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✓ From the School✓ Home School Association✓ Spirituality Opportunities✓ Nurse’s Nook✓ Counselor’s Corner✓ Scouting
Important Dates
10/9: 8 AM Mass, 6th Grade10/12: NO SCHOOL10/13 – 10/23: MAP Assessments10/16: 8 AM Mass, 5th Grade10/21: Social event at Burnt Mills Cider Co.
From the Principal
Pray for us!
Dear SJS Families,
I hope you were able to join your children’s teachers at ourVirtual Back to School Night event. Thank you for your positive feedback!
I hope you all received the invitation to our social event at the Burnt Mills Cider Company on Wednesday, October 21 and can joinus! If you have not had a chance to RSVP yet, please click on the “Thankful Vibes” image on the next page.
This week, we studied the virtue of Kindness. Through prayer, classroom discussion, and practice, our students learned how they can practice speaking, thinking, and acting kindly (even when someone is not being kind to us!). Congratulations to the following students who most exemplified Kindness this week:
Liam Mulrane, Teagan Rogers, Hannah RoughneenParker Mulrane, Victoria Kurylko, Gabriella CardoneCameron Scott, Nolan Lawlor, Carmello Pytell-EstevezNatalia Hekiert, Eddie Collins, Grace SandomenicoVeronica Hekiert, Justin DeAngelis, Erin JacobsIsabella Reyes, Jackie Adler, Amir Mejia
Please see in the next pages more information about what’s happening at Saint James School.
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Florendo
Kindness
Saint Aelred of Rivaulx
Saint Veronica
Saint Camillus de Lellis
Saint Martin De Porres
From the School
Back
YEARBOOK SALESThe 2019-2020 yearbook can be purchased online through Friday, October 9. Please place your order soon!! The cost is $30. Orders will distributed to the teacher of the oldest child.
Playground Duty VolunteersWe are able to start signing up volunteers for outdoor recess. We would love for you to help. You can help
as little or as much as you like. If you have fulfilled your volunteer requirements, you can sign up right
away. For all new volunteers, you must go through the fingerprint clearance process, attend a Virtus:
Protecting God's Children training session, and complete some additional forms. St. James is offering
Virtus training on October 8th and October 14th at 7pm. Go to this link to register
**Please note:** The forms and instructions for the fingerprint clearance process have recently changed.
The volunteer forms on the SJS website are not yet current. A Honeywell email alert will be issued to all
parents when the volunteer information has been updated on the school website in the next week. All
new volunteers can get started by attending the Virtus session. If you have any questions about the
fingerprint clearance process or volunteer requirements, please contact Carolanne Patetta, at
For questions about playground duty, contact Cindy Galiani @ sjsplaygroundreminder.gmail.com for any
questions.
Home-SchoolBack
It’s October and the Box Tops competition is
on! The class that raises the most Box Top
money gets a dress down day!
BUT WAIT!!!! Something is different!!!!
The Box Tops program changed to become
digital-only. Participating brands changed
their packaging from a traditional Box Tops
clip to the new Box Tops label. St. James
needs all of you to please, download the Box
Tops app and start scanning your receipts. If
you already have the Box Tops app, please
add St. James as your school.
HERE’S HOW IT WORKS: Buy
participating products and use the Box Tops
mobile app to scan your store receipt. The
app identifies eligible products and
automatically adds Box Tops to your school's
earnings online. Tap the STAR and write in
your child’s class. Even if you’re shopping
online or doing grocery pickup, you can still
submit your e-receipts and earn Box Tops.
Twice a year, our school gets a check!
Your earnings may seem small, but they really do add up. The more people that
participate, the bigger the impact we can make. Attached is the Box Tops Overview.
Little by little, we can help make a big difference!
Please download the Box Tops App today and start scanning!
Thank you for your support,
The HSA
Home-SchoolBack
Spirituality Opportunities
Back
October is the Month of the ROSARY!
Our Lady of Fatima begged us to pray the Rosary every day. Let's use the power of the Rosary to
pray for conversions and peace in our Nation.
Following are six different ways to pray the Holy Rosary with devotion to honor the Queen of the
Most Holy Rosary during this special month dedicated to Mary:
• Pray the rosary daily after morning Mass or privately with friends and family.
• Pray the rosary during the day—try not to postpone it until the end of the day or bedtime.
• If possible, use a book like “Holy Rosary” or an audio recording on line of the Rosary to help
you enter more deeply into each mystery.
• When you pray the family rosary, especially with young children, use a picture book or app that
shows an image for each mystery of the rosary.
• Make a pilgrimage with your family to a nearby church or shrine dedicated to the Blessed
Mother:
• Blue Army Shrine - Washington NJ
• Dominican Rosary Shrine - Summit NJ
"The Rosary is the most beautiful and the most rich in graces of all prayers; it is the prayer that
touches most the Heart of the Mother of God...and if you wish peace to reign in your homes, recite
the family Rosary." -POPE SAINT PIUS X
WEEKLY RECITATION OF THE ROSARY
Plague in Rome ends after Pope St. Gregory the Great l
eads a procession with a painting of Our Lady by
Saint Luke (591)
“…there is no problem, as difficult as it may be, that
we cannot resolve at this time by praying the Holy Rosary.”
– Sr. Lucia of Fatima
Join us every Wednesday 2:30 pm
in St. James Chapel
Spirituality Opportunities
Back
Nurse’s Nook Back
The students continue to do a great job with their masks and thank you for making sure it
fits well and for providing an extra mask for your child each day.
Some students are experiencing dry and scratchy throats from masks. Please send in
plenty of water so they stay hydrated.
Sometimes, seasonal allergy symptoms can be confused with COVID-19 symptoms. If your
child has been diagnosed with seasonal allergies, please follow your doctor's advice
regarding allergy medication and other interventions in order to minimize their allergy
symptoms and avoid confusion of illness symptoms.
**New Jersey requires all children aged 5 and under to receive a flu vaccine by December
31 or they can be excluded from school. Please send in documentation when your child
receives the flu vaccine. Children over 5 years of age are not required to receive the
vaccine for school attendance.
**Tdap and Meningitis vaccines are required for students in 6th grade (11 years old).
Please send in documentation when your child receives these vaccines.
Please remember that all of our classrooms are peanut and nut free!
Counselor’s Corner BackWhat to Do (and Not Do) When Children Are Anxious
How to respect feelings without empowering fears
When children are chronically anxious, even the most well-meaning parents can fall into a negative
cycle and, not wanting a child to suffer, actually exacerbate the youngster’s anxiety. It happens when
parents, anticipating a child’s fears, try to protect her from them. Here are pointers for helping children
escape the cycle of anxiety.
1. The goal isn’t to eliminate anxiety, but to help a child manage it.
None of us wants to see a child unhappy, but the best way to help kids overcome anxiety isn’t to try to
remove stressors that trigger it. It’s to help them learn to tolerate their anxiety and function as well as
they can, even when they’re anxious. And as a byproduct of that, the anxiety will decrease or fall away
over time.
2. Don’t avoid things just because they make a child anxious.
Helping children avoid the things they are afraid of will make them feel better in the short term, but it
reinforces the anxiety over the long run. If a child in an uncomfortable situation gets upset, starts to
cry—not to be manipulative, but just because that’s how she feels—and her parents whisk her out of
there, or remove the thing she’s afraid of, she’s learned that coping mechanism, and that cycle has the
potential to repeat itself.
3. Express positive—but realistic—expectations.
You can’t promise a child that his fears are unrealistic—that he won’t fail a test, that he’ll have fun ice
skating, or that another child won’t laugh at him during show & tell. But you can express confidence
that he’s going to be okay, he will be able to manage it, and that, as he faces his fears, the anxiety level
will drop over time. This gives him confidence that your expectations are realistic, and that you’re not
going to ask him to do something he can’t handle.
4. Respect her feelings, but don’t empower them.
It’s important to understand that validation doesn’t always mean agreement. So if a child is terrified
about going to the doctor because she’s due for a shot, you don’t want to belittle her fears, but you also
don’t want to amplify them.You want to listen and be empathetic, help her understand what she’s
anxious about, and encourage her to feel that she can face her fears. The message you want to send is,
“I know you’re scared, and that’s okay, and I’m here, and I’m going to help you get through this.”
5. Don’t ask leading questions.
Encourage your child to talk about his feelings, but try not to ask leading questions— “Are you anxious
about the big test? Are you worried about the science fair?” To avoid feeding the cycle of anxiety, just
ask open-ended questions: “How are you feeling about the science fair?”
Counselor’s Corner Back6. Don’t reinforce the child’s fears.
What you don’t want to do is be saying, with your tone of voice or body language: “Maybe this is
something that you should be afraid of.” Let’s say a child has had a negative experience with a dog.
Next time she’s around a dog, you might be anxious about how she will respond, and you might
unintentionally send a message that she should, indeed, be worried.
7. Encourage the child to tolerate her anxiety.
Let your child know that you appreciate the work it takes to tolerate anxiety in order to do what he
wants or needs to do. It’s really encouraging him to engage in life and to let the anxiety take its natural
curve. We call it the “habituation curve”—it will drop over time as he continues to have contact with the
stressor. It might not drop to zero, it might not drop as quickly as you would like, but that’s how we get
over our fears.
8. Try to keep the anticipatory period short.
When we’re afraid of something, the hardest time is really before we do it. So another rule of thumb
for parents is to really try to eliminate or reduce the anticipatory period. If a child is nervous about
going to a doctor’s appointment, you don’t want to launch into a discussion about it two hours before
you go; that’s likely to get your child more keyed up. So just try to shorten that period to a minimum.
9. Think things through with the child.
Sometimes it helps to talk through what would happen if a child’s fear came true—how would she
handle it? A child who’s anxious about separating from her parents might worry about what would
happen if they didn’t come to pick her up. So we talk about that. If your mom doesn’t come at the end
of soccer practice, what would you do? “Well I would tell the coach my mom’s not here.” And what
do you think the coach would do? “Well he would call my mom. Or he would wait with me.” A child
who’s afraid that a stranger might be sent to pick her up can have a code word from her parents that
anyone they sent would know. For some kids, having a plan can reduce the uncertainty in a healthy,
effective way.
10. Try to model healthy ways of handling anxiety.
There are multiple ways you can help kids handle anxiety by letting them see how you cope with
anxiety yourself. Kids are perceptive, and they’re going to take it in if you keep complaining on the
phone to a friend that you can’t handle the stress or the anxiety. I’m not saying to pretend that you
don’t have stress and anxiety, but let kids hear or see you managing it calmly, tolerating it, feeling good
about getting through it.
Clark Goldstein, PhD
Souce: childmind.org
Scouting Back
