Principal's Weekly Newsletter

Trunk or Treat on Friday was a blast! We had a wonderful turnout, and the car decorations were so impressive! From skeletons, to dinosaurs, to farms, Wonka's chocolate factory, Starbucks, and more, the trunks were creative, detailed, and spooky! We are so grateful to all of the parent volunteers who helped make this event possible during the night of the event as well as to our wonderful committee members, Christy, Mary, and Greta. There was some tough competition in the costume contest this year! Congratulations to the winners of the costume contest: Emilia, Milo, Connor, Parker, Nicole and Alex, and the 8th grade class! Check out some of the great costumes below. We look forward to continuing the celebration with a Halloween colors dress down day on Friday. Happy Halloween!

Because All Saints Day falls on Saturday this year, we wanted to let you know that there are still wonderful opportunities to celebrate!

Deacon Tommy and his wife, Nancy, along with the Egan, Bowman, and Say families (who are all St. Mary’s School parents) are hosting an All Saints Day Party at St. Mary’s Parish on Saturday, November 1st after the 4:00 p.m. Mass, from 5:00–7:00 p.m. If you’d like to join, please register using the link below.

On Monday, students are invited to dress up as their favorite Saint. Please note that students may either come dressed as a Saint or wear their full school uniform.

Congratulations to our middle school Cross Country team on their first meet last weekend! They did a wonderful job putting all of their training to the test in the race. We look forward to cheering the team on at future meets this season!

Our infant students are learning all about fall! They read a variety of books, including a book about apples, one of our staple fall foods! Then, they painted their own apples to take home.

The Toddler classroom enjoyed music class with Ms. Pereyra this week! Students love hearing her play and sing and singing along with her. After class, students were able to try playing instruments of their own throughout the day.

This week, PreK classes learned all about apples! In Ms. Houlder’s class, students participated in an apple investigation where they were able to look at the inside of an apple with a magnifying glass and see all the seeds. They all took turns looking inside the apple and counting the seeds. They also identified and named each part of the apple: the skin, core, stem, seeds and flesh. They then measured how tall the apple was using cubes. They made some predictions before starting the measurements and saw who was the closest with their guess.

In Mrs. Porcello's class, students read the story Apples and reviewed the life cycle of an apple. They also learned the parts of an apple and cut one open to look at the seeds. At small group time, they had an apple taste test! Students sampled red, yellow, and green apples. They discussed if they liked the taste of the apples, thought they tasted just okay, or thought they tasted icky. They then used a taste test chart to record the data.

Students in grade 3 and K1 gathered together for their first buddy meeting of the year. The two classes went on a nature walk to collect leaves. They then brought their leaves inside to create leaf prints all together.

After enjoying the story, Pete the Cat: Five Little Pumpkins, our kindergarten engineers engaged in a STEM challenge! Students were challenged to design and build a gate using popsicle sticks and clothespins that could support five candy corn pumpkins. This hands-on activity prompted creativity, problem-solving, and fine motor skill development. Great job, engineers!

The first grade students practiced using the scientific method this week! They conducted an experiment using candy corn and their five senses to note the differences between whole and crushed candy corn. Before the experiment they made hypotheses and then determined if they were right or wrong by analyzing the data they collected.

Last week in second grade, Mrs. Sterge's class practiced measuring in math class! using beans, they lined them up and took different measurements of the beans using unifex cubes. They practiced different strategies to take measurements as part of the process. Then, they added the different length of beans together using number lines. Great job, second grade mathematicians!

In Ms. Pereyra's drama class, 5th grade has begun a Halloween themed unit of readers theatre! Students will be looking through a duo scene of Bobby and Betty Bat and their love for candy on Halloween. Students will work together to understand character objective and how to read through a scene smoothly.

Students in the 5th grade are working with partners to show what they know about matter. Each group was given a topic that has been taught to the class and they need to create a poster teaching others about the topic. Students have to come up with specific examples and create an image to represent the examples.

As part of their ongoing survey of the kingdoms of living things, 7th grade scientists spent a few days this week exploring mushrooms, representatives of the fungi kingdom. They first observed, sketched, and labeled four types of edible mushrooms before dissecting them and setting them up to produce spore prints. On day two of their exploration, they observed the spore prints, made wet mount slides of the spores, and viewed their slides under the microscope.

Please find the links below to our social media pages. We are 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/