January 30, 2023

Dear St. Raphael School Families and Friends, 

Welcome to Catholic Schools Week!  It’s a fun time to celebrate our students, teachers, pastor, and parents! We have fun activities all week long for our school. Monday, we honor our country and community with red, white, and blue day! On Tuesday, we celebrate Mass with our Catholic school partners!  Wednesday will be a hit as we participate in Global School Play Day.  College day will be on Thursday as kids will sport a college t-shirt or sweatshirt.  We will end the week with sports day. Students can wear their favorite team jersey or shirt!  

The Global Day of School Play is Wednesday, February 2.  Students can bring toys, games, sports equipment, etc. but we are not allowing anything with screens or batteries.  Everyone will be active all day with unstructured play. What is unstructured play? Unstructured play is a set of activities that children dream up on their own without adult intervention. This type of play rarely has predetermined goals or objectives but instead allows children to create their own rules and establish their own limits. Recent research suggests that children should experience twice as much unstructured time as structured play experiences and touts the benefits of unstructured play:

• It provides opportunities for children to master elements of the world on their own terms.
• It develops self-determination, self-esteem, and the ability to self-regulate — all vital elements of emotional development.
• It fosters social competence, respect for rules, self-discipline, aggression control, problem solving skills, leadership development, conflict resolution, and playing by the rules.
• It stimulates the senses and allows children to discover the different textures and elements in the world.
• It provides fertile ground to cultivate creativity and imagination.
• It enhances cognitive understandings.
• It builds strength, coordination, and cardiovascular fitness and moderates childhood obesity and its associated health complications.
• It sees boredom as a vehicle for children to create their own happiness, enhance inventiveness, and develop self-reliance.

We are excited to participate in such an important day!

Get ready for our annual auction, Wanted on Saturday, February 25^th at the Carriage Museum. This is an event that you don’t want to miss…it’s always memorable.  Purchase your tickets here.
Important Dates:

January 30 – February 4: Catholic Schools Week

January 31: Mass at Bishop Diego High School at 10:00 am

February 1: Global School Play Day

February 22: School Mass at 10:45 am

February 25: School Auction

In Mary’s Love,

Ms. Michelle Limb, Principal 

A Prayer for Our School
Loving Father, Thank you for all who are part of our school.  Please grant them your encouragement, wisdom, and peace. Strengthen teachers with heavy workloads. May they be firm, yet patient, expecting excellence but forgiving mistakes. May they support their students, playing to strengths, helping with struggles, and motivating them to do their best. Comfort and restore those living under shadows of unhappiness, abuse, pain, or fear.  May many find faith discovering their identity in You and knowing Your amazing grace in their lives. Please pour out Your blessings upon our whole school community. In Jesus name. Amen