On the third Sunday of Advent, families gather in St. Peter's Square in Italy.  The Holy Father welcomes all and extending a blessing to the crowd and the Infant Jesus figures raised to him.  Likewise, kindergartners fashioned Jesus figures from clay, set in a crib of straw and wool.   Father Bob visited kindergarten speaking to them of the meaning of Christmas and blessing the Christ Child figures. 

Congratulations to EagleStorm, our second Robotics Club team to qualify for the FLL State Championship! This team of 4th and 5th graders scored very well in all four aspects of competition at their qualifying tournament on Saturday. They were the youngest team there and earned 7th place out of 19 teams present, from all over Rhode Island.   Our two teams, NovaShock and EagleStorm, will now go on to compete at the State Championship at Roger Williams University on January 16th. What a tremendous asset to our St. Joseph School science program!  Check out the SJS Robotics page  here: http://nbreault.weebly.com/sjs-robotics.html 

​Grade 5 had so much fun studying simple machine in Science class today.   With the help of principal Woodmansee, a maul, a wedge and a mallet, we learned how to split wood by using our hands and some simple tools.  A good tool extends the power of your hand.  Tools are all around us.   A fork to whip in egg, a needle to sew a hole, and a hoe to mix sand and cement are all pretty amazing tools.  

​Today we focused on splitting wood.  We learned about effort and put-put the effort in arm resistance, the force of splitting wood. We determined that it’s easier to split wood with a maul instead of a mallet and a wedge.  This is because of the better leverage because of the longer leverage effort arm, heavier head of this tool.  “This made the lesson so much easier to understand than reading it out of a book.”-One student said.  “Totally one of the best Science class yet!”-Another student stated.