Dear Parents/Guardians,
12.8.2009
I hope you all enjoyed the Christmas Concert on Sunday and had a good time at the family potluck.
It was tremendous to see how spirited and large our community can be. As you were able to see, the
concert itself is quite an undertaking to plan and execute and I want to commend the staff members who
helped out by doing such a fine job making it all work so well! The 2 other events – the Fun Fair on
Saturday and the family potluck on Sunday – were also big hits and great examples of our community
spirit!
Important Dates
Today is the feast of the Immaculate Conception … Tuition due date – Friday, December 11 …
Feast Day of our Lady of Guadalupe – Saturday, December 12 … Last day of classes before Christmas
break – Friday, December 18
Specials Classes
Through classroom newsletters or teacher blogs, our classroom teachers are able to keep you up to
date with what is happening in their classrooms. I’d like to share with you what is going on in your
child’s specials classes. Today: Spanish & Music; next week: Gym & technology. Please see the back of
today’s letter.
Basketball Teams
I am happy to report that all of our basketball teams are doing quite well. It is great to see wins
(the teams have earned many of those!) but even better to see our students learning to play as a team,
getting great exercise, committing themselves to practice and self-improvement, and broadening their
skills. Coach Sotomayor and Coach Ortiz are doing a very good job.
After School Clubs
The clubs that are finishing this week include: Go Green, Children’s Story Time, Foreign
Languages, Art (gr. 3-5), Girls Fitness, and Tutoring/HW Help. The clubs ending next week are:
Cooking, Arts & Crafts, High School Prep, and Pokemon. Quick note: Arts and Crafts will not be held
tomorrow, Wednesday 12/9 but will take place next week, 12/16. Thanks for your attention to these dates.
We will begin a new series of after school clubs in January. The details will be shared upon our
return to classes after the Christmas break.
Winter Weather Information
I would like to review our policies and procedures regarding school closings due to inclement
weather. First, as a school we are very sympathetic to the difficulty of finding childcare in the event of a
cancelled day of school. As such, St. Sylvester will be open every regularly scheduled day except in truly
exceptional cases. In general, we will be open if the Chicago Public Schools are open. The best way to
find out of any emergency closings is to listen to WBBM 780 or WGN 720 as they will announce any
school closings.
Classroom Wish Lists
Below there is a list of materials and supplies that teachers have put on their “wish lists”. It is
shown below in case anyone has or is willing to offer any of these supplies for the classes to use. This
idea was suggested by several school families for this time of year and I think it is a very good one.
Preschool & K: dress up clothes, toys (dolls, cars, etc.), books
1: stickers (showing the seasons); Dominoes; board games: Trouble, Score Four
2: pull down maps of U.S.A. and world
3: books, flash cards for multiplication and division,
4: board games for the 50 US states, books about saints
Grades 5-8: math flash cards, rulers, dry erase markers, old magazines (Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Ntional
Geographic, etc.)
Specials Classes Newsletter
Spanish
We are very excited in our Spanish classes to start learning about the different holiday words and
phrases. I am happy to say that all of the students should now be able to speak in full, yet simple,
sentences. We have been concentrating on different verbs and how to change them so that they make
sense in a sentence. We have also covered the professions, numbers, colors and many other things. Some
simple words that the children should know for the holidays are: árbol de navidad (Christmas tree),
regalo (gift), papa noel (Santa Claus), estrella (Star), and los reyes magos (The three wise men).
After Christmas break we are going to focusing more on vocabulary that the students should
recognize around their houses, in the streets, and with their friends. Some of these topics are: in the park,
around the town, in the house, and at the supermarket.
In the upper grader, we now have a good enough base that we will be able to tackle some more complex
vocabulary and sentence structure. There will also be a lot of repetition and review of the materials we
have covered. I think the more that the students See and Hear and Say the basic concepts the more they
are going to remember and use.
I will be introducing some new games and activities into the classroom. I have also been using a
website where the students will be able to hear native speakers speaking with different accents. There are
also some great listening comprehension exercises that I am very excited to be using. The younger grades
will be working on making a small dictionary for all of the vocabulary that we have learned and they will
also learn how to use and make a verb conjugation wheel.
You can help too! Around the house you can ask your children “¿Como se dice?” (koh moh say
dee say) and then point to an object. They should know how to say most of the objects that we find
around the house. If you find that they are not able to say some of the objects, you can have them write
them down and we can look them up during our Spanish class.
Grades K & 1: The kindergarten and first graders have been learning a lot of Spanish! Each class starts
with a book written in Spanish, followed by Spanish songs and games to master the vocabulary that we are
working on. We are learning how to count in Spanish. Kindergarten has practiced counting to 20 and first
grade can count to 100! In September, Hispanic Heritage Month, we learned about a few Hispanic
Americans who have made important contributions to our world. Both classes have learned their colors,
animals, and are now working on parts of the body. Students have enjoyed singing their Spanish songs.
Ask them to sing for you what they've learned at home!
Music
The recent music classes at all grade levels have been spent preparing for the concert. Ms.
Ortegon worked with students and their singing for the beautiful mix of Christmas songs during the
concert. Great time has been spent throughout the year on instrumental lessons. Students have been
learning to play the piano keyboards, the recorders, bells, and a large number of percussion instruments.
Both of our choirs continue their work as well. The choirs have performed at our weekly student
Masses and each month sing at the 11:30 Sunday Mass on the third Sunday of the month.