Principal's January, 2008 Letter
January 7, 2008
Dear Parents/Guardians:
Happy New Year!!!!
Come celebrate with us as we launch the start of our 50th Anniversary year celebration. Our anniversary year will commence with our Catholic Schools Week liturgy on Sunday, January 27th at 9:00 am and conclude with our 50th Anniversary gala on Friday, September 26th at the Sheraton Tara Hotel. We are very excited and hope you are too!
Our first Annual Fund is off and running. As of Friday, January 4th , we have received $19,262 towards our goal of $25,000. Thank you to all who have been so generous. A more detailed breakdown is included in this week's memo.
St. Bridget School Lights the Way is the theme for the 2008 Catholic Schools Week, January 27 - February 2. Our schedule for that week is as follows:
| Sunday, January 27 9:00 am | Liturgy to kickoff St. Bridget School's 50th Anniversary Celebration -- Upper Church. All families are invited. Students and staff will be active participants in the liturgy. |
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| Tuesday, January 29 | Open House for prospective parents 9:00 - 10:00 am. Tell all your friends and neighbors and help spread the good news about our school. |
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| Wednesday, January 30 | Open House Current Parents 8:30 - 9:45 am. Please come to see your child interact with their teacher. |
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| Thursday, January 31 | Snow Date - prospective parents |
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| Friday, February 1 | Snow Date - Current parents |
Sharing Good News:
- On Sunday, December 23rd, our school custodian Alfredo Nieves, was ordained by Cardinal Sean O'Malley in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, as a permanent deacon of the Catholic Church. I have asked the children to call him Deacon Fred. We are honored and very proud to have Deacon Fred with us at St. Bridget School!
- St. Bridget School has received a donation of a new sound amplification system. This new technology, using light, was donated by the Hard of Hearing Advocates of Framingham in memory of a parishioner. It will be used by Mrs. Karasch in her middle school math classroom. This sound system helps students focus better on classroom discussions and directions. Thank you to the Hanna family!
- The students in Grades 5-8 collected over $1300. for their adopted outreach families. Gifts, purchased by room mothers, were wrapped, tagged, and brought to the rectory for distribution. K1 and Kindergarten collected many, many stocking stuffers, grade one collected boxes of coloring books and crayons, while grades 3-4-5 together assembled 40 personal care bags for those less fortunate. We are teaching our children to live their Christian faith.
DID YOU KNOW:
- 1B received their first pen pal letters from a first grade in upstate New York and has begun brainstorming ideas to write back to them.
- The first Arts and Craft club meeting for 1st and 2nd grade was very exciting! The boys and girls had fun making gingerbread houses out of graham crackers and lots of candy. The next meetings will be January 11 and 25. The students will be making winter crafts.
- The 8th graders are beginning a newspaper unit and will be writing a newspaper as a culminating activity. They will also begin a unit on the Civil War. Any Civil War enthusiasts that can help with the unit?
- Grade 6 began a study of Ancient Greece and will end with a Grecian Feast.
- Each Thursday afternoon the K1 class enjoys special time with their Reading Buddies from Mrs. Woodworth's fourth grade class. The fourth graders helped the K1 children cut, color, and paste together Nativity scenes to take home. It was a great experience for both classes.
- Congratulations to Corrine M from Grade 6! She chose to enter a writing contest at the suggestion of Mrs. Trombino and her essay was selected to be published. The hardbound anthology Celebrating What Is Important To Me included Corrine's essay "Animal Abuse: Just Plain Wrong".
- The students in Grades 5-6-7-8 will be participating in a contest to design a logo for our 50th anniversary year. This art project will be coordinated by Ms. Tomkins.
- Next Saturday, January 12th, our second graders will receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation in St. Bridget's Church. Next they will prepare for First Eucharist on May 3rd.
- The 4th and 5th grade Christmas Cantata, postponed from a December snowstorm was held last Wednesday evening. It was well worth the wait!
- Fifth graders have started reading their next novel, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh.
- Mrs. Woodworth's fourth grade Social Studies classes are sending out postcards next week focusing on Framingham as part of a post card exchange program. They have received postcards from Nebraska, Ohio, Illinois, Connecticut, Kansas, and Washington.
- In Kindergarten, students are finishing their unit on the five senses, learning about the Braille Alphabet and The American Sign Language Alphabet. They will be learning about penguins with many activities including making a book about penguins, singing penguin songs, and making paper bag penguins. The students will honor Martin Luther King, Jr. during January and continue to work on counting, number writing, and estimation in Math. In reading they will continue to work in their journals, to learn about sentence structure and high frequency words. In Religion, they will learn about God's gifts of friends and neighbors.
- Grade 7 science students will be traveling to Boston on January 25th for a two hour lab on Reptiles and Amphibians at the Harvard Natural Science Museum. After the lab they will tour the huge variety of specimen in the museum to see how classification of plants and animals is organized. Last year's study of Rocks and Minerals will be reinforced in the many showcases of precious and semi-precious minerals and stones on display. Mrs. Zschuschen and the students are all looking forward to this worthwhile field trip.
- Mrs. Aijala and Mrs. Bruce's third graders are piggybacking on a book entitled Tuesday by David Wiesner that is made up only of illustrations. Each child will write his/her own version of the story. Our authors will be using strong verbs and sparkling adjectives to make their reader's feel like they were there the night the frogs flew.
- Mrs. Withee's music classes will be concentrating on composers: Grade 2 - Beethoven, Grade 3 - Mozart and the Magic Flute, Grades 4&5 - Handel and Grades 6&7 - Strauss.
- Spanish classes: 8th grade is completing Chapter 7 and will next begin a unit on the home and chores. Students will be designing their "Casa de Sueños" or "Dream House". They will be able to choose either a PowerPoint presentation, draw a blue print, create their homes out of a material (such as Lego, cardboard, shoe boxes, doll houses etc...)or film their own homes and describe them in Spanish.
The 7th grade is now learning how to create simple sentences with verbs, nouns, and articles. They will be playing some fun games such as the Dice Verb Game, Battleship, and a variety of games on the computer. - In Grade 7 students have just finished with Lesson 3 in our Keeping Children Safe Program. Next they will be discussing how to protect themselves from Sexual Harassment.
- Grade 6 Religion class is learning about Moses and the Ten Commandments. Through the use of skits students acted out one of the Commandments for their classmates.
CIA's for December:
| 1B | Dominic K | 5L | Erinn H |
| 1B | Conor H | 6 | Cameron M |
| 2A | Gus D | 7 | Amanda K |
This month the teachers will begin our safety programs, Talk About Touching (K1-3) and Keeping Children Safe (4-8). Each teacher will send home a letter describing the upcoming lesson. Grades 6 and 7 began their Keeping Children Safe program in the fall. During the week of January 14th - 18th Grade 7 will take part in our new chastity program See I Make All Things New. This program will be taught each day by members of the Archdiocesan Respect For Life Office. They will be here again in February to teach the program to Grade 8.
Our days are full and busy. Students are happy, rested, and ready to take on new challenges - albeit learning how to read, writing a story, term paper, or using a Power Point demonstration. St. Bridget School is a special place for children and families. One parent called it "an oasis". I encourage you to spread the good word about our school and its programs. We use many marketing techniques but we find the best is your word to a friend, neighbor or relative.
St. Bridget School is about to celebrate 50 years of educating children in Framingham and the greater Metro West community. With your assistance, long range planning by the School Advisory Board, and prayers, we plan to be present for another 50 years.
May God Bless you and your family in this New Year,
Mrs. Roseanne Mungovan
Principal
Previous weeks Weekly Memos may be found in
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