Monday Morning Memo

What a great start to the new school year! Your children have taken to the new year as if they were waiting for it to begin. We are so proud of them and of the faculty whose preparations have helped make the transition from summer to school so smooth.

Thanks for the great attendance at Middle School Curriculum Night! Our faculty members appreciate the opportunity to share with you their plans and to get to know you better. We sincerely appreciate your support.

Have you met Gingie Watt, our new Lower School Division Head? If not, please join us for a very informal “Meet and Greet” this Wednesday, Aug. 31, at 8:15 a.m. Gingie is working hard to learn the names of students and their parents and would love the opportunity to get to know you!

This week is ECC (Early Childhood Center) Curriculum Night on Thursday, September 1.

Please come hear what your child’s teachers have to say and ask your questions of them. The schedule is as follows:

6:00 – 6:25 PM Meet and greet Mrs. Abio and the specials teachers in the ECC Commons. Curriculum packets for Art, Spanish ,Music, Library and PE will be available.

6:30 PM – Curriculum Night Begins in your child’s classroom.

Carpool request for the inner parking lot circle: We tend to block up our parking lot for all carpools, making it difficult for people to enter or exit the lot during these times. Please line up as far to the right as you can and leave a lane for people to move through the lot. Blocking the turning points makes things especially difficult. Also, parents coming to afternoon carpool from the north should consider taking Broadway to 43^rd St. and entering the carpool line from the south. The wait over the crest of the hill on Main St. is very dangerous, as you cannot be seen when coming over the hill.

Now you can subscribe to our SPEDS blogs by email or RSS feed. Both options can be found in the right column of any of our blogs. Follow by Email will deliver new blog entries to your email box as soon as they are published. Just enter your email address, and click on the link in the confirmation email that will come from Feedburner Email Subscription. To add a blog to your RSS feed, choose the feed reader you want to use in the Subscribe To menu on each blog.

The flyers for Lifetouch on-line ordering of school pictures is coming home TODAY!

Please look for it in your child’s backpack so you can order individual and class photos.

We have helpers this year from Cristo Rey High School! Five students will come on Fridays and one on Tuesday to work with specific teachers in the school – one in Admissions, one in Spanish, one in fourth grade, one in fifth grade, and one on Tuesday and one on Friday in ECC. We are delighted to partner with Cristo Rey to provide these students with work experience and to give additional attention to our students! To learn more about this great school and its mission, go to www.cristoreykc.org.

Service Club: Our first Service Club outing for the school year will be this Tuesday, August 30. We will meet from 4:00 - 5:30 pm at Grand Avenue Temple. We will learn about their congregation, which is 85% homeless, and participate in an act of service. Thus far we have 20 students/parents participating. To enroll, email: pbauer@speds.org. Directions will be emailed.

Parent Bible Study: We are offering a four week Bible study focusing on the book of Ephesians from 12:00-1:30 pm beginning Wednesday, September 7 in the Garden Room of the church. Please bring your Bible. To enroll, email: pbauer@speds.org.

This Friday, September 2nd will be the first of four Eucharist services we will celebrate with students in grades three through eight. (The younger students will be having their Friday service in the ECC Commons on this day.) All students are invited to the altar for a blessing or to participate in the Eucharist and parents, as always, are welcome to join us. We will also be commissioning the students and faculty for our new school year!

Family Fun Fest is a special event for the children that the Parents’ Guild hosts each fall.This year the fun begins on Friday, Sept. 16^th at 3:45 and goes until 6:30, weather permitting. There will be food and treats galore as our eighth grades and their families will be selling hot dogs, hamburgers, grilled sausages (all cooked by our own Ron Morton), chips, popcorn, cookies and drinks. One of the highlights for the children is the Cake Walk, for which we will need at least 75 cakes or other baked goods like cookies, brownies, pies or other fun sweets. If you would be willing to bake for this event, please drop off your donation in the morning carpool line on Friday, September 16^th. Volunteers will collect them in both lines. Other activities will include midway games, carnival rides, hair painting, and temporary tattoos.

Tickets can be purchased on line in advance with a credit card (for which you will receive free bonus tickets) at https:/stpeds.ejoinme.org/FFF2011 until Monday, September 12th, or the day of FFF with cash/ check!

A message from our rector, Fr. Stan Runnels: Team St. Paul's KCMO is riding in the LiveStrong Foundation Tour de BBQ 2011 in Kansas City. It is the goal of our ride to remember that cancer is about people, real people -- people we know and about whom we care. We invite you to send to Team St. Paul’s names of friends and family members who are cancer survivors, patients, or victims. We will print all the names we receive on our ride jerseys as a way of honoring and remembering those persons. Team St. Paul's hopes to collect 2500 names to print on our jerseys. We invite you to consider sending a $1 per name donation. These donations will go, 100%, to the University of Kansas Cancer Center and the LiveStrong Foundation (We pay all of our own expenses for the ride). So send names for our jerseys to teamstpaulskcmo@gmail.com and, if you want, send your donation (payable to Tour de BBQ) to Team St. Paul's KCMO, 11 E 40th St, KCMO, 64111 or, online, at http://public.eventunited.com/kcsc/TourdeBBQ2011/TeamFundraising.aspx?tid=8397 (Scroll down to see our team message). Coach Kurt and Fr. Stan are campus contacts for Team St. Paul’s. If you want to learn more about the Tour de BBQ, http://tourdebbq.com/. We will post updates and pictures on Facebook at Team St. Paul's KCMO--Tour de BBQ 2011 . Thanks!