Principal's Weekly Update

Dear Families,

If you were tasked to build a house using only toothpicks and candy corn, how would you begin sketching the blueprint? This challenging and fun task was given to our 2nd and 3rd graders this past Tuesday. In this week's newsletter, you will not only see the blueprints that our 2nd and 3rd graders drafted, but also 8th grade's phase changing experiment!

As 6th grade student, Livia, announced this morning in our Morning Announcements (pictured above), please keep our middle schoolers, faculty, and chaperones in your prayers as they prepare to go on their field trip to Maine from Monday-Wednesday next week. We will miss our older students!

See you all next week for a 4-day school week. Have a restful weekend!

November 6-8

• Middle School field trip to Nature's Classroom in Maine

November 9th

• Online Information Session
• Grades 2 and 3 community walk field trip

November 10th

• No School: Veteran's Day

November 16th

• No EDP
  

November 17th

• Trimester 1 grades close (K2-8)

November 22nd

• Thanksgiving Liturgy of the Word: 10:15 a.m. in the church for PreK-8
• Early Dismissal: 11 a.m.
• No EDP

November 23rd

• Happy Thanksgiving! No school

November 24th

• No school (Thanksgiving break)

November 27th

• Return to school from Thanksgiving break

December 5th

• Christmas Tree Lighting 4-5:30 (EDP ends at 4)
  

December 12th

• Christmas Pageant 9 a.m.-10:30 a.m.
  

Please remember that there is no parking in our parking lot between 7:30-8 a.m. and from 2-2:30 p.m. Students arrive via car drop-off only or walk to school in the mornings. In the afternoon our Early Childhood Program students are dismissed at 2:15. Many families walk to pick up children and cars mustn't enter or exit quickly during these high foot traffic times. If you are a parent volunteer or visitor to a classroom during school hours between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m., you are welcome to park in the Parking Lot. Thank you to all parents and guests for adhering to this critical safety policy!

"All of us are called to be saints." This quote from Fr. Jonathan's homily on Wednesday not only summarizes the important message he spoke about with our students at Mass, but it also captures our goal for each student at St. Mary's school. Becoming a saint happens by accepting God's invitation for each of us to become who we are meant to be. This means that we are striving for greatness daily in our lives and saying yes to God in both little moments and great moments. Then, our family, community, and school will become fully alive!

Hats off to the members of our first-ever St. Mary's choir, led by Mr. Lynch, our music teacher. Their angelic voices reverberated through the church, helping to make the liturgy wonderfully beautiful. In addition, Mr. Lynch has spent the last few months preparing all students during music class to sing the Litany of Saints. It is an understatement to say that the faculty, staff, and parents present were amazed to hear such unison throughout the voices.

We had a guest priest, Father Thomas Moses (father of Anna Maria in K1) concelebrate the Mass. Father Thomas comes from the Annunciation Cathedral which is a Melkite parish (Byzantine Rite of the Catholic Church). Finally, thank you to Fr. Jonathan, Fr. Bobby, and Fr. Thomas for celebrating the mass, and thank you to the altar servers and lectors for serving God and the community.

On Wednesday, November 22nd, PreK-8 will be attending Liturgy of the Word at 10:15am. Join us in reflecting on all that we are grateful for and for all the blessings that God has given us!

St. Mary’s School is proud to announce its pre-order sales of spirit apparel! We have long-sleeved tee shirts in both youth ($20) and adult ($25) sizes and long-sleeved hooded sweatshirts with pockets in youth ($30) and adult ($35) sizes. These items are not school uniforms from Lands End. They are school spirit apparel for families and friends of St. Mary’s to proudly show off their school pride! To pre-order, please email Patricia Salic, our Director of Advancement at psalic@stmarys-brookline.org

Any parents with musical talent?! We would love to have you be a part of this year's Christmas Pageant! If you are interested and would like more info please contact Dr. Nadjarian and Music Teacher, Ryan Lynch, by Friday, November 10. This will allow us to arrange for a rehearsal or two before December!

In the spirit of generosity and concern for others, St. Mary of the Assumption School will sponsor its Annual Thanksgiving Food Drive in collaboration with the Parish on Monday (11/13) to Friday (11/17). We will be collecting donations of all food items to create gift bags so all members of the parish community will be able to enjoy the blessing of a Happy Thanksgiving celebration. Labeled tables will be in the Cafeteria for parents and families to drop off items. Each Classroom in PreK-8 will have a food assignment.

Donation requests by grade are as follows:

PreK……Broth (Chicken, Veggie) or Canned Soups

K1..……..Canned goods (Green Beans, Gravy, Corn)

K2….…...Cooking Oil (Canola or Vegetable)

Gr 1..……Cans/Jars of Cranberry Sauce

Gr 2..……Powdered Milk

Gr 3..……Coffee, Tea, Apple Juice

Gr 4..……Bags of Sweet Potatoes

Gr 5..……Canned goods (Green Beans, Gravy, Corn)

Gr 6..……Cake/Cookie Mixes

Gr 7……..Apple Sauce, French Fried Onions

Gr 8……..Corn Bread Mixes

On Tuesday, Ms. P’s class had a wonderful Halloween celebration! They played multiple holiday-themed education games, including witches brew and coloring the candy corn. Even on a day like Halloween when the sugar can make them hyper, the students were still improving their fine motor skills during these learning experiences.

This week, PreK and 5th grade buddies learned about saints in honor of All Saints Day. The 5th grade class taught Ms. Porcello's PreK class about what a saint is and how one becomes a saint. Then they all played Saint Bingo, which included saints that the PreK students had often heard before. Every time a saint was called, 5th graders were asked to share what they knew about the saint. Students all learned something new about saints!

Students in Ms. McAuliffe’s K2 class used their senses to investigate a special backpack in Ms. Whitten’s Drama class. Since they didn’t know who owned the backpack, they put on their imaginary science goggles to find clues about the owner of the backpack. Scientists described the backpack as bumpy, hard, and mysterious. Students took turns holding artifacts from the backpack such as a hat, flashlight, hiking boots, and a phone charger. Ms. Whitten wrote down students’ predictions about the owner on the Interactive Board. Students offered suggestions along with evidence and reasoning to support their thoughts. Ms. Whitten explained that the owner is someone brave! They practiced bravery and fear by acting out emotions as statues! She revealed that the backpack belonged to “The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything” by Linda Williams. Students looked at the digital book cover and used Visual Thinking Strategies to share their observations with a partner. Ms. Whitten used this book to introduce the new unit: Reader’s Theatre. What a special day in Drama Class!

Ms. Tiney’s K2 students are continuing to explore their five senses. In this lesson, they focused on their sense of smell. Taking turns to sniff five mystery scents, the students shared their predictions for each scent. They were excited as each scent was revealed and they found out if their predictions were correct.

If you ask our 2nd and 3rd graders, a highlight of the week was their combined Halloween celebration on Tuesday! With the help of parent volunteers, students were split into groups with the task of building the largest house made out of toothpicks and candy corn possible. The first step in the process was to construct a blueprint of their design for the foundation and decorations of the house. See the pictures attached for some extravagant designs! Later on in the day, they put their plan into action by constructing the house using the toothpicks and candy corn. Some houses stood strong, while others learned from their mistakes for next time! Yet, the members of both types of groups got to enjoy the community and celebration that made the day so special.

On Halloween, 4th grade students participated in a series of math challenges. They were tasked to solve word problems and practice fluency with multiplication facts in order to discover a mystery picture. This mystery picture then revealed a secret message. The real challenge was to solve logic puzzles to find the values of the mystery symbols. Students loved working together to complete the challenges!

During this 15-minute block of their day, our 5th graders are in "Number Corner," where they work on reasoning through various math concepts. On Thursday, they worked on adding and subtracting fractions by finding the least common denominator. Mrs. Palmer has been teaching them to not view fractions as boring numbers, but rather to picture them as time on a clock (e.g. 7/12 can be viewed as 7:00 on a clock) and to think in terms of money (e.g. 1/4 + 1/2 can be viewed as 25 cents + 50 cents = 75 cents, which is 3/4). These 5th graders are beginning to master fractions, and it will provide them with a strong foundation for 6th grade math next year and beyond.

Mrs. Bayazid and Dr. Nadjarian enjoyed playing Totem during lunch, a game that allows us to see the positive in others in creative ways!

In 6th grade religion, Fr. Bobby spoke about “Allhallowtide,” a term for the three consequential days of October 31 (Halloween), November 1 (All Saints Day), and November 2 (All Souls Day). The class learned that this festive time of the year goes beyond spooky skeletons and pumpkins. Rather, this time is a reminder that we are called to greatness - we are called to become saints so we can be with God forever in heaven. Further, these days remind us of our obligation to pray for our family members and friends who have passed away.

Our scientists in 8th grade turned their textbook knowledge to real-life experimentation this week. After learning about phase changes on a molecular level, the students utilized the scientific method to measure the change in temperature of a piece of ice as it was heated over a burner. They collected temperature data every 15 seconds on Excel. They will be analyzing the data soon.

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/