Principal's Epistle

St. Mark’s Lutheran School, 5849 Buckwheat Rd., Milford, OH, 575-3354

www.stmarksmilford.org            http://stmarksmilford.blogspot.com            

rreisenb@hotmail.com or stmarksmilford@yahoo.com

Calendar                   

16  Chapel at 9:15AM

17  Runners’ Club until 4PM

20 St. Mark’s has worship services at 8AM, 10:30AM, and 6PM with Sunday Sch. at 9:15AM

22 Runner’s Club until 4 PM

23 Chapel at 9:15 AM

24 Runners’ Club until 4 PM, Family Fun Night 6:30-7:30 PM

25 Principal’s mt. in Dayton

Prayer Families

Annajane U. (P2), Tyke U. (P4), Chad R. (P4), Sarah E. (P3)

Saint Salute

A big Saint Salute and thanks to Paul Halter for coordinating the improvements in the parking lot, the lighting and the carpet in the church.

Notes

            How important is technology to your child’s life?  More for some but less for others.  Let me explain.  Discussions and decisions that are made at home between parents and children will have significant impact on your children and the next generation.  Before I explain my previous statement, I wish you to remember that nothing is all good or all bad.  Technology is in your child’s future.  Like driving a car, your children need to learn to use it safely.  Generally, little or none for the very young.  Reading the research suggests that it causes our brain waves to go from beta to alpha (active to passive).  Do you want that to happen to your child?  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cris-rowan/technology-children-negative-impact_b_3343245.html?utm_hp_ref=tw).  Do you want your child to grow quickly dependent on the electronic babysitter?  You can create better habits for yourselves and them.  That said, I also know that desperate times call for desperate measures.  For elementary children, to the extent that you can, limit, limit, limit screen time, including TV. Again, the same brain wave effects as above. We want the minds of our children actively engaged, and despite the educational claims of today's electronic games and programming, the best education is the tried and true: books and play. If you allow screen time, you need to be very clear about the limits and if they are violated, so is the privilege. No exceptions.  More on this next week.

Important Dates to Know

Oct. 23    Walk-a-thon

Nov. 5-6   Picture Day

September tuition is now due

Epistle News

The Principal’s Epistle is emailed to everyone.  If you wish a hard copy, please notify the office.  Otherwise, the Epistle is available on my blog and accessible on our school’s web page.

Family Fun Night

St. Mark’s has a family fun night every two months in place of a PTA meeting.  All families and their members, whether students or not, are invited for a one hour presentation starting at 6:30 PM in the Fellowship Hall on Thursday, September 24.  We will be having a special guest that night.  A beekeeper will bring a live bee colony and explain it to the families.  A snack will also be part of the night.

Box Tops for Education

 Thank you to everyone who has sent in Box Tops! We are off to a great start with almost a 1000 Box Tops that have been submitted.  7^th & 8^th grade room is in the lead with an average of 33 Box Tops per student.  Way to go 7^th & 8^th grade!  They are followed by 5^th & 6^th grades in second place, 1^st grade in third place and Kindergarten in fourth place. 

Thank you to everyone who has been trimming the Box Tops.  It has made to BIG job much easier.  Be sure you are sending in ones that have not expired as well as making sure the complete expiration date is showing.  Remember that the last submission date for this first mailing is Sept. 23^rd.  Watch if you have Box Tops that expire 11-1-15.  Please turn those in now for the early submission.  Again thank you for saving Box Tops for St. Mark’s Lutheran School!  Judi and Gil Schepmann

Happy Birthday

17                    Natalie N. (P3)

18                    Kolbie B. (P4)

19                    Delany B. (P4)

Classroom information

Mrs. Frey (P-3 & P-4)

Preschool will be focusing on letter H for Home 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 tile paintings. In Bible Time 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. Reynolds (PK & P-2)

Pre-2 In our 2 year old class this week we are going to practice saying our new friends names, learning how to form a line and become more familiar with our school schedule. Our Bible lesson this week is a review of the Creation story. We will be making fish handprints for art and learning a song called slippery fish.  Pre-K In Pre-K we are discussing what it means to be a good friend. We have made a promise poster that we have signed with our handprints, promising to be a good friend and follow our classroom rule. In Bible we are talking about how Jesus was a good friend and how he helped other people. We are continuing to learn about the letter F as we talk about being a friend. We are also talking about our families this week. We are drawing pictures of our families and creating a color chart of the people within our house.

Mrs. Sherman (K)

Kindergarten is buzzing through the alphabet!  They are identifying the letters Pp - Tt this week.  They are also identifying beginning sounds, rhyming words, nouns for places and antonyms.  In writing, the class is labeling pictures and beginning to write simple sentences. At math time, they are counting, making body/height comparisons and combining shapes to create new shapes.  They are enjoying rotating through math centers.  At Bible time, they will hear the account of Noah and the flood.  It is a lesson of obedience, patience, thankfulness and promises.  Kindergarten will begin studying types of weather in science.  The full day students are naming animals in Spanish, comparing and contrasting versions of Goldilocks and creating a weather book, "Rainbow, Rainbow."  They will begin working in math journals. 

Mrs. Reisenbichler (1)

This week we learned about Joseph and Moses in Jesus Time.  In math, we had our first assessment and explorations session.  Action verbs were the part of speech we focused on this week.  In reading, we read a story about Curious George.  We also completed out authors study on Robert Munsch by sending him an e-mail.  In science, we learned about raccoons.

Ms. Rhonemus (2)

This week in second grade we started our second unit in Math which is giving us some extra practice with addition and subtraction stories.  In reading we are learning about families while working on identifying short vowels.  Our writing that ties into the reading lesson involves writing friendly letters so students are going to be assigned a classmate to write be pen pals with for the week.  In addition to these fun things the second graders will learning about the Pledge of Allegiance and the Bald Eagle in our social studies lessons.  In art the students made their names out of base ten blocks and then determined the number value of their name based on the number of blocks and rods they used.  Seventh and eighth grade is reviewing chapter 2 and taking a test on the digestive system then we will be starting to learn about the Cardiovascular system.

Mrs. Mayo (3-4)

This week we study the account of Jesus' temptation and relate it to how the devil tempts us.  In reading we'll be finishing Helen Keller while working with prefixes, suffixes, cause/effect, inferring, and summarizing.  In grammar we'll be working with compound subjects and verbs in sentences.  In social studies we'll finish with the northeastern states by learning about Connecticut and then doing a review.  In science we'll be working with states of matter.  In math, the 3rd graders will be taking a chapter test, then begin a unit that will work with addition and subtraction.  The 4th graders will be working with place value and organizing and displaying data.

Mr. Postenrieder (5-6)

In our Bible time this week we looked at how Abraham’s offer of Isaac as a sacrifice foreshadowed God sacrificing his son on the cross. WE also discussed the relationship of Isaac and Rebekah and the role God played in their relationship. In 5^th grade math we worked with estimation, addition and subtraction of whole numbers and decimals.  In 6^th grade math we worked with place value, the number line, problems about comparing and equal groups. In our Language Arts time we continued reading Summer of the Monkeys and taking character notes. In Social Studies we looked at forces that shape Earth and how God is in control. In Science we continued work on the Science Fair and why we study science. In Spelling we worked through our fourth lesson with a theme from Proverbs 20:11.

Mr. Mayo (7,8)

We have begun our study of The Red Pony.  It’s going to be a new experience for the 7^th graders to read with the depth that will be expected.  They’ll learn how to do it, and be more comfortable as we dig into Steinbeck’s text and see the devices he uses to tell us the story.  We eagerly await our first History test, which got postponed because of technical difficulties.

Mr. Reisenbichler (7-8)

In religion we are studying how to worship God.  In 7^th grade math the students are reducing fractions, making function tables, and measuring angles.  In 8^th grade math we are calculating powers and roots, learning about irrational numbers, and estimating.  The students are learning to writing directions in communicating a project in STEM.