Gold/White Dominates the Week!

Gold/ White Week

What a week of spirit leading up to the celebration of Miss Jennie's birthday on January 30!  Do the girls in this school have fun or what?  I wasn't here for Disney Day, but Mrs. Seabolt took pictures and I heard all about it! (I had Jury Duty, and I actually served on a jury, so it was kind of a productive day.) Today was the Gold/ White competition, and it was spectacular.  The teams rocked the gym, and the girls looked resplendent in their gold sequins and white feather boas.

Since we have done so much celebrating this week, I had to find a way to weave history into Spirit Week, so Decades Day was the perfect vehicle.  Hello 60s! Did these girls ever get into it! They've  learned about the Viet Nam War and the civil rights movement, and how college students all over the country protested, so they staged their very own sit-in, and Dr. Kapetanis and Mrs. Friend went right along with it.  The "protestors" presented their list of demands...more cookies in the cafeteria, flag football at recess, more jeans days, compliment circles....all very interesting!

Famous author coming in February

Award Winning Author Coming Here

Award winning author, Carmen Agra Deedy, is coming to St. Catherine's on February 21, 2018 to speak to our lower school students.  Born in Havana, Cuba, Carmen came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1964. Her children's books have won numerous awards and reflect her unique life experiences.

We are offering the opportunity to purchase an autographed book for your child through our local children’s bookshop, bbgb books. You may go to bbgb's website, http://bbgbbooks.com/book-buzz/?book_list=st-catherines, and add your book(s) to the cart.  At check-out choose school delivery, select St. Catherine's, then indicate your child's name, teacher and to whom the book(s) should be signed.  Please place your order by Monday, February 5th. The books will be delivered to school for Carmen's visit. You may call bbgb with any questions at 804.353.5675. 15% of the proceeds will come back to St.

Catherine's!

Snow, School, Snow, School....

Girls, remember to give the Foreign Language letter to your parents!  This is an exciting and important decision that you are making--the choice of whether to take Spanish or Chinese next year!
The paper has to be returned by January 25, 2018.

What a crazy whirlwind of school, snow, school, snow...we have had, but in spite of this, we have taken advantage of every minute of academic time we could.  In math, we are adding and subtracting mixed fractions with unlike denominators.  You may notice that Singapore suggests that computation be horizontal as opposed to vertical...probably different from what you learned!  In their written reflections the girls expressed a lot of curiosity about decimals, plus we are on the second unit of fractions, and they are a little tired of just fractions, so we deviated from the course this week.  Last night they looked for examples of uses for decimals.  You may have helped them do this, but I bet you would not have expected how truly excited they were in class today.  They LOVED it and asked for more homework like that. As I have said before...this is quite the unusual class!!!  Enthusiasm for everything!

Health and Wellness Month

Because this week the focus has been on the MIND, and the ways we can keep our minds healthy,
the Wellness Committee made a special labyrinth for the girls to experience. It is located in on the terrace on the Green.  They were invited to move along the path and meditate or think creatively or spiritually...pretty cool for the girls. This morning we had a total school Shouting Prayer on the Green. Girls who have gone to Shrine Mont have experienced this, but others have not.  Ask your daughters about it!

Your girls are bringing home letters today from the PE Department with wellness tips for the girls to try at home.  Great ideas!

Lots of action in M06....

I think that you know what this is!  Look familiar!  Say hello to your younger self and welcome back to the 80s!

Gold/White Cheer Rally Practice Tomorrow

Girls, remember how much fun you had last year practicing for the Gold/White Cheer Rally last year? Well, it's that time of year again, specifically tomorrow morning!

The LS girls will have Gold/White cheer practices tomorrow morning (1/19) and next Tuesday morning (1/23) from 7:30-7:55 AM.  Gold Team will be in the LSAR and White Team will be in the LSMPR.


When you come to school tomorrow, please go directly to one of these rooms and have some fun learning the cheers!

Another snow day.....maybe

What a wild and funny way to start 2018...lots of snow days and frigid weather!  Girls, you have your "marching orders" for work!  Remember to do your Wordly Wise and Spelling.  You have the assignments written down.  Also, don't forget to finish your math classwork from today, and you have some work for tonight.  Make sure to check the blog for more math work.  If we are out more than one day, I may have to add a little more!  Sorry!

You are doing a great job learning about fractions...so great that we are starting work with unlike denominators.  Soon we will be heading into decimals, a topic that you have been begging to learn.
I love your enthusiasm!

Stay in touch with your fellow readers over the next couple of days, and be prepared for a corresponding assignment when you return!

I hope that we get enough snow that you can sled and have fun, and we can write some "snow stories"!

It's Christmas Time........

What a whirlwind week of yes, some academics........some vocabulary, some fractions, some holiday writing and some character studies, and the list goes on.  About those fractions.......this is such an interesting program...the way they put numbers together is so cool, and the girls are beginning to catch on, but enough about that!  Let's look at the fun stuff!

We made stockings for the fireplace with glitter galore.  Christmas music and creativity...great combination! We've written Christmas stories and Storybirds, read Christmas stories with our Big Sisters, and we drew one more Christmas Star of David. In fact, the girls taught the eighth graders how to do it, and they loved it.  Geometry and religion...great combination. Before we were in full throttle Christmas many of the girls wrote Advent Haiku and published it in a special jeweled notebook. A few days ago ,they also made a beautiful Nativity.  Each figure was hand sculpted by each girl.  The result was just fabulous...the attention to each detail of a king or a donkey or a camel or Mary or the Baby Jesus...beautiful.

Roberts' girls from the eighth grade AND their teacher, Mrs. Crook...also a Roberts' girl!

...and the stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

              Laila Patel Supports the Troops and Their Families

Laila and her family are dedicated to a wonderful charity call Fort Lee Holiday Helper.  Laila decided to help three years ago by making beautiful jewelry and keychains to sell.  "This year my goal is to make $125 to donate," she says.  Each object, lovingly made by Laila, sells for $5. Last Friday morning Laila brought her wares to school, and our class had so much fun trying to decide what to buy. You could hear gales of laughter and joy down the hall!  By the way, Laila doubled her goal!

We are so proud of our classmate, Laila!

Christmas Schedule

Christmas is much closer than we think! Here are some of the important activities at school that you might need to put on your calendars. Every year we have a beautiful Christmas service which includes the entire lower school. This service, so spiritual and lovely, is always the perfect service to remind us of the many blessings in our lives. Strings will play, the choir will sing, the shepherds will await the birth, and the readers will recount the story. Perfection.

Below you will find practice times.  Please plan so that your child will be available for the practices and the service on Wednesday, December 20, which is also the last day of school. You will pick up your child at SCHOOL directly after the service ends at River Road Baptist.

Monday 12/18	Tuesday 12/19	Wednesday 12/20
2:00-3:15 LSAR	11:30-2:30 RRCB	Students arrive at regular time. Students will begin boarding buses at 8:10. Service begins at 9:00 and ends at approximately 10:00. Extended Day girls will ride on a bus to St. Christopher's. All other students return to school and are dismissed in carpool. Third and Fourth grade carpool is in McVey lot unless traveling with younger siblings.

Lots going on! Kara Finley off to Robotics Championship!

Christmas Outreach

When you are out doing your Christmas shopping, remember to send a present to school for our Lower School Project to benefit SCAN.  Our class is collecting presents for a 15 year old girl!  How fun is that?  The girls themselves suggested makeup (shock!), nail polish, bracelets, earrings, books, journals and music cards.  Target is your friend! Thank you so much for supporting this wonderful project!

Something about math.....I don't know what it is, but it consumes this class!  The girls are starting fractions, and they are doing a great job.  Understanding the concept of a fraction is no small thing so it will take a lot of work and hands-on projects to begin to comprehend it. Ask your daughter what trick they learned to decide if a fraction is greater or less than 1/2.  It's pretty cool!  There is lots of good news about basic math facts. The girls are doing so much better!  Keep up that nightly work at home. The pay-off is in the classroom, and if you have looked at some of the math your girls are doing you would see why this is critical!

Before we even think about Christmas, we have to honor the Advent season, which is what we are doing in the lower school.  This is above all a spiritual season, so Advent will be front and center in our class. It's hard when it seems as if Christmas has started and is all around us.

Kara Finley is representing our class at the Robotics Championship at JMU this weekend.  She is part of the winning team Chemical Crushin' Saints! Let's all congratulate Kara for her hard work this year and wish her luck!

Thanksgiving...Hello? Not yet! Celebrity Among Us? Mary Mac!

Time does not stand still at St. Catherine's, EXCEPT when one of our own Roberts' Fourthies becomes a celeb for the day!  Wow! Mary Mac Starke rocked it on Mix 98.1 Thursday morning for TWO HOURS!  Why, you ask!  Mary Mac raised almost $5000 dollars for Juvenile Diabetes by participating in the JDRF One Walk Fundraiser.  Now, we already knew she was a rock star in our class for lots of other things, but now, we know that not only can she raise a whole lot of money for a worthy cause, but this girl is also a natural DJ!  This morning on the radio Mary Mac played the trombone, she talked about the sports she loved and about St. Catherine's, plus she picked a fabulous playlist.  So what did our class do? We delayed our ERBs for an hour and just listened to 98.1 and Mary Mac!  In case you were wondering if the girls had fun doing this, here are a few pictures!

Our rock star DJ Mary Mac Starke and her fan club!

Can you imagine taking an ERB after all of this excitement?  Well, these girls took a zen moment, and the beat went on! They are busy finishing up their ERBs with the distinction of being the first lower school class to take them on the computer.  Thanks to fine planning by the Tech Department, all has gone well. We have learned how to cope with internet loss, girls needing to leave the classroom, and other complications, and so far so good!

Since the beginning of the year, the girls have been introduced to different types of writing.  Some of it has been fun and creative, and some of it has been related to what we are learning. This week they are either writing a comic strip or Storybird, while incorporating vocabulary words they've learned in the past two months. This is more challenging than it sounds, but not for these Fourthies... every day they beg to work on their writing assignments. They are also in the initial stages of writing a news story, but more on that later!

As for math, it's all about problem-solving, which the girls do every day.  As their computation skills evolve, their ability to solve problems improves. I must say that this group of girls are enthusiastic learners. They never complain, and they have done a ton of math!  Now, they realize how much they need automatic recall of basic math facts because it is just too challenging without that knowledge.  These girls are also multiplying three digits by two digits and dividing into four digit numbers, plus they have started looking at basic fraction concepts.

Week of November 20

Monday  -  Girls join fifth graders to see Wonder - We leave at 12:00.

Tuesday - Fourth Grade St. Christopher's boys come to St. Catherine's for a Math Expo. Each class shares a different activity with the boys. We are pairing with Mrs. Carlson's class, and we are excited!

Wednesday -  Thanksgiving vacation begins with no school until Tuesday, November 28!

Big Sister/ Little Sister Fun

As promised, here is the FlipGrid we did with Mrs. Crook's eighth grade girls last week!
Have fun watching it!






https://flipgrid.com/0ec4fc       The password is biglittle.

Mount Vernon and Big Sister/Little Sister-Highlights of the Week

What a week this was! Even though the weather was dismal for Mount Vernon, the good news is that it did not rain!  I have been there, at least, ten times, and I never get tired of seeing the view of the Potomac from the piazza.  It's amazing to think that George Washington enjoyed that same view.  The girls were as in awe of the experience as I was. We said a prayer at the tomb of George and Martha, and the docent on duty said that made his day...all of those yellow capped heads bowed in prayer.  This is such a special group of girls, and I mean that!

Big Sister/ Little Sister

St. Catherine's has a long standing tradition of the girls partnering with older classes.  Up until this year,  the Fourth Grade partnered with an upper school student and walked to St. Stephen's for St. Catherine's Day, as well as partnering with classes for various activities to celebrate Miss Jennie's birthday or just to work on projects. This year we are partnered with Susan Crook's middle school class for a Big/Little activity.  The fun part about this--I taught Susan Crook, as well some of her students! Susan and I had a ball coordinating things with our girls.  Yesterday we made Thanksgiving cards to accompany the cans for the Food Drive.  We also made a FlipGrid! As soon as I get the link, I will let you see it!  Meanwhile, enjoy these pictures from yesterday and ask your daughters what a FlipGrid is!