AQUINAS ACADEMY A Pennsylvania Charitable Trust 340 North Main Street, Greensburg, PA 15601 Phone: 724-834-7940 Fax: 724-836-0497 NEWSLETTER JANUARY 2017 choosing. There are many options and ways to My Dear Aquinas Family, help you manage tuition. Please be sure to talk As we return from the Christmas break, we begin with our business manager (Mrs. Maria to look towards next year’s enrollment. Catholic Cochenour) if you have questions. 2. Tuition Schools Week is typically the beginning of this Assistance. In an effort to keep our local process. I wanted to take a few minutes to explain administrators out of family finances as much as the process. There are many facets of possible, FACTS is used to assess the needs of enrollment. Application, registration, paperwork each family that applies. FACTS, then determines packet, and financial information are just a need and passes this information along to the few. So, allow me to shed some light on some of Diocese and the local administration. FACTS these. does not have money to give. The financial aid is given from two pools of funds. The first is the If you are already enrolled at Aquinas Academy, school’s own budget. Funds are given to the you do not need to apply. You are reserved a spot school from the parishes to run the school and aid for next year. Any new students must apply prior can be given from this funding. The second is PA to acceptance and registration. We do ask for State tax in the form of EITC. Look for more siblings not yet registered to apply, but they will information about this in another newsletter, but I have first consideration based on family legacy. will say that both of these funds are extremely limited. Once a student is accepted, there is a registration packet that is needed. This allows the school to The next action step for you is to register. We keep current information on file. This registration would like to have all registrations returned very places the student in a specific grade in Aquinas quickly and this will allow for us to focus on new Academy. enrollment and next year’s budget. We thank you for your attention to this detail, and we remind you Much of the paperwork that is needed is assigned that we are here to help throughout the by either the state or the diocese and the school process. Our office is equipped to assist and must maintain those forms in files in the event of looking forward to doing so. We hope you had a an audit. We truly appreciate your compliance wonderful Christmas and we are looking forward with these forms. to an exciting Catholic Schools Week! Financial information takes on two parts. Both are I can do all things through Christ who strengthens managed by FACTS. Here is how it me. Philippians 4: 13 works. FACTS handles: 1. Tuition Management and 2. Tuition Assistance. 1. Tuition Yours in Christ, Management. This is the billing and collection of the tuition throughout the year. All families are required to have a FACTS account for this Mr. Joseph J. Rice purpose. If you pay monthly, the funds are Principal withdrawn directly from the account of your CHRISTMAS SHOP decorate a Christmas tree with a certain number of The Christmas Shop was a big hit! It was great to ornaments that are labeled on the tree. Christmas see the smiling faces of the children as they time sure does make for fun counting activities! bought surprise gifts for their loved ones. After a higher than expected demand on the first day, the Both preschool classes had wonderful Christmas entire store was restocked for the second day of parties this year. They had such a wonderful time shopping. In addition to giving the children an celebrating Jesus’ birthday and enjoying fun opportunity to shop on their own, the Christmas games and crafts with their friends. A special Shop netted a profit of $2,525 for the school. thank you to all of the preschool parents for all that they do for each class! We would like to thank all the parents who volunteered their time to come in and help. With this first year of running the shop under our belt, we learned a lot, and we have already begun planning for next year! Thanks again to everyone who helped make the Christmas Shop a success! - Nikki Zubaty and Keira Bonomo PRESCHOOL NEWS Both of the preschool classes have been very busy learning about Advent. The classes made their own advent wreaths and have been lighting one candle each week throughout the season. Each week the children light their candle and sing along to our Advent song about waiting for Christmas day and the birth of Jesus. The PreK 4 class has been working very hard learning letter sounds and recognizing new letters. During the Christmas season, the children learned all about letter C which brought us upon Candy Cane Day. The children made candy canes by rolling golf balls in red paint and rolling them in a pan all over a white candy cane to give it stripes. They also graphed their preferences on who likes peppermint candy canes better or who likes cherry candy canes better, cherry candy canes came in with the win! Of course, we had to end our day with taking home a very special candy cane that was delivered to us by Saint Nicholas! The PreK 3 class has been focusing on counting numbers. The children in this class can count all the way to 20 with ease! They have been practicing their counting and number skills during Christmas math centers where they have to 2 KINDERGARTEN NEWS What do YOU do on Tuesday? Why eat spaghetti of course! At least, that’s one of the silly parts of Kindergarten will end the month of December the song, “TODAY IS MONDAY’ by Eric Carle. with a birthday celebration for Jesus. Merry Learning this song is helping the kindergarten Christmas wishes go to all of our families and children with learning the days of the week. friends. The children are also busy organizing FIRST GRADE NEWS mathematical manipulatives into groups of tens. Before Thanksgiving, the students were busy The children think “what a great way to get all the working on special projects and photographs for way to one hundred.” Two hundred, three the Gala. Thank you to Mrs. Tiedeman, Mrs. hundred.... Szakos, Mrs. Denis, Mrs. Kerr, and Mrs. Bossert. We appreciate you sharing your time The students learned about another famous saint and talents with us! In addition to helping with this month by watching Nicholas, the Boy Who the Gala projects, Mrs. Bossert helped send the Became Santa. With some assistance by our students off on their Thanksgiving break by fourth grade prayer partners, the children made reading a wonderful story. She read, Balloons small paper shoes. A big surprise awaited them Over Broadway, which tells the true story of the the next day when they discovered golden puppeteer Tony Sarg and his helium balloons that tangerines and candy canes in their shoe. would become the trademark of Macy’s Day Parade. After the fun story, the students were able Our activity room became a glorious mess as we to create their own balloon that they would carry worked on special Christmas ornaments, gifts for in this special parade. Thank you, Mrs. Bossert! parents and friends, and even gingerbread people. But nothing could beat the day kindergarten took The students worked on a lesson with Mr. an imaginary trip to the North Pole on the Polar Dombrowski, our school guidance counselor and Express in our pajamas! The students shared his grandfather to Max and Beau Bossert. Mr. or her favorite bedtime book and stuffed animal, Dombrowski read the story, I Can't Believe You learned about reindeer, made cottony Santa Said That! to the class. This story is about a boy Clauses, and drank hot cocoa with cookies. named RJ who says what he thinks… no matter how it sounds or makes others feel. With help from his parents, he learns he doesn't have to verbalize every thought that pops into his head. In fact, sometimes the less said the better! Mr. Dombrowski had a nice discussion with the students about how words can cause hurt feelings and how the students can use a social filter to 3 avoid speaking hurtfully or disrespectfully. With Mr. Dombrowski's guidance, the students constructed a diagram showing their Thinking Bubble, Social Filter, and Talking Bubble. The students learned how to use their Thinking Bubble and Social Filter before they speak the words in their Talking Bubble. Thank you, Mr. Dombrowski for teaching us this valuable lesson! Now presenting…The Student of the Week! Congratulations to Ava Richards who did a fabulous job as our Student of the Week! The students enjoyed seeing Ava's special Care Bear as well as all the books she made. The first graders have once again scored the team of the week in First in Math throughout the whole school during the first week of December. Not only did the whole class earn team of the week, but Beau Bossert scored the ultimate honor--top player of the week in the whole school! First graders are definitely working up their sticker count on the board outside of the office! First graders have also learned new strategies to subtract numbers. The children can now make a ten to subtract, use doubles to subtract, find missing addends, and can relate addition and subtraction.