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.

A big thank you to our wonderful PTO for providing these personalized yard signs for each of our 44 members of the Class of 2020. Also, many thanks to the delivery team of faculty, staff, and parent volunteers for placing these in the yards of our graduates.

A surprise retirement parade for Mrs. Hayes, led by the Colerain Township Fire Department last night, brought over 50 cars past her house. Flowers, balloons, honks, and well wishes congratulated her for 23 years of teaching kindergarten at St. John’s. Congratulations to Mrs. Hayes on her retirement and we wish her all the best.

Although our annual PTO "Mornings with Mom" didn't quite look like what we had planned, students still celebrated their moms while they enjoyed some quality time and a special breakfast with her at home. We love our St. John's super moms! Click on the title of the article to see more photos.

Ms. Witzgall's second graders got outside yesterday to celebrate Earth Day and enjoy some beautiful sunshine. Some students played, rode their bikes or read a book, and others planted flower seeds and composted. May we all use earth’s resources rightly and wisely for generations to come.

Thank you to everyone who participated in our Virtual Talent Show last week. We loved seeing all the videos of your amazing talents! Please visit our Facebook page @St John the Baptist School or Instagram page @stjohnthebaptistschool to view all the videos.

Since one of the best parts of being schooled at home is staying in your pajamas all day, and last Friday, March 27, was supposed to be our annual Donuts with Dad celebration, we ended our Virtual Spirit Week with celebrating our dads from home in our jammies. We missed seeing all of our dads at school, but really enjoyed seeing all the photos. Visit our Facebook page to view the entire album from Donuts with Dad. Link in full story.

Thursday, March 26th was Jersey Day. Wow...we have a lot of Reds fans! Thanks for sharing the ❤️ for our Cincinnati Reds ⚾️ on the day that would have been Reds Opening Day.

We’ve got SPIRIT yes we do! In keeping with our Wednesday tradition of wearing Blue Jay spirit wear, students wore their blues on Wednesday, March 25th. Click on the title of this story to see more photos.

In honor of hair stylists and salon employees that have been affected by the shutting down of all salons due to the Corona-19 Pandemic, on Tuesday, March 24, we had some crazy hair-dos going on at home. Some of them made us laugh, and that is something we all need right now. Click on the title to view some CRAZY HAIR!

In an effort to keep our school families more connected, we decided to have a Virtual Home School Spirit Week. On Monday, March 23, students dressed as super heroes in honor of all doctors, nurses, hospital employees, first responders, grocery store employees and all other essential personnel. Click on the title to see more of our student super heroes.

Getting it done on day one of distance learning! Our students have set up school in their homes and thanks to technology today, are able to continue learning and complete assignments. Thank you to all our wonderful families for your cooperation, patience and understanding during these challenging times. We are truly all in this together. Want to see more photos? Just click on the title of this story. We would love to see more! Please send your distance learning photos to lheidorn@stjohnsdrschool.org. You might just see them featured on social media, in the newsletters or in the yearbook.

We recently welcomed accomplished author, Jeff Alt, to share with our students information about his books. History came alive for grades K-4 as they explored our national parks with time traveling Bubba Jones and his sister Hug-a-Bug, the main characters in Alt’s National Park book series, ”The Adventures of Bubba Jones.” Students especially enjoyed participating in several short interactive skits. Grades 5-8 had a more mature version of what Jeff Alt experienced while walking the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. They heard about his motivation for walking the trail, the preparation, how he accomplished the endeavor, and his encounters with nature's friends. Thank you to Jeff Alt for sharing your adventure and knowledge of National Parks. Also, a special thank you to all who supported our extra book fair in the fall to make this visit possible.

Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden brought a few small friends to share with our third and fourth grade classes. Third graders had their own little encounter with Mataco, a three banded armadillo and Cueball, a python snake, while fourth graders were entertained by Snuffles, a screaming hairy armadillo and Sapphire, a blue tongued skink. Thank you to our PTO for providing us with these fun learning enrichments!