Dear Families,

Thank you to all parents and guardians who attended Back to School Night! It was such a fun evening being all together, and we look forward to building our home/school partnership throughout this school year! Our Parent-Student Handbook was distributed during Back to School Night and at school this week. Please read, sign, and submit the last 5 colored pages of the handbook to the school office by Monday, September 25th.

Thank you to our Grade 8 leaders, Emilia and Julia, for leading the school in Friday morning announcements and prayer. You did a fantastic job!

Please remember that lunch will not be served on Monday due to Brookline Public being closed so please send lunch with your child.

Have a wonderful weekend, and I hope to see many of you at our 5K Race tomorrow morning!

Race day is tomorrow! It is not too late to register to run, walk, volunteer, or come to cheer on the community! Please prepare to find street parking or take public transportation, as the school lot will be unavailable.

- Check-in begins at 8 a.m.

- The race starts at 9:30 a.m.

Sign up below:

https://runsignup.com/Race/MA/Brookline/StMaryoftheAssumptionSchool5K

September 23rd

• St. Mary's 5K Race
  

September 25th

• Yom Kippur- Bring lunch from home

September 26th:

• Touring Tuesday
  

September 25th-29th

• MAP Testing

September 26th

• Touring Tuesday

September 29th

• Deadline for Band Registration
  

October 1st:

• Children's Liturgy of the Word during 11 a.m. Mass

October 2nd

• Feast of the Guardian Angels School Mass at 8 a.m. (K2-8 students only)
  

October 6th

• Picture Day
  

October 9th:

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

October 10th

• Coffee with the Principal
  

Cold and Flu Season: If your child is being treated with antibiotics please get a note from their doctor clearing them for school. Any student started on antibiotics has to be on them for a full 24 hours before they can return to school. Flu shots are now available at pediatric offices and pharmacies.

Please make sure we have an emergency contact on file for your student. This has to be someone other than a parent that your child knows and can be available to pick up your child in the event we are unable to contact you. You can reach out to the main office to update emergency contact information. Please have this information updated by the end of next week.

MAP Testing will begin at St. Mary's this week (K2-8 students only). Please make sure your child is well-rested and nourished the morning of his/her test. Be on the lookout for communication from your child's homeroom teacher for more details.

This morning students in grades K2-8 attended a Band Demo with Paul Effman Music, led by our Band Director Mrs. Jen Hawes. Kindergarten students in Ms. Tiney and Ms. McAuliffe’s classes are invited to play the ukelele! Students in Ms. Reitnour’s Grade 1 class, Ms. Connor’s and Mrs. Fragola’s Grade 2 classes are invited to play the violin! Musicians in grades 3-8 are invited to choose a band instrument such as flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, xylophone, drums in addition to violin. Students learned about the different families of instruments such as wind, percussion and brass. Mrs. Hawes reminded all students they can start and join the band any year, not only in Kindergarten. Families can sign up digitally or also with the paper form by Friday September 29th.

Link To Register for Band and Violin Online: Pemusic.com/join

Our Picture Day is scheduled for Friday, October 6th rain or shine! We ask that students come to school in full uniform. Lookout for order forms in child's backpack!

The school will not be accepting late forms after photo day, Friday, October 6th. However, if you are interested in purchasing photos, you can can order online for one week after picture day. Everyone will receive a free class photo.

Pre-ordering will open one week prior to photo day. Please click the link below to pre-order:

photocharm.org

Click on "pre-order photos"

The password: STMARYS24

Ms. Bayazid began her high school placement sessions with our Grade 8 students this week! Students were asked to think of what they would like in a future high school and were taught how to log into their Revanna accounts.

Great job to our 8th-grade students for leading us in Parking Lot Prayers on the virtue of temperance. They have prepared a skit on temperance and they will be performing for the school during this Monday's Parking Lot Prayers.

4th and 5th grade had their first combined Social-Emotional Lesson on inclusivity with Mrs. Bayazid. The students loved how interactive the lesson was and followed along throughout.

3rd Grade students started their Friday with a Social-Emotional Lesson with Mrs. Bayazid. They loved that they could choose their own adventures and discuss their answers thoughtfully.

With our next student Mass coming up quickly on October 2nd, some of our students are being trained as altar servers. Fr. Bobby is helping them understand how to be reverent and prayerful while serving God and their fellow students!

Ms. Crapo's students has had an awesome week engaging in Small Group Stations, practicing daily routines, and learning all about using the fun supplies and materials in our classroom! Students are doing a great job sitting through Morning Meeting, greeting our friends and saying Morning Prayer. They are working on walking in a nice line as we go to Specials and the playground. They are looking forward to starting an All About Me theme next week where they will learn more about all their friends!

Nurse Catherine and her nursing student, Ms. Ashley, spoke to K1 class about proper hand washing. Student sequenced the steps to wash their hand properly and were taught that germs are invisible!

Señora Annie does an excellent job teaching her students Spanish through music! Today, she used her guitar, recorder, and drums to teach her students salutations in Spanish!

Grade 1 began their weather unit this week. They brainstormed weather vocabulary and drew pictures to help them remember what these words mean throughout the unit.

This week, second graders learned the importance of following laws as well as the justifications for creating them. The question posed to them was to create their own law. Why is it important? What is their justification? An example included implementing a lower speed limit so traffic accidents would be limited. Students drew their laws and shared them with their classmates.

Students in Ms. Connors' class wrote letters to their parents for when they attended Back to School Night.They shared things that they were proud of as well as what they looking forward to in the second grade!

Students in Ms. Kousidis' 3rd grade class have been learning about the life cycles of plants and animals. In science this week students were introduced to the sun's place in our world. They completed a craftivity to explore energy and the sun! Scientists continued to make observations of their seeds they planted last week. Students looked closely at their seeds, then drew and wrote about their discoveries in their science journals! Great work, scientists!

Grade 4 participated in a math forum, which is a time to discuss reasoning and how to get to a solution together as a whole class. One of the word problems they solved goes as follows “At Camp Mosquito”, there are 24 campers and 6 tents. If each tent has the same number of campers, how many campers are in each tent?” Students demonstrated finding the solution to this problem by using number array tiles, area models, ratio tables, and skip counting using a number line.

The 5th grade classroom patron saint is St. Joseph of Cupertino and this Monday was his feast day! St. Joseph of Cupertino was a man from Italy of heroic faith who performed amazing miracles. He inspires our 5th grade students, and they celebrated by enjoying a special 5th grade Mass and Italian snacks. Fr. Bobby celebrated Mass with them and Fr. Jonathan led them in a discussion on St. Cupertino and classroom festivities!

Ms. Allen’s Gr. 6 Religion class visited the church for a lesson on prayer. The students were reverent and respectful when Ms. Allen and Fr. Jonathan discussed the four types of prayer. They learned the acronym PACT to remember them: Petition, Adoration, Contrition and Thanksgiving. Fr. Jonathan guided them to write their own heartfelt prayer incorporating those 4 types of prayer as a conversation with God. They also had the chance to learn the Angel of God prayer from Fr. Jonathan. He encouraged them to recite this prayer to remember that God gave them their very own Guardian Angel to protect them.

In Mr. Antonacci’s math class, the students went on a “scavenger hunt “ outside as they were introduced to the metric system. The students collaborated as they identified different objects to estimate the corresponding metric measurements for length and mass. They learned an acrostic phrase to remember the prefixes for grams and meters.

This week, students in Mr. Febesh's science class created ecosystem models that included a desert, rainforest, forest and ocean. There models had to include the different spheres of an ecosystem, geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere.

Mr. Suriawinata led his 8th grade students today on a discussion about the law of conservation of energy. After playing a review game about concepts related to the different forms of energy, students practiced their understanding of the equations related to kinetic and potential energy, combining algebra with science.

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/