Dear friends of the Stella School!
The school year is coming to an end and the last weeks were again full of excitement.
Construction of the Campus in DonauCity is progressing rapidly. The building is still growing inwards and downwards, soon it will also be going upwards!
© PicMyPlace
We are happy about the excellent performance of our students – e.g. our official Individual Competence Measurements (IKM) are above the Austrian average. Congratulations! At the same time, the children do a lot of interesting things and there is joy everywhere. The Gymnasium held an excellent Leadership Day, organized entirely by the students themselves. Our elementary school classes went on beautiful excursions and we also had our traditional family pilgrimage to Maria Grün in Prater – school and kindergarten together. In Seebenstein everything is being prepared for the new secondary school, which will start in Seebenstein this fall.
And: We are also working on the preparation of another new location, in the city of Salzburg. There, too, an elementary school will be opened. It will be located in the Maxglan district, initially with a multi-grade class – a model with which we had also started the schools and Vienna and Seebenstein. If you are interested in enrolling, please contact us as soon as possible (info@stella-dc.at).
Last but not least, I would like to mention that again some very generous people have supported the Stella Education Project. We are enormously grateful for this! Again and again we come across people who deeply understand that it is not about larger or smaller donations of money, but about contributing to an investment in the young minds of the future. All the private schools with a long and fruitful tradition were able to come into being because “at some point” “someone” put money in their hands to make Christian education possible. And today, this same attitude is needed again. We are used to the idea that education costs “nothing”. But behind every free access to education there are financings, which are raised from the society, mostly invisibly; with private schools just visibly. A big thank you to all those who are involved in this project and who inspire others to get involved and thus “make a school” – in the best and double sense of the word!
I hope you enjoy reading the articles and wish you all the best for the last weeks of the school year!
Sincerely yours
Heidi Burkhart & the team of Stella International School
Contents
- Stella Seebenstein
- After-school care (Vienna)
- Kindergarten (Vienna)
- Primary School (Vienna)
- Secondary School (Vienna)
Stella Seebenstein
At the beginning of May, we were visited by eight young adults from HOME Passau, who are currently participating in a discipleship school there. They helped us with the care of our garden and with the clearing out of the future middle school classes. Thank you so much for that! 😊
On May 13, we celebrated the First Holy Communion of 6 children in our school chapel. It was a wonderful celebration that we were able to experience together with our school chaplain.
On May 25, we were happy to invite all the moms to our Mother’s Day breakfast. The children rehearsed a dance and prepared a delicious breakfast buffet – and made their moms very happy!
At this year’s Seebenstein Run, our school took part for the first time. Imelda and Andreas each made it to 3rd place! Congratulations!
After-school care (Vienna)
The after-school children visited the City Farm in Augarten. There they took a garden experience tour on the topic of wild bees & beneficial insects. They walked through the gardens, looked at wild bees and other beneficial insects and learned where they hide in the garden, why we welcome them and how we can help them.
Kindergarten (Wien)
In the kindergarten, the month of May was dedicated to our mothers.
After Mother’s Day weekend, we invited all the moms for breakfast. The children baked muffins the day before. The moms were then allowed to enjoy their breakfast together with the children in the group. In addition, we played, painted and looked at everything. It’s not every day that you have a visit from your mom in the kindergarten, after all.
In May, we especially celebrate our Lady of God. There is a small Marian altar that is always decorated with flowers by the children, and there are also special activities in the groups on this theme.
In one group, the children were able to experience that we can always trust in the protection of Mary and that she always spreads her mantle over us. The children looked at pictures of the protective mantle Madonna and were then allowed to place their own picture on Mary’s mantle.
Primary School (Vienna)
The children of the 2nd grade have been working on their Mother’s Day gift. This year, their mothers received a beautiful flower vase made of wood. They sawed, sanded, glued and of course helped each other a lot.
A special highlight was the English lesson of the 3A with Amelia. She is from Kansas in America and is currently visiting Vienna for 4 weeks. She told the children many exciting things about her home country. At the end the children played “heads up, seven up” – a typical game in American schools.
At the end of April / beginning of May, the second classes invited their parents to the school to present their profession. It was not only exciting, but also thrilling and educational. We are grateful to gain many insights into our parents’ education and jobs. We experienced great presentations and also got to test out some materials. Thank you to our parents!
As part of their bee project 🐝 the 2a visited the beekeeping school in Donaupark. They learned about the tasks of a beekeeper and were also able to take a look inside the beehive.
During the “Hello Car” excursion organized by ÖAMTC, the children learned the formula “reaction distance + braking distance = stopping distance” through self-experience. What was especially exciting was the ride-along and that the children were allowed to make an emergency stop from the passenger seat.
A rainy but educational trip with a vital lesson for their own journey to school.
Once a year, Austria-wide mandatory standardized tests are conducted in mathematics and German. These individual competence measurements – IKM tests for short – apply exclusively to the 3rd and 4th grades at the primary level.
As in the previous year, the results were above the Austrian average, which makes us very happy! We congratulate our diligent students and thank the class teachers for their solid and intensive work with the children.
Secondary School (Vienna)
One of the highlights of the school year is the Leadership Day, which took place for the 2nd time this year at Stella-Gymnasium on May 4!
On this day, the students take most of the responsibility for the planning and execution of this event: During the welcome, Teresita and Theodor explained our school concept and then led through the program. The program was very varied and colorful – songs by the school choir, acrobatic performances, poems, a play, and much more.
A highlight was the presentation of the book project and the subsequent auction of the last copies of the book, which was spontaneously initiated by Johannes and Antonius from the 2nd grade – the proceeds for the sale will be donated to the earthquake victims in Syria and Turkey.
Some students received awards and small gifts for their special efforts for the benefit of others in the school community.
At the buffet, which was served by our students, the guests had the opportunity to get to know each other and to finish the event in a relaxed atmosphere.
Although the temperatures were quite fresh, our 4th Stella pilgrimage to Maria Grün in Prater took place on May 13, 2023. Together with the Stella Gymnasium, a devotion was arranged in the church there to keep this family tradition of our school high. As every year, everyone signed our pilgrimage book as a small remembrance of this day. Thank you to all the families who participated.
“The planetarium was very exciting, we learned a lot about distances and times. We were accompanied by two professors. We had a challenge not to fall asleep. Not everyone made it because the chairs were very comfortable.”
Field report of a student about the 1st grade visit to the planetarium
On Monday, 22.5., we had a lecture by Mr. Wegerer, the emergency aid coordinator from Hilfswerk International, at the end of our book project in the high school.
In total, more than 1,352.14 euros could be transferred to Hilfswerk International for the earthquake victims in Syria and Turkey within the framework of the book project “Exciting Stories”.
In a gripping presentation, Mr. Wegerer told us about the situation of the people in the crisis area and also explained to the children how the donation could help the school there. The questions did not want to stop, at the end the students thanked Mr. Wegerer with a stormy applause for the interesting stories and photos.
This semester, the 1st grade focused on color theory and its basics. In addition to independently mixing colors from the primary colors, everyday objects were also collected to create their own color wheel, which now hangs on a wall in the school.
Another focus in 1st grade visual education was perspective drawing. Some exercises at school were followed by a trip to the park around the corner, where the students could test their skills outdoors.
The 2nd grade class studied the history and the main features of the comic format in visual education. Afterwards, one comic after the other was drawn and enthusiastically presented to each other.
After successfully passing the theoretical and practical test for the drill press, all 1st grade students in technical and textile work received their drill press driver’s license and are now allowed to work with it on their own.
This semester, the 2nd grade had the task of planning and implementing their personal dream room in a shoebox on the right scale. The free use of a wide variety of materials motivated the entire class to implement their own dream ideas.
