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St. Mary’s School
The Magic of Folded Paper Snowflakes
By Kathy Ayette
I have to tell you the magic in my classroom is strong magic
indeed. In January, the kindergarten class made snowflakes and
their teacher hung them from the ceiling. They also did a torn
paper picture of snowflakes to hang in the hall. As you may
remember, there wasn’t a lot of snow in January. Now I had
planned to do paper snowflakes with my class. I enjoy listening
to the oohs and ahs as the children unfold their papers to reveal lacy
snowflakes. It never gets old. I hope you noted the word
planned. Somehow before I knew it, January had morphed into
February. So, I had the children cut out the snowflakes and glue
a red heart in the center of each snowflake. (I like killing the
proverbial two birds with one stone.) The extra “unhearted”
flakes were glued on black paper. I hung our snowflakes from the
ceiling and the pictures in the hall. Bingo! We have ten inches
of snow. (I apologize. I guess we overdid it a little.)
February turned out to be the month that almost wasn’t, thanks to the
abundance of snow. The shortest month was a bit shorter than
usual. We had one holiday, Presidents’ Day, two snow days, and
six two-hour delays. I always find the two-hour delays particularly
challenging. For some reason I seem to believe that I can control
the space and time continuum and should be able to cover everything in
four hours that I usually cover in six. However, there was one
February that beat this one. I don’t remember whether we had any
delays, but I do remember we had exactly seven school days the entire
month.
The primary students celebrated Valentine’s Day on February 12, since
Valentine’s Day fell on Sunday this year. The following Monday
was Presidents’ Day. The day after the holiday was Fat
Tuesday. Our tradition has been to celebrate Fat Tuesday with
Mardi Gras masks and beads. We enjoy King Cake and at the end of
the day bury the Alleluia. Burying the Alleluia is actually an
ancient Christian tradition. Decorated Alleluia banners are
symbolically “buried” as a sign of putting aside pleasures to
concentrate on the somber and serious season of Lent. On Easter
the banners are “resurrected” and hung over the classroom doors in
celebration. One of the unique customs of this burial is after
carrying the banners to their place of interment, a short prayer
service is held and then the participants make as much noise as humanly
possible for one minute. Then the banners are laid in place and
the congregation leaves in silence. In the past we have always
interred the banners in the church basement. This year due to
Covid, we had planned to have the service outside in the playground and
“bury” the banners in the boiler room. That was the plan.
Fat Tuesday was snowed out. The banners are safely awaiting
Easter in the boiler room, but there was no ceremony.
The Mardi Gras Reverse Raffle was held as planned. This year the
drawing was online due to Covid. The lucky winners of $250 were
the Livingstons, Rodney Oda, Grady Jones (one of my first graders), Peg
Hadden, Kyle Hummel, and Mike and Sherri Jones. The grand prize
winner of $3000 were the Jones Kids. Congratulations to all.
Ash Wednesday was the next day, February 17, which happened to be
another snow day. St. Mary’s was on a two-hour delay that
day. The students who were able to make it in at the regular time
and the staff attended Mass and received ashes. At noon, Fr. Matt
came over to school to give ashes to those students who were unable to
attend Mass in the morning. By the way, I don’t think I have told
you about Fr. Matt. Father Matt Feist is our resident
priest until someone is assigned to our parish. We are very happy
to have him with us.
The past few days the temperatures have improved, and the snow is
melting. Some of my students have reported that they have heard
birds singing. That means that spring is just around the
corner. Each day, I have the Question of the Day for the
students. (We use it as an exercise in graphing and fractional
parts.) One of the questions this week was whether the students
thought we would get more snow this last three weeks of winter.
The majority thought not, although I am not sure that wasn’t just
wishful thinking. Here’s hoping my students’ magic is just as
strong predicting the weather as it was bringing snow!
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