Well, we're done! It is always impossible for me to put into words all I'm feeling on the last day of school. Joy for all the good memories. Sadness to see the students move on. Pride in what amazing kids they are. Gratitude for all their hard work and to our supportive parents and wonderful colleagues. Hope for all they will accomplish as they make the world a better place.

We were believers this year. We believed in building. We believed in life. We believed in our dreams. We believed in each other. And most of all, we believed our faith. I started this webpage by asking a saint for help. So we'll also close this year by asking for the intercession of our last Saint of the Day. She was also an exceptional young Catholic and if you'd like to read more about her life you can go here.

Bl. Chiara Luce, pray for us!

Have a great summer filled with many adventures!

- more great articles to come in the newspaper throughout June! The students are wonderful writers!

- info about "How to Train Your Soul" the Catholic summer program for our parish. July 5-9. Tons of fun while learning about their faith and the students won't want to miss the water fight on Friday! The students all brought home a registration form.

Well, we've stayed busy all the way through the last week of school. Last Tuesday, we had a baby shower for our spiritually adopted children. They will be born this month! The students enjoyed treats and games such as "Guess Which Candy Bar is in the Diaper?" We had a lot of fun! Then on Thursday, the students had their DARE graduation and Friday was the reward at the movie theater for meeting their raffle ticket goal!

On Monday, Mrs. Meng held the Clue Club, for all the students that read a mystery novel in the last month. Tuesday was our Teacher/8th grade Volleyball game, where the teachers dominated for the 130th year in a row. Tuesday we also did an interesting science experiment, trying to decide whether oobleck was a solid or a liquid. See for yourself. (And no, I have no idea what they are saying :)

We are down to the last week of school! And the students have finished their astronomy video project. They are all excellent, but we thought it would be fun to showcase our work here and ask YOU to be the judges! Parents, Grandparents, Godparents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Classmates, Teammates, Babysitters, Bus Drivers and Everybody else- we need YOU! Send Mr. Arnold an email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , with your name and your pick for the best video. I will only accept one vote from each email address. Please take into consideration which video is most creative and most informative when choosing. Thanks for your participation! Hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

I've been doing a lot of driving lately, so I decided
to grab a couple of the Catholic CD's from the
back of church. Last night, I listened to Building
Better Families by Matthew Kelly. It was
EXCELLENT. Not only does it have awesome
ideas to reflect upon, but Mr. Kelly's speaking
style is engaging and funny (with a cool Australian
accent). I'm convinced that if every family put into
practice just 1 of his 5 practical ways to build family
spirituality, our school would be TRANSFORMED.
One of his key ideas is families should try to pray
together, starting with one night a week and going
from there. He quotes this statistic that I thought
was amazing: We all know that currently 1 out of
every 2 marriages ends in divorce. For families that
pray together that statistic goes to 1 out of every
2000 marriages."

So strengthen your own marriage and teach your children how to pray as a family so they will have a strong marriage someday! Please consider borrowing this CD from the back of church! You won't regret it!

I honestly don't know how people memorized the Preamble before Schoolhouse Rock. This was very helpful to me in my high school government class. Hopefully you'll find it helpful too. Make sure you understand the difference between the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Bill of Rights for next week's test.

But apparently, it CAN be memorized without the song. This kid is too cute.

Speaking of government, next Thursday are the StuCo elections! Students who would like to run for 5th grade representative need to turn in their speech to Mrs. Campbell by Tuesday. There are some example here on the St. Pats YouTube channel.

To celebrate a year of hard work, the 5th
grade class took a road trip on Tuesday to
Rolling Hills Wildlife Adventure outside of
Salina. Thanks to St. Swithyn's intercession,
the cloudy skies didn't rain on us all day.
We had a great time going to the zoo and
the museum. We even had a surprise visitor:
Madie Wilborn! Check out all the new photos
in the Picture Gallery.

Our class has a new project for the end of the year: create a video to help students learn about the planets in our solar system. Today we filmed the footage we will edit in Windows Movie Maker. We hope to have them on the website by the last week of school. Here are two examples that we watched that took very different approaches. More examples can be viewed at St. Pats YouTube channel.

Thousands of maple seeds flew through the air as the 5th, 1st and Kindergarten classes witnessed seeds getting scattered by the wind. The students brought helicopter seeds from home and enjoyed this fun event on a beautiful day!

Every year of teaching brings new and exciting elements that add to the classroom. This school year has been the Year of Video. With such a theatrical and musical bunch of students, plus a webpage to showcase our performances, we have used our video camera more this year than ever before. In the Link section, you'll find St. Pat's YouTube Channel. This will take you to not only all the videos we've made (under Uploads) but also to every video we've watched this year (under Favorites). Take a walk down memory lane!

As the year comes to a close, I'll be getting busier with other projects and I have a feeling this might be my last Link of the Week, making it an even 40. But maybe you'll email me some great suggestions for well-designed, fun and educational websites? We'll see.