Extracurricular Activities

Altar Servers assist at liturgical services that include weekend Masses, funerals, weddings, and prayer services.  Both boys and girls in St. Bede School and CCD are invited to participate in this volunteer activity in the spring of the fourth grade.  New servers are paired with veteran servers for one week of serving during the summer before being scheduled.  Servers range in age from 5th grade through high school.

The Art Club is a 5-10 week after school class where students interested in extra art do projects and activities inspired by the theme for the session. A variety of traditional and non-traditional art supplies are utilized and the sessions alternate between grade levels.

The St. Bede chess club aims to generate a lifetime of enjoyment and love of chess – the oldest sport/game in western civilization! The SBCC is open to all players: grades 1-8, girls and boys, beginners to advance.  The members meet Thursday after school for 1 hour from September to April. Besides instruction, SBCC sponsors interclub competition for small prizes and awards.  It also encourages its players to enter local interscholastic tournaments in order to challenge their ability and to make new friends.

The St. Bede Children’s Choir is open to children in grades 3-8 and meets on Fridays after school from 2:45-3:45pm.  The Children’s Choir sings at the Family Mass at 10am on the 1st Sunday of each month and on special occasions throughout the year such as the Catholic Schools Week Mass and Christmas Eve. The children also have opportunities to join with the Adult Choir for Masses. Children are taught vocal techniques, solfege, rhythms, learn anthems, and have opportunities to cantor at Masses.

The Boy Scouts of America is one of the nation’s largest and most prominent values-based youth development organizations, providing programs for young people that build character, trains them in the responsibilities of participating citizenship and develops personal fitness. For more than 100 years, Boy Scouts of America has helped build future leaders by combining educational activities and lifelong values with fun.

St. Bede Scout Programs:
Cub Scouts: For children in Grades 1-5, Cub Scouting is the foundation of our organization and involves the whole family as parents pitch in to plan and deliver activities.
Boy Scouts: For youth 11-17 years old, this is the traditional Scouting experience. While there’s guidance from experienced leaders, Boy Scouts take their own lead, exploring places they’ve never been as they dive into the rugged world of outdoor adventure.

The mission of Girl Scouts is to build girls of courage, confidence, and character who make the world a better place.  As Girl Scouts, girls discover the fun, friendship, and power of girls together. Girls grow courageous and strong through a wide variety of enriching experiences, such as field trips, community service projects, cultural exchanges, and environmental stewardships.  Girl Scouts helps girls develop their full individual potential; relate to others with increasing understanding, skill, and respect; develop values to guide their actions and provide the foundation for sound decision making; and contribute to the improvement of society through their abilities, leadership skills, and cooperation with others.

Mad Science® is the world’s leading science enrichment provider, delivering unique science experiences that are as entertaining as they are educational. Mad Science encourages scientific literacy in an age when science is as vital as reading, writing and arithmetic.

Shake up a flask of fun in the lab as a junior chemist! This hands-on and interactive program of chemistry for children ages 5-12 is packed solid with cool reactions. Students put on goggles and change liquid to solid and back again. They get to handle laboratory tools, build and break molecules, and pick up some tricks on chemical changes.

Session 1 will run from Sept. 20-Oct. 25th and is open to students in grades K-6.  The time/day of this club is Tuesdays from 2:30-3:30 pm.  Students are typically dismissed from the main front doors on Edgerton Avenue. Please see the attached flyer for more details about the program. 

To register: https://pittsburgh.madscience.org/parents-details-a.aspx?regItemSessionID=368003 

Math Club is a time for exploratory learning for grades 3-5 with the help of several 6th grade volunteers. The students are given an opportunity to learn how to use Math manipulatives, including place value blocks, tangrams, linking cubes, and other fun tools. They will also have a chance to play Math many different math games including 24, Math Bingo, Math Baseball, and many others.

Actors in the Musical Theater Club engage in vocal instruction, choreography, and staging. Over the course of approximately two months, students attend rehearsals and prepare a final performance each year.

All 6th, 7th and 8th grade students are required to participate in the St. Bede Science Fair by completing a science project. This controlled experiment is to be designed using the scientific method.  With the guidance from parents and the teacher, the science project gives St. Bede students the opportunity to be scientists. They find a problem, research it, design an experiment to test a hypothesis, collect observations, and analyze the information to see if the hypothesis is valid. The completed project counts for approximately 50% of the student’s 2nd grading period Science grade.

The St. Bede Student Council is a service oriented organization that strives to uphold the Catholic Christian values of integrity, faithfulness, kindness, and charity. The council consists of four officers along with two representatives from grades 4-8 that are chosen by their classmates.

Sessions will be held on Tuesdays after school from 2:30-3:30 and will begin in November . Tennis club is open to students in grade 1-6.

The school yearbook is a project undertaken by volunteers in the 8th grade class. Students work from October through March to create the annual yearbook for the rest of the school. They take pictures of each grade throughout the year at lunch, recess, special events and in class. A computer program is used to design the layouts for each page and add the pictures, backgrounds and titles. Yearbooks are delivered and handed out to students at the end of the school year.  The 2023-2024 St. Bede School yearbook order deadline is Monday, April 1st so order yours HERE. 

NOTE: No extra copies will be available.

The St. Bede Middle School Youth Group meets every other week after school to dive deeper and grow in faith and love. Through service, activities, games, movies, discussions, etc. we strive to open our minds and hearts to God so that we may have a better relationship with Him. Some of our service activities include:

• Community Clean ups
• Visiting Soup Kitchens
• Collections for the Little Sisters of the Poor
• Food Bank
• Pumpkin Gleaning
• Cleaning up the grounds at the Homewood Cemetery
• Christmas Caroling for those in a nursing home or at the Children’s’ Institute
• Cards for people in a nursing home

Yoga for Kids is offered in the after school program at St. Bede for children in grades 1-4.  Sessions typically run 5-6 weeks long and are offered throughout the school year.  Kids will learn fun yoga poses and many breathing methods to keep their growing minds and bodies strong.  Kids’ yoga classes nurture relaxation and cultivate calmness, confidence and security.

The Zumba® Kids and Zumba® Kids Jr. programs are designed for and welcome ALL types of kids: girls/boys, active/inactive, overweight/underweight. Additionally, the Zumba® Kids and Zumba® Kids Jr. programs appeal to kids that are not necessarily attracted to traditional physical activities for kids. Will Norman, co-author of a recent study on school children and physical activities and director of the Young Foundation, a social think-tank in London, said: “Kids want to do much more informal sports like street running, parkour and Zumba®-type activities that are very flexible, can be done wearing different types of clothing or while listening to music and can be done individually. Competitive sports will work for some people. But if we want to get the most active, we need to change our thinking. We need a philosophy that’s driven by the people we are trying to target and not provide things that the most inactive don’t want to do.” Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/oct/01/competitive-team-sports-alienate-schoolchildrenThis club will be held on Thursdays from  2:45-3:45  for students in grades 1-5.