OLG Newsletter – June 11th

June 11, 2015

Dear OLG Families,

What a year it has been! We have so enjoyed working with you and
your wonderful children and seeing them grow in so many ways. It has been a full year for our students and staff, as we celebrated our strengths and set new goals during our accreditation process, dove into implementation of a new math program, successfully launched our extracurricular program thanks to School Fund Drive donors, painted our salmon in the school stairwells, and experienced community through our Faith Family Groups. On a regular basis, I witnessed articulate and engaged students asking in-depth questions; creative and purposeful teaching; faith-filled reflection and service; academic curiosity and perseverance when challenges were faced; joyful learning; parents, grandparents and community members volunteering; and many acts of kindness and compassion.

We’d love to see you at the 9:00 end-of-the-school-year Mass tomorrow morning to celebrate with us!  Please also consider attending the event on June 18th at 7:00 pm, here at OLG, to celebrate the Papal Encyclical on the Environment. Information and details about this event, “Praised Be:  Pope Francis calls us to care for creation,” can be found on the flyer in today’s FCE envelope or on the parish website. A week later, a special event with Nimo Patel will help us to be connected in heart, mind, and spirit, as we deepen our ecological awareness grounded in faith, and our commitment to care for the Earth.

From Miss McKamey: 

Have a wonderful summer! I am so grateful for the energy, commitment, and care that you bring to our school community. I wish you a relaxing and enriching summer and plenty of fun family time!

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

• Field Trips
• Picnic at Alki
• Performing the Mitten and Very Hungry Caterpillar plays
• Free choice Show-n-Tell
• Making new friends!

Kindergarten 

Kindergarten is great! We loved Birthday celebrations, playing with friends, the talent show, and math. Watercolors, science experiments, the field trips, time outside for recess, and learning about sea creatures. The parties, square dancing, sign language, iPads, P.E., stories, and station time. What fun we had.

First Grade

• We love God! We like making cards for Mt. St. Vincent residents and making prayer candles, books, and rugs blessed by Father Jack!
• We love each other! We like doing our class covenant, playing games, singing in concerts, doing the Jog-a-thon, and creating art!
• We love science! We like raising butterflies and salmon and releasing them in the wild. We love doing the Salmon Chant!
• We love our 6th grade buddies! We like going to Mass with them and releasing the salmon with them!
• We love learning all kinds of cool things together!

Second Grade 

• Growing in our Faith through: celebrating First Communion & First Reconciliation, making First Communion banners, sharing our Baptism stories, visualizing the Gospels, making rosaries, cleaning the church, having prayer time in the Small Chapel, & leading the Mass all by ourselves.
• Writing paragraphs & creating our very own “Small Moment” books.
• Learning about Japan, South America (South America projects), Plants, and  Solids & Liquids.
• Painting fish in the hallway with Miss Heidi & doing fun art projects with Mrs. Bellia.
• Having fun with our friends & amazing teacher on field trips (Kubota Garden, Arboretum) with WOW parties & popsicles on the playground, and Topping-It at the jog-a-thon.

Third Grade

• Water rockets and solar system projects
• Saint projects
• Crayfish and bess beetles
• Mustache Thursdays
• Ms. Savio 

Fourth Grade

• Oregon Trail StoryPath
• Pirates from Grammar Island
• Washington State Map project with our families
• Oral Presentations on people that impact Washington State
• Earning our marbles

Fifth Grade

• When Ms. Hobbs drew a very elaborate example of Mount St. Helen’s erupting and exploding on the white boards during our Landforms science unit, but accidently used bright orange    SHARPIE instead of a whiteboard marker, and didn’t notice until the drawing wouldn’t erase!
• The Colonial America projects and presentations! “Those we so fun!”
• Bad Joke Tuesday/ Punny OR Funny Tuesdays
• Tickets, raffles and candy as incentives and rewards!
• The Over 65 Dinner!
• Learning about, making, flying and racing airplanes!
• Band! “We loved beginning band and Miss McKamey!”

Sixth Grade

• Two sad and lonely students lost in the middle of the night at Camp Hamilton
• Mr. Franck singing in the mornings
• 1st grade buddies
• Cheeto fires in science!
• Greek Mythology
• Dance party in the 3rd grade

Seventh Grade

• The new things, like dances
• The ways they helped, like Angeline’s
• The ways they grew, like speech class
• The ways they led, like Stations of the Cross
• And all the things that made them laugh, like Semu and his mushrooms, Shakespearan insults, Shaq, scowls, bbq sauce, and Ms. Hieger’s jokes, which cannot ever be taken literally.

Eighth Grade  

• Being a cool cat in the 8th grade musical, Aristocats.
• Eating dim sum at House of Hong and learning about the Cathedral.
• Our 8th grade talent show at the Mount.
• Putting together our Rudegoldberg Projects and our Green Apps
• Gates Foundation, Seattle University, Guad Talks and the completing the Juan Diego Project.

Thank you to all of you, our parents and guardians, for making this an amazing year! Through all your dedication and hard work, the Parent Org was able to reach our fundraising goal and meet our commitment to the school! The year has gone by so quickly, but when you look back at all we accomplished, it is easy to see that it was a full, busy school year!

We enjoyed fun times together throughout the year at events like Halloween Carnival and BINGO night, just to name a few. We added to our parental toolkits, as we learned about internet safety at our parent education night (and we look forward to our Family Nutrition Night coming this fall). We showed what a close, supportive and involved community we are throughout our school’s accreditation process by offering unparalleled hospitality! Finally, we enjoyed record breaking fundraisers as we danced the night away at our Sparkle! Auction and shared laughs (as sunscreen) as our kids ‘Topped It’ at Jog-A-Thon! What a year! It’s been a pleasure sharing this year with all of you and I look forward to another great experience this coming school year. I wish you and your families a safe and relaxing summer break!

There is still time to join the Parent Org Team for this coming school year!

Don’t miss out on a great opportunity! We can do this together; it will be great!

The Parent Org has the following positions available for the upcoming 2015 – 2016 school year:

1)     Light the Night Chair & Co-Chair (automatic 50 hours) – Plan OLG’s annual Christmas lighting event in December. Use your creativity to continue to make this night a fun and memorable holiday event for our school and parish families!

2)     Halloween Carnival Co-Chairs (automatic 50 hours) – The Parent Org needs two co-chairs to help the current Halloween Carnival Chair plan and organize this coming year’s event in preparation to take over Halloween Carnival in 2016/2017. This is the perfect position for two creative people who love to plan events and get the school community excited and involved! Our current chair will share all her knowledge and planning materials with you, so when you take over, you can hit the ground running! This is a great position for those of you who would like to meet your volunteer commitment at the beginning of the school year!

Email Erin Stampe if you are interested in either of these positions, or if you have further questions.

Are You A Gardener?

Coming this fall, the Parent Org is holding a Bags & Bulbs Fall Fundraiser! That’s right, folks! In addition to bringing back our very popular Mixed Bags sale, we are also going to offer high quality flower bulbs that will arrive during the peak of the fall planting season! So, instead of buying those cheap bulb packs from Costco at the end of summer, or those expensive varieties from the nursery, consider purchasing your bulbs during OLG’s Fall Fundraiser campaign this September. You can support our school AND prepare your yard for beautiful blooms come springtime!

Helen Oesterle

Pastoral Associate

Summer Volunteer Needed to Help Organize Church Pews 

During the school year, we are blessed by the OLG School 2nd graders who clean out and organize our pews every week.  THANK YOU!!  But the task is year round and we need a few volunteers to take over during the summer.  Our hope is to get enough volunteers to make the job easy and fun.  If interested, contact Helen:  206-935-0358.

Summer Film Festival 

Join us for our 4th Annual summer film event.  Our first film is “Romero” on Tuesday, June 9 at 6:30 pm in the Walmesley Center.  It is the true story of Archbishop Oscar Romero who lived in El Salvador during the political unrest in the 1980s.  He was a powerful supporter of the poor and marginalized which the government authorities saw as disloyal.  He was murdered while celebrating Mass and was recently declared a martyr by Pope Francis.   Rated PG-13.  Bring your favorite movie treat…popcorn and lemonade provided.

Vacation Bible Camp

VBC Crew Needed