Principal's Weekly Update

Dear Families,

Today's morning announcements were delivered in French, Spanish, and English by Brandon in Grade 7. He did an excellent job leading the school in 3 languages!

Today was the first day of Band classes. Students were introduced to their instruments and will be soon filling the halls with glorious melodies!

Have a restful weekend and see you on Monday for Parking Lot Prayers! Our Virtue of the Month is Patience.

October 15th

• Children's Liturgy of the Word: 11 a.m. Mass
• Protecting God's Children Training: 12-3 p.m., Parish Hall

October 18th

• First Choir Rehearsal at 2:30 (Grade 3-8 only)

October 20th

• Progress Reports Released (K2-8)

• Discovery Day

October 22nd

• Cross Country Mayor's Cup at 9:30

October 27th

• Costume Parade at 8:15 a.m.
  
• Trunk or Treat from 4-6 p.m. EDP ends at 4 p.m. dismissal from Harvard Street doors.
  

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 9

• Online Information Session

November 10

• No School: Veteran's Day

The weather is expected to turn more seasonable next week. As a result, shorts are no longer allowed at school until April Vacation. Children go out to recess every day, weather permitting. Warm clothing is a must for them to remain comfortable outside. Hats, gloves, jackets, and sweaters should have your child's name on them so if they get lost we can return them to you.

If your child is home sick, please let me know so I have a record of their absence.

I am still missing Epi-pens and inhalers for a few students. Please make sure I have these medications as soon as possible.

Enjoy your weekend!

Today our Grade 6 students gathered together with hundreds of other students attending local Catholic schools for the Annual Children's Eucharistic Holy Hour and Rosary. Students and faculty joined together in worship at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross to "embrace the whole world in prayer" by praying intentionally for the different regions of the world. What an opportunity it was to live out what the students have been learning in religion class!

In PreK, our young students are building upon their unit about family. With Ms. Crapo, students use their artistic skills to glue family members onto a poster and color in features such as eyes and clothes. They were excited to share all bout the different members of their family with the class!

This week in Ms. Schneiders' class, we were visited again by our friend, Chef Tony, who needed our help filling his pizza orders. Sometimes Tony would confuse toppings and they would have to start again! The children enjoyed counting and comparing the number of pepperoni slices on their pizzas with their friends. They learned vocabulary words such as greater than, less than, and equal to.

Ms. Curley's class had an artistic week! Students made an emoji feelings mask, learned how to paint a purple night sky by mixing red and blue paint, and made fall trees with colored paper and crayons! They also journaled about the most magical place each student would want to live. Some chose Jurassic World, while others preferred Unicorn Land!

In Ms. Creamer's class, one of the favorite activities involved students practicing their artistic and musical skills by painting to music.

K2 has been practicing rhyming! They are working on hearing, repeating, and producing rhymes. This week they had fun making spook-tacular rhyming spiders!

Students in 1st grade are learning all about different types of precipitation, including rain, sleet, hail, and snow. They also learned how precipitation is measured. The class worked together on a precipitation craft, designing the different types of precipitation. This activity was especially exciting because students earned the opportunity to use their glue bottles for the first time this year. Great work meteorologists!

In Ms. Fragola's class, students are working on their descriptive writing skills. They are articulating the details of their Halloween ghost and then drawing the pictures to decorate their classroom. Take a look at the artwork below to find ghosts of various personalities.

Students in Ms. Connors’ classroom were introduced to badminton in Mr. Holmes’ Physical Education class this week. Students practiced in pairs and small groups volleying the birdie, serving underhand, and keeping the birdie airborne. Not only are they working on their hand-eye coordination, but they will also be the all-star of your next family vacation badminton tournament.

Students in Ms. K’s class are studying the weather in science class with a special focus on the four seasons: winter, spring, summer, and fall. They also practiced interpreting the weather forecast for the week. Our young meteorologists pointed out the daily low and high temperatures, noticed which days were sunny or rainy, and identified trends in the temperature over the day. They concluded the lesson by journaling about their favorite season. The most popular seasons turned out to be fall and winter, so you can expect them to enjoy the weather for the next few months!

Grade 4 continues to master their measuring skills using the metric system and a ruler. As a class, they guesstimated the width of different items in centimeters. They then worked in pairs to use a ruler and meter stick to measure different items like their desk and a cubit: the length from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger.

Scientists in Grade 5 tested the densities of liquids and solids in Mrs. Palmer’s Science class by observing their buoyancy: negative, positive and neutral. Students have been learning about matter in many ways like what are properties of matter and different ways you can measure matter. In Thursday’s experiment, students observed liquid water, solid ice, liquid corn syrup, liquid oil, solid cork and solid grape floating together in a clear container. Excellent discoveries, Grade 5 students!

In religion class, students are discussing the important role that silence and listening play in our relationship with our friends, family, and God. When in conversation with our friends and family, we know that we can only truly listen to the person in front of us if we pause from our own speaking and thoughts. Similarly, we can only hear the voice of God if we take a moment each day (even if it’s only 5 minutes) to listen to God’s voice in the silence of our hearts and in the Scriptures.

In math, Mr. Antonacci's class reviewed the mathematical order of operations using PEMDAS (Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and Subtraction), especially focusing on exponents. Then they worked on mastering exponents with an online game called Blooket. Students had the option of working independently or as a pair. Mrs. Enrique even joined in! The class averaged 90% accuracy! Lastly, students worked on more challenging equations in anticipation of their homework.

In Mr. Suri’s science class, students demonstrated their understanding of the taxonomy and characteristics of various animals by presenting to the class an animal of their choice. Students described the animals' physical characteristics, habitat, diet and nutrition, reproduction and development, cellular organization, and convergent and divergent evolution. Some students shared about common animals, such as giraffes and house cats, while others shared about more unique animals like red pandas. Did you know that a red panda is not part of the panda family despite its name? It is actually more closely related to a raccoon. Well done, scientists!

On Tuesday, Mr. Febesh’s 8th Grade class worked on poster presentations illustrating the tax policies imposed on the American colonies by the British that led to the Revolutionary War. In small groups, students made their own creative interpretations of the Intolerable Acts in the style of political cartoons of the era. These presentations will serve as a useful primer to the Revolutionary War unit and provide students with essential context for the conflict.

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/