St. Sylvester Says Farewell and Welcome

Last Friday the St. Sylvester school children said a sad goodbye to Fr. Paul Stein. He visited one last time before he left the school campus. Fr. Paul has been here at St. Sylvester for five years and has done so much for our school including classroom visits and special Masses geared towards children. His work here will not be forgotten and we will keep him in our prayers as he transitions into his new full-time position at Loyola University. Above is a picture of the farewell poster the second grade class made for him with each of the children's fingerprints as leaves.

Today we also had an exciting surprise visitor - Fr. Sam! Fr. Sam is the new pastor at St. Sylvester parish and we are so very excited to get to know him. He will be saying the children's Masses starting this week. He promised to start learning the students' names one at a time starting today! We look forward to having him in the classroom more frequently as he settles in!

100th Day of School

Today, February 4th, is the one hundredth day of school here at St. Sylvester School. To celebrate this accomplishment, each of the students brought in their own collection of one hundred objects. During math class, we took a break from telling time and used our one hundred collections to see how many ways we could get to one hundred. The students made five groups of twenty, twenty five groups of four, and fifty groups of two! Each child made these and more groups with objects such as toothpicks, cottton balls, and even rocks! Thank you for assisting your son or daughter in collecting their one hundred objects. Ask them which other equal groups they made with their one hundred collection.

Catholic Schools Week

The second graders kicked off Catholic Schools Week with a pajama party! Everyone was able to wear their pajamas to school and enjoy an extended D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything And Read) time. They shared blankets, pillows, and books! We talked about how fun it can be to get cozy with a book, especially during these winter months.


On Thursday the students attended All-School Mass followed by our biannual awards ceremony. It was a tough choice, but some of the second graders really shined this past semester and received recognition for their hard work in second grade. The winners from Room 205 were:

Peacemaker Award: Ezekiel
Effort Award: Giselle
Poster Contest: Sydney
Handwriting Contest: McKayla

Congratulations to the winners and keep up the great work! The final day of Catholic Schools Week was most of the students' favorite one. That is because we celebrated the All-School Olympics. The second graders were split up among twelve different teams and worked along with students from every grade level to compete in different events. Below is a video showing all of the fun we had at the Catholic Schools Week Olympics!