare for their first test by making review posters. The topics were decimal operations, estimation strategies, negative and positive integer operations, and the metric system. Then they presented to the class to solidify their understanding.

In ELA this week, the 7th grade class learned how to identify Simple, Compound, and Run-on Sentences in grammar through engaging with Ms. Allen’s PowerPoint presentation as well as completing grammar practice worksheets. They also reviewed how to recognize complete and simple subjects, complete and simple predicates, and coordinating conjunctions.

Please find the links below to our social media pages. We have been constantly uploading posts and stories so if you are interested in seeing more of our day-to-day happenings, please follow us!

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/st-mary-of-the-assumption-school

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stmaryschoolbrooklinema

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stmaryschoolbrookline/