Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Principals Epistle



 http://stmarksmilford.blogspot.com            
Calendar                   
10 Chapel at 9:15, PM Preschool chapel at 1PM
11 Runner’s Club until 4PM,
12 Market Day orders due, $1 Dress Down Day
14 St. Mark’s has services at 8AM, 10:30 AM and 6 PM
16 Runner’s Club meets until 4PM
17 Chapel at 9:15 AM, Preschool PM chapel at 1PM, Market Day 11:30 AM
18 Runner’s Club meets until 4PM

Prayer Families
Alaina S. (4), Ian S. (2), Carson H. (1), Grady H. (K), Ava B. (4), Addison B. (1)
Saint Salute
v A big Saint Salute to Laim J. (3) and Noah J. (6) for making their volunteer hours goal
v A big Saint Salute to A big Saint Salute to those students climbing the AR Wall of Fame: 
o   Ethan S. (7)                1,200 points                         
Notes
St. Mark’s Lutheran School begins the year with 160 students.  63 are in grades 1-8, 19 are in Kindergarten, and 78 are in 6 different preschool classes.  There are a few openings in Pre-2, Pre-3 PM, Pre-4 PM, and PK.  Kindergarten, grades 1-2 and 3-4 have waiting lists.
Being in school every day means your child won’t miss out on learning.  Try to schedule appointments and family trips outside of school hours.  If they ask to stay home “just because,” remind them of what they will miss, such as their reading group, art class, a club, or something else.  Explain that they can be absent only if they are sick or if there’s a family emergency.
Joke – What’s yellow and smells just like green paint? (answer at end of Epistle)

Important Dates to Know
17 Market Day 11:30 AM
25 Family Fun Night
Oct. 14-15  School Pictures
Family Fun Night
September 25 is our first Family Fun Night of the year.  Several display stations that show students different aspects of life during the 19th century will be presented along with hands-on learning activities for the students to see and experience the daily life and work of their 1800s counter parts. Students will be able to try a corn grinder, use a drop spindle, card wool, stitch embroidery, play Jacob’s Ladder, carry wooden buckets and more.  The fun starts at 6:30.  We hope to see you then.
Forms Due
The Emergency, Photo, Pickup, Doctor’s permission, and Medical Record forms are due.  The state requires us to have these forms. They may be placed in the red basket in the school hall, brought to the office, or given to me.
Preschool Drop Off-Pick Up Procedures
No student may enter the school before 8:55AM unless they are going to extended care.  The morning classes end at 11:30AM.  Late pickup fees apply after 11:35AM.  The afternoon classes may enter the building after 12:25 for 3’s and 4’s and after 12:35 for PK.  Afternoon classes dismiss at 3:00 PM except for PK that dismisses at 3:10.
Market Day
St. Mark’s has chosen a monthly fundraiser call Market Day.  They allow supporters to purchase high quality food products.  A percent is earned by our school.  An order form is was attached to last week’s Epistle.  Please ask a teacher or me if you have any questions.  Ordering online is very easy.
Dress Down Day for K-8
St. Mark’s usually has one dress down day per month.  Students in Kind. to grade 8 may pay $1 to dress down on Friday, September 12.  Please give your money to your teacher.  Students do not have to dress down on this day – it is optional.  No unchristian words, logos, or pictures are permitted on these days.
Fund Raisers
St. Mark’s usually has one major fund raiser each year.  This year we will not sell Christmas items.  Instead, we will hold a Walk-a-thon.  More information will be coming later.  Also, we have several small, on-going fund raisers.  We collect Box Tops for Education, used ink jet cartridges, and recycled paper (no cardboard).  Market Day is a monthly sale that requires families to order either online or via an order form (due this Friday).
Bible Study Info
A women's bible study small group is meeting on Wednesdays at 9:00 at Mimi's Cafe on Mason Montgomery road. We will be studying the book of James. Please contact Paula Schepmann (schepmann@gmail.com) for updated information if you are interested in attending as location may change month to month. 
Happy Birthday
10        Taylor S. (3)                           11        William G. (P4)
16        Ariella C. (K) & Kynlee W. (P4)
Classroom information
Mrs. Schulte (Pre-2)
We welcomed the children back for their second day at Preschool.  When they arrived, they saw some very ‘fishy’ things going on.  They could grab a pole and do some fishing, play with fish puzzles, and enjoy fish sorting games.  At Circle Time we shared some songs, dances, and of course, the MYSTERY BAG!  During Center Time we will enjoyed a Reading Pond complete with play water, stuffed pond animals, and lots of pond life books.  During Bible Time, we continued to share the Creation story and work on our creation books.  We worked on our color and shape of the month by making fish with dots for our classroom.  And during Outdoor Play, we blew and caught lots of fish bubbles.  
Mrs. Reynolds (PK)
Pre-K is excited to begin week 2!!! Last week we went over the classroom rules and started our daily routines! We were all very excited about the first week of school and it went very well!! We read "The Kissing Hand" by Audrey Penn to help with our first day jitters and made our own "kissing hands" which you can see displayed in the hallway. We also started an "All about me" book to get acquainted with one another.  This week we will be learning about the letter "F'" and all the words that begin with "F". We will also be working hard on writing our names.Our theme of the week is Friends and Family! We will be discussing what it means to be part of a family and what friendship is.  In bible we will be discussing the stories of Jonah and Joseph and how God used them as agents of truth!
Mrs. Frey (Pre-3,4)
Preschool will be focusing on letter F for family this week. 3’s will create Fall family trees and decorate a picture frame for a family portrait. 4’s will create a family class book and make tissue paper fish. We will continue to learn about God’s creation and how he made a special place for everything he created. We will discuss taking care of God’s creation and practice making good choices in the classroom.
Mrs. Sherman (K)
"The Garden is Closed" is the Kindergarten Bible lesson this week.  God created everything good, but we sin and sin changed everything!  During math, the class will create and extend patterns, explore volume and participate in math centers.  The boys and girls will be scientists as they conduct a color combining experiment.  They will observe, make predictions and record their results.  The class begins a fairy tale unit.  They will compare and contrast traditional and nontraditional versions.  The all day Kindergarteners wills also create, compare and measure beanstalks, mix paint colors and record results and complete Humpty Dumpty activities.
Mrs. Reisenbichler (1-2)
Our lessons this week in Jesus Time are about Jacob and his sons.  This is a great lesson in how God loves dysfunctional families as much as healthy family structures.  The two skills that need to be cultivated and exercised in family are love and forgiveness.  When these to skills prevail, dysfunction can be corrected.  "God demonstrates his love for us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."  This week we will be working on completing some of the activities we did not get to last week in language arts.  The second graders will finish reading  Frog and Toad are Friends and start writing their original Frog and Toad story.  First graders are also nearing the end of their nursery rhymes unit.  This group of first graders have demonstrated readiness to begin the Accelerated Reading program.  This week they took their first AR tests.  This year I am using math stations with the children.  They seem to be enjoying the stations and I have noticed a real improvement in math skill.
Mrs. Mayo (3-4)
In religion, we continued to study the account of Cain and Abel and then moved on to the tower of Babel.  In reading, we  read a few mystery stories and applied what we have learned about characters, setting, theme, and details.  In social studies, we had our first test on what we've learned about Ohio so far.  Then we began learning about some famous Ohioans.   In science we continued to learn about the tools of science.  We practiced numbers to 100 and color words in Spanish.  In math, the 3rd graders worked with money, time, and patterns.  The 4th graders had their first math test on polygons, lines, and angles and then used data to learn more about Washington, DC.  We'll also cook for the first time this year by making Bubble Pizza.
Mr. Postenrieder (5-6)
In our Bible time this week we looked at the importance of the Reformation and how it still affects us today.. In 5th grade math we worked with prime factorization, factor strings, and square numbers. We enjoyed our first test on Thursday! In 6th grade math we worked on sequencing and scales. We were also able to enjoy our first test on Wednesday!  In our Language Arts time we continued to build our vocabulary, as well as continued with “The Good Deed.”. In Social Studies the topic was Africa’s physical geography. In Science we began to answer the question: “What is Life?” We continued looking at classifying living things and how this is useful in more than just Science. We also looked at more evidence for the Bible. In Spelling we studied words with the prefixes re-, uni-, mono-, bi-, tri-.
Mr. Mayo (7-8)
Our continuing study of the Civil War had brought us to the Emancipation Proclamation.  I think it will be interesting to see the reactions on the students’ faces when they realize that Mr. Lincoln didn’t free ALL slaves in the U.S., but just the ones in the South.  I’m sure they will have opinions about that fact. 
We continue to learn about the abuse of power both in Stalin’s Russia as well as Orwell’s book, Animal Farm.  The students are quite able to grasp the concepts being put forth and to see the parallels of history.
Mr. Reisenbichler (7-8)
In religion we will study what God’s Word says about TV and movies.  In 7th grade math the students are learning about various types of word problems and also probability.  The 8th grade is studying percents, fractions, and decimals.  In science we will be launching our rockets as part of our STEM project.  We are also continuing our study of cells.

Answer to joke – yellow paint

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