To kick off Teacher Appreciation Week students surprised our teachers on Monday morning by delivering a popcorn snack to them. Thank you to our St. John's Social Committee for planning daily surprises to show our love and appreciation for our teachers!

Our amazing and generous Blue Jay families have done it once again!! Box upon box of gently used shoes totaling 453 pair were collected for the Aubrey Rose Foundation “Soles to Souls” shoe drive. One of our 8th grade students organized the shoe drive for St. John's as her Confirmation service project. A big thank you to all for your generous donations to help those in need.

Shouts of joy abounded as the playset was reopend last Friday for recesses! Revised safety guidelines are in place for Covid protocol.

Shout out to our two eighth grade students who have been earning money for our school in their free time by entering thousands of Coca-Cola codes into the My Coke Rewards program! We are grateful for their service to our school and they plan to continue entering the codes for St. John's even after graduating in May!

Thank you to Nate's Toy Box for their gift of books to our second and third grade students. Click on article to learn more about Nate's Toy Box.

Kindergarten students celebrated their 100th day of school in character. Click on the article title to see more of their amazing costumes.

Wow!!! We are bursting with pride at the unbelievable amount of baby items and $1,336.97 in cash donations our school families collected last week for the school-wide Catholic Schools Week Service Project to benefit Pregnancy Center West. Kudos to Ms. Dreyer’s 28 seventh grade homeroom students for collecting $367 in cash donations, many of which came directly from the student’s’ own piggy banks. A heartfelt thank you to everyone, including Mrs. Norma Rapien, who hand knitted baby blankets for us to include with our donations.

Thank you to our school and parish communities for a successful Open House last Sunday. If you or anyone you know was unable to make it last week, we are happy to schedule a private tour for interested families. ***PRIORITY REGISTRATION for preschool is Friday, Feb 5, 2021 and for K-8 Friday, March 5, 2021.

Fifth grade art students recently talked about how art can express community. They discovered how Keith Haring drew the human figure with very little detail because he wanted to emphasize that all humans deserve to love and to be loved. Students practiced drawing one another in Keith's unique style as classmates took turn posing as model figures.

Remember those beautiful cards that our junior high students made for the patients of Heartland Hospice? Mrs. Wolf brought her therapy dog, Hank, to visit sixth grade and tell them a little bit about the hospice and how visits from Hank and their heartfelt greeting cards are so much appreciated by the patients.

Because junior high students haven't been able to safely go out into the community to do our traditional service projects, they used their time and talents to make greeting cards for Heartland Hospice patients in the area. These beautiful and heartfelt cards will certainly bring some joy and smiles to the recipients.

Kindergarten students had some great ideas of what they would do for our great country if they were President. Click on the article title to view more photos.

The annual Halloween parade may have been cancelled due to Covid precautions, but our preschoolers enjoyed a visit from Father Pete and his parish staff when they came over to "trick or treat" with our preschoolers.

For many years, Mr. Anthony Eichhold made blue and white rosaries and donated them to St. John's for our kindergarten students. Sadly, we recently discovered that Mr. Eichhold passed away over the summer. His wife and son generously decided to continue his passion for making rosaries and we received them last week for each of our kindergarteners. We learned in talking to Mrs. Eichhold, that over the past 15 years, her husband made over 184,000 rosaries and donated them to various local catholic schools and other establishments.

Learning about fire safety looked a little different this year for kindergarten as Mrs. Osborn dressed the part with equipment borrowed from Mike Hayes. Although we missed having our Colerain firefighters come visit us and share safety tips, students enjoyed this unit with their teachers standing in as the firemen.

Even with the computer lab currently closed, there’s no stopping Mrs. Robbins from having some educational fun with her classes!! Thank you to our 8th graders for helping her to draw giant chalk keyboards on the blacktop for 2nd grade to practice typing their names using their feet to jump around from key to key.

For the immediate future, St. John's students will be learning at home via the Google Classroom platform on Wednesdays. Distance learning on Wednesdays allows for our cleaning crew to thoroughly disinfect the school building and gives everyone a break from wearing a mask all day. Students in grades 4-8 were issued school laptops to use both in the classroom and for distance learning.

We are ready for our first day of school tomorrow, Thursday, September 3! Health and safety measures have been implemented around the building for COVID-19 protocol. Just to name a few; partitions have been installed on preschool and kindergarten tables, directional floor arrow stickers have been added for safe traffic flow, desks have been safely spaced apart, cafeteria seating has been modified, maintenance will be spraying disinfectant regularly throughout the school day, and air purifying units have been installed on all air conditioning units.

While learning from home for the last few months of the school year, our talented students created some amazing artwork! Click on the article title to access a link to our Virtual Art Gallery of projects created during distance learning.

Congratulations to our Class of 2020 graduates! A "modified" in person Graduation Ceremony, including a Baccalaureate Mass, was held on June 15th for our students and their immediate families. Thank you to the Birkle family for creating the wonderful slideshow of grade school memories.