It is hard to believe that we are in our last full month of school already. As we draw near on the last days of school I want to thank each and everyone of our community for the awesome school year. A big thank you goes to Father Seuss for leading our school in a positive direction. Your presence in our school is amazing and your dedication to Catholic education is your uttermost priority. I also cannot thank all the teachers and staff who make a difference each day. Everyone from cooks, cleaning, and aides all help to prepare our students for the future. Next, I want to thank all the students and families who have made St. Mary School a choice for their family. We have a very special community here and I am glad that you have chosen this community as your home. Lastly, I want to thank all the benefactors of St. Mary School. They provide their talents, time, and treasures to us to ensure this community can maintain doing what we do! I am grateful to be part of this amazing community! Happy Spring and enjoy all the blessings from God.
Everyday when I arrive at St. Mary School, I always try to think bigger and expand my knowledge. We dream big at St. Mary School, with a lot of our dreams coming true because of the many people working hard to support our mission.
1- One of those dreams that came true was our recent lettering project around school. We were able label all the classrooms for security purposes along with displaying the beatitudes in the eight hallway classroom windows to increase faith awareness. 2- Another dream was to develop a viable 3K program for our school and grow enrollment. Well, next year our 3K program is almost at capacity with limited options still available. We also we have 17 students in 4K and a estimated 13 in 5K. Our enrollment for the last three years went from 81 students to an estimated 100 students next year. Our community is putting forward the effort and thanks to you for all sharing the fantastic things happening around our school. In addition, we have received additional new families in in 5K and 1st grade. 3-Another big dream has been School Choice. We are trying to find better ways to serve the families who may not be able to afford our school. School Choice is great way to help them and us. Please remember the deadline is April 20th for sign up. I want to thank everyone for dreaming big, but also thank you for making these dreams a reality. We continue to grow because we share as a community. I want to thank each and everyone for their time, talents, and treasures they provide to St. Mary School. Lets continue to dream big! I selected celebration as my title for my blog this week because of two special events that are happening at St. Mary School. Our first celebration is our new display board in the main hallway to highlight students, families, events, birthdays, etc that are happening in and around our community. We removed the previous birthday board and mounted the new flat screen tv and computer in that spot. We have created a Google slide presentation to include birthdays, but also showcase our accreditation paperwork and important upcoming dates such as spring break and Auction from the Heart. In computer class, fifth and sixth grade students are creating a google slide to showcase themselves. Their slide will then be put into our main presentation for everyone to see. A big thank you to Matt Shellenberger for researching and connecting all the equipment to our network. Lee Johnson for removing and mounted the new equipment. Lastly, Home and School for purchasing this for our school. This is an awesome celebration for our school! Another celebration for our school is Dr. Suess Week. Students will partake in a variety of different events next week to celebrate reading. A big thank you to Ms. DuBois and Ms. Agamaite for taking the lead on this. To help get in the spirit, Mrs. Delebreau and myself created "Truffula Seed Packet" for all the students. We thought it would be a great way to celebrate our special week with our students. We need to focus on our celebrations and thank everyone for making our school awesome. Cheers to many more celebrations for years to come.
Catholic School Week
WOW...we are in the middle of our Catholic School Week events. I want to just take a moment to thank everyone for making this week so special for our students. There is much planning that takes place behind the scenes to make all these events possible. Teachers, staff, parents, grandparents, and Home and School all work extremely hard to make each event special. I hope your family is enjoying this week as much as me. School Choice I am also encouraging everyone to become familiar with our School Choice program. Our school will be part of this awesome program where students have the possiblity to join our school community for FREE. This program is based on income eligibility. I would encourage all current families in 3K, 4K, and 5K to apply. Any public or homeschool student in any grade is welcome to apply. If you qualify, the student would attend St. Mary School for free for the remainder of the elementary school levels. In exchange, we would receive over $7,000.00 per pupil/per year who qualify. Our school window to apply starts NOW till April 20, 2017. Please apply using the link here. http://dpi.wi.gov/sms/choice-programs If you have any questions, please call the school office at 920.845.2224. Family Size Maximum Yearly Income Single Parent Married Parent 2 $29,637 $36,637 3 $37,296 $44,296 4 $44,955 $51,955 5 $52,614 $59,614 6 $60,273 $67,273 Mentor Families Next school year we are looking for current families to adopt a new family to St. Mary School. We are trying to create this new partnership to help the new families adjust to St. Mary School. This mentor program would allow new families to ask questions and get questions answered from these families who know the ins and outs of your community. We want to create better communication to these families. If you are interested in becoming a mentor family, please let me know. I would like to to have about ten mentor families in place for next year. I hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween. We had a great time as a staff dressing up with our emoji shirts. Thanks to Jen for ordering the shirts and Abby for decorating them. Along with our emojis, students had the privilege to wear their costumes as well. We saw everything from cowgirls to robots. It was nice to see students dressed up at school. The same day, students enjoyed a movie, popcorn, and water. Thanks to the Home and School for sponsoring the popcorn and water. Furthermore, a big thank you to Karen and Lorie for popping the popcorn and cleaning up the areas afterwards. Cold Stone CreameryI had the privilege to sponsor nine students to Cold Stone Creamery on Monday. What a great way for students to get recognized for all their hard work inside and outside of the classroom. I was happy to bring Eli, Coy, Connor, John, Alayna, Cady, Carson, Clare, and Garrett to this event and they were happy to be selected. Please stayed posted as we will do something similar again soon.
WOW!! I cannot believe that we are halfway done with our first quarter. It has been great to have the students back at school and for us to get back into the swing of things. Some highlights for me so far this year are starting my bluejay group time, getting to know all the new students and families, and being outdoors with the kids. I have started teaching my bluejay group this week. We are working on building words with text twist, practicing brain teasers with math problem, and oral/listening skills with I have...who has. Our fastest time so far is 4 mins and 29 secs. I also have enjoyed getting to know all the new families and students. Each and every student brings a total different element into our school environment. It was awesome to have each one of them add their hand to our family tree in the cafeteria. Lastly, I have enjoyed my time outdoors at recess with the students. We have been playing multiple games of volleyball. Each day brings something new and excited to our outdoor experience. I hope the school year is off to a great start for you and your family. I send blessings to all of you during this autumn season.
The end of the year always approaches fast. We have entered our last full month of school before we let out on June 8th. We have several things happening between now and then so please make sure you check out the events calendar online. This calendar provides all the activities, dates, and times we are doing things at SMS. I just want to highlight the last day of school for students, parents, and families.
Wednesday, June 8th 8:00 to 10:00 4K and 5K graduation in parish hall 10:00 to 11:00 All school mass - certificates for perfect attendance, etc 11:00 to 11:45 All school yearbook signing 12:30 to 1:15 - 4K / 5K Badger Bouncers 1:15 to 2:00 1 / 2 / 3 Badger Bouncers 2:00 to 3:00 4 / 5 / 6 Badger Bouncers 7:00 6th grade graduation Mass and social to follow I welcome everyone to join us on our last day of school to celebrate our successes and say good-bye to another school year. Thanks to everyone who continues to make SMS the best learning community. With our previous school office transformed into our new 3K room, we are excited to what possibilities this new adventure will bring to St. Mary School. As we look at the future of St. Mary School, it is important that we realize we need to continue to provide a strong faith and academic foundation for all families new and returning. Our hope is that once families come to our 3K program, maybe they will come back for 4K and beyond. As of today, we have eight students signed up for our 3K program next year. At this point, our tuition covers the cost to hire a part time teacher. The 3K program, as it stands today, will not require all 20 hours of this new part time teacher. What does this mean for our other students....It means we will have an extra person in the building to help other students. I feel this is a win for everyone! I appreciate everyones support as we embark on this adventure.
I have a quote behind my desk that reads, three simple rules in life 1) If you do not go after what you want, you'll never have it. 2) If you do not ask, the answer will always be no. and 3) If you do not step forward, you will always be in the same place. This quote has been with me along with some prayer when the school and I decided to enter into the world of 3K. We have officially gotten board approval along with finalized all registration materials. We are now enrolling students into our program for the upcoming school year. As much of you know we have limited space but that did not stop us. We have went ahead with the plan that the home base for 3K will be in the previous school office. This space allows for a carpet for gathering circle, a few tables for snack and project time, and a bathroom for the kiddos to use. The 3K students will be leaving their home base for play-based learning in the 4K room. Our 4K students attend their combined arts specials outside of their classroom for about an hour each day. During this time, 3K will utilize that space for the center time and other play-based learning activities. I have included some pictures of the new home for 3K and our new school office. I continue to thank everyone for all the support of our community. The St. Mary's community has been working extremely hard to make some physical improvements to our cafeteria. We have pooled several resources together to make this a reality. The pillars have been painted a St. Mary blue along with a hand-painted family tree on the wall to showcase our family. This painting was done by the staff and teachers of St. Mary School. In addition, we have removed the carpet from the bottom of the pillars and purchased new wainscoting to replace it. Mitch Jadin has volunteered to put it up once he comes back from his current job site out of state. Furthermore, we thought we could finish off the space with new cafeteria tables. I made contact with Dan Schiltz, previous parent from our school, who was able to get us a 59.5% discount on new tables. Our tables came from $1600.00 a piece to only $635.00. The tables we have decided to purchase are round that include the seating. These tables can then be easily folded up to make room for indoor recess space or our talent show. We are in need of about twelve tables to make our area complete. I am happy to say that Home and School has purchased three tables and we had five other families step forward to purchase an additional five tables. Thanks to everyone who is making this change a reality. Check out the pictures below to see some of the changes...More photos to follow soon.
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