JOURNEYING WITH POPE FRANCIS!

The school theme for our new school year is "Journeying With Pope Francis!" The Pope has the eyes and ears of the whole world and this includes my students. They have been watching and listening to him. He is easy to quote and follow. As a faculty we decided that each month we would select one of Pope Francis' quotes and do an action plan with the students with the quote. August we journeyed with him in taking care of the environment as he encouraged us to " be one with the environment."

Tuesday, August 20th was Environment Day at our school. In the afternoon the whole school was outside picking up trash on different parts of the playgrounds, parking lot, church courtyard, prayer garden and the grounds in front of the school and church. The students loved it.

After the clean up all grades returned to their classrooms for a lesson on preserving the environment. Here are some of the projects:
Kindergarten developed a bowling game using recycled yogurt bottles from their lunch for the pins.

STRIKE!!
They also used empty toilet paper rolls to create an old fashion marble roll game!  What creative thinking!!

Toilet paper and paper towels rolls make the best art projects.





The bagel is buried under the birdseed-see the little hill?

Grade 1 used a half of a bagel, spread it with peanut butter and then dipped it and rolled it in bird seed. Hang it at your house and you are feeding lots of birds.

 

 

2 hands action!  While waiting licking my peanut butter fingers :):)

 A little dab here yet!

Grades 2 and 3 used all recycled materials to create an Art Creation.

Creative Minds at Work!

Grades 4 and 5 drew a floor plan of their home and indicated what they could do in some of the rooms to save energy.




Taking a shower instead of a bath saves water. Another student was going to close the shades when the sun is shining to cut down on the A/C running.
Grades 6 and 7 are still working on their project. It will appear soon.

September's theme is a quote of Pope Francis from the World Youth Days:
" A shepherd should smell like the sheep.  I'm not here to be served - I'm here to serve. ." Check us out in September to see how we carry this quote out.  What can you do to carry out the shepherd quote?
 

 

SCHOOL BELLS RING!!

School Year 2013-2014!
Teacher Inservice began August 1st, Open House was August 6th and the first day of school was August 7th. And we just finished our first full week of school -fire drill and all!

Look at these outstanding bulletin boards to open our school year!

 

 

The Packers even made it to Sierra Vista to open our school year!

 

 

 

 

 Each month we will select one outstanding student from each class to be our "Diamond of the Mountain." Pictures will appear here with the reason that they are at the top of our mountain!

 

 

 Our goal for the year: Journeying With Pope Francis!  Each month we will pick one saying of Pope Francis and make an action plan for it. August-we selected Pope Francis' saying,, " We are at odds with our environment." Action plan-all students will pick up trash on the church and school grounds on August 20th and then an ecology conscious project in each classroom.

We had our first school Mass prepared by the 6th and 7th graders.

 Father Ariel blessed all the classrooms after our first school Mass.

 Walking the quiet sidewalk around the classrooms - on a mission!

 

 

This was the 3rd Sunday of the month so we had our First SOS Weekend ( Save Our School). 2nd collection is taken up by the students at all of the 5 Masses and it goes to our school. Our Lady of the Mountains Parishioners are very supportive of our school.
The school choir sings at the 9:30am Mass. We have new members and our project this year is to raise money for real songbooks for our school Masses!

 Students are the lectors at the 9:30am Mass. They pronounced the following words perfectly: Zedekiah, Malchiah, Ebed-melech, demoralizing-and all with confidence.

 Two students sing the psalm response and the lead the congregation. We have many eager students volunteering to do this ministry. Future adult cantors of our  Catholic Church.

And here are our future ushers...............

PreSchool and Prekindergarten took up the 2nd collection at our Spanish Mass!  (The little girl on the left loves wearing her blue jumper because it looks like Sister Carol's. How observant 4 year olds are! )

Bishop Kicanas Visits Our Parish

Bishop Kicanas surprised our pastor with a phone call a week ago and said, " I am coming to visit your parish on Sunday, August 11th!" The Bishop left on Thursday from Tucson and is visiting all the parishes in Cochise County-all in one vicariate. A very busy schedule for the Bishop. The Bishop celebrated the 7:30am and 9:30am Sunday Masses. The church was filled for both Masses. Our school students and their parents were at both Masses and our students proudly showed off their new uniforms with our new logo.

 The new logo was designed by Sr. Mariella Erdmann, one of our Franciscan Sisters who is an Art Professor at our college-Silver Lake College of the Holy Family. She was also my Postulant Directress.

The mountains and the M stand for Our Lady of the Mountains, our parish name and the first name of our school, before it was changed to All Saints.  The logo is now being used for our parish also, with Our Lady of the Mountains printed at the bottom instead of All Saints Catholic School.

Here are some pictures of the Bishop's visit.

Parishioners had an opportunity to greet the Bishop before Mass.

Our Knights of Columbus formed an honor guard for the Bishop.

Bishop - greeting one of our faithful parishioners who is in a wheelchair.

Giving his mitre to the Deacon.

After the Gospel was read, the Bishop took the Book of the Gospels and gave the people a blessing with it.

Fr. Ariel concelebrated the Mass with the Bishop.

The Bishop asked for all students and teachers to come up front for a blessing as they began a new school year. We started on August 7th.



The Final Blessing!

After Mass -time for pictures with the Bishop.  We had some very proud students with him! And I was proud of them too!

 Breakfast with the Bishop was next-all parishioners were invited too :):)

The Bishop follows a vegan diet so I tried lots of new foods.

 

 

A very jubilant pastor at the end of the Bishop's Pastoral Visit to Our Lady of the Mountains Parish in Sierra Vista. It couldn't have been a better morning! 

Also, a great way to start our school year.