Good Morning Families,
We hope each of you had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday! We hope your bodies were filled with delicious food and your minds and souls filled with laughter from family and friends.
As we embark on the first week of Advent, we prepare our hearts and minds for the birth of Christ. Each day during the Advent season, our students will pray the Examine. We will reflect on our days and actions.
Thank you so much to everyone helped make our visit to St. Vincent de Paul a success! It was an incredible experience for our students. We lived out the mission of serving others!
Looking Ahead....
Wednesday, December 7th - Reconciliation at 10:00 am
Thursday, December 8th - All School Mass at 10:30 am in the church
Wednesday, December 14th - All School Mass: this is our annual Gift Mass
Monday, December 19th - Half Day - dismissal at 1:15 pm
Tuesday, December 20th - Half Day - dismissal at 1:15 pm NO AFTERCARE
Tuesday, December 20th - Christmas Party
English Language Arts
Spelling - For the next three weeks of school, students be completing a different assignment for each spelling list. All directions will be covered in class. The spelling test will still remain on Thursdays.
Spelling Test Days: 12/1, 12/8, and 12/15
Grammar - Students will be working on pronouns. We will also be reviewing basic conventions through the use of Daily Oral Language, which will be done in class each day.
There will be a grammar and reading assessment on Friday, December 2nd.
Social Studies
This week, we will be discussing Arizona's global location, regions of Arizona, and different types of maps. This will lead us to our in-class project of creating a relief map. We will be making these maps the week of December 12th. We will need some parent volunteers to help us create our maps. Look for more information to come in a separate email.
Math
We will be working on multiplication of a whole number up to 4 digits by a 1-digit whole number.
Science
We are studying animals with backbones including fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
Religion
As we begin
Advent, we light one candle in the midst of all the darkness in our lives and
in the world. It symbolizes our longing,
our desire, our hope. Three “advents” or
“comings” shape our desire. We want to
be renewed in a sense that Jesus came to save us from our sin and death. We want to experience his coming to us now,
in our everyday lives, to help us live our lives with meaning and purpose. And we want to prepare for his coming to meet
us at the end of our lives on this earth.
So, we begin
with our longing, our desire and our hope.
When we wake
up, each day this week, we could light that candle, just by taking a few
moments to focus. We could pause for a
minute at the side of our bed, or while putting on our slippers or our robe,
and light an inner candle. Who among us
doesn't have time to pause for a moment?
We could each find our own way to pray something like this:
“Lord, the
light I choose to let into my life today is based on my trust in you. It is a weak flame, but I so much desire that
it dispel a bit more darkness today.
Today, I just want to taste the longing I have for you as I go to the
meeting this morning, carry out the responsibilities of my work, face the
frustration of some difficult relationships.
Let this candle be my reminder today of my hope in your coming.”
Each morning
this week, that momentary prayer might get more specific, as it prepares us for
the day we will face. And as we head to
work, walk to a meeting, rush through lunch, take care of errands, meet with
people, pick up the phone to return some calls, answer e-mail, return home to
prepare a meal, listen to the ups and downs of our loved ones' day, we can take
brief moments to relate our desire for the three comings of the Lord to our
life.
If our
family has an Advent wreath, or even if it doesn't, we could pray together
before our evening meal. As we light the
first candle on the wreath, or as we simply pause to pray together our normal
grace. Then, as we begin to eat, we can
invite each other, including the children, to say something about what it means
today to light this first candle.
Perhaps we
could ask a different question each night, or ask about examples from the
day. How am I getting in touch with the
longing within me? How did I prepare
today? What does it mean to prepare to
celebrate his coming 2,000 years ago?
How can we prepare to experience his coming into our lives this
year? What does it mean for us now, with
our world involved in so much conflict? How are we being invited to trust more
deeply? How much more do we long for his
coming to us, in the midst of the darkness in our world? In what ways can we renew our lives so we
might be prepared to greet him when he comes again? Our evening meal could be transformed this
week, if we could shape some kind of conversation together that lights a candle
of anticipation in our lives. Don't
worry if everyone isn't “good at” this kind of conversation at first. We can model it, based on our momentary
pauses throughout each day, in which we are discovering deeper and deeper
desires, in the midst of our everyday lives.
And every
night this week, we can pause briefly, perhaps as we sit for a minute at the
edge of the bed. We can be aware of how
that one, small candle's worth of desire brought light into this day. And we can give thanks. Going to bed each night this week with some
gratitude is part of the preparation for growing anticipation and desire.
Come, Lord
Jesus! Come and visit your people.
We await
your coming. Come, O Lord.
