Week 15: Thanksgiving and Advent

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

I hope you and your family had a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration.   I am so thankful for each one of your children in my class this year. What a blessing they are to me!  Thank you, parents, as well, for the support you give to your children and to me. I hope you were able to enjoy this holiday weekend with family and friends!  Thank you for your generosity for our seminary families as well.  We were able to give 20 dinner boxes (turkeys, pie crust, rolls, butter, etc.) seminarians also were given a $10 restaurant gift card, and kids picked from a toy box! 

Please Bring on Monday...Ameren UE booklet

Have you had a chance to look at the kit?  I am amazed at the generosity from Ameren to families around the state of Missouri.  What a wonderful learning opportunity for your child to learn to care for the resources God has given us!
 
To dos:   1) Send back the booklet on Monday so we can go over a few things this week

               2) Use what you can for your family/house.  Let your child take the lead on investigating water usage, looking for "phantom load" etc.  

               3)  Look for the SURVEY TO RETURN to come home on Monday. The survey can be filled out on paper or online.  Surveys should be back by Monday, Dec. 7 whether you use the kit or not.  If I get the letters returned, Zion gets another
$50 grant!!

   

ADVENT WORSHIP WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 30

Families:

Students have enjoyed some lighter work loads as we have been practicing music, narration, and drama to lead worship this Wednesday.   Pray for the message of salvation to ring clearly in our drama and songs!

 Times:  Wed. 11/30 -  10:00 A.M. (chapel with Zion students) and 7:00 P.M.     

Arrival for the evening services: Students are to meet in my classroom no later than 6:40 P.M. Pre-service musicians, a bit earlier.  I'll confirm with Mrs. Thoelke.

 

Dress:  Students should dress nicely for both the morning service and the evening service.

                  Morning – standardized school dress (or costume)

                  Evening – standardized school dress or “Sunday best” -  avoid jeans and  

clothing with writing 

After the evening service:  Parents may pick up students from the Welcome Center in church.

** Reminder: As students are leading worship, please refrain from photography during the service.  We would be happy to stage pictures after the worship service ends. You may set up a video camera in the balcony.

U.S.O. Drive - Christmas Service Project

Every year each classroom at Zion completes a Christmas service project in place of a gift exchange in the classrooms.  Our junior high students will extend their service project from September’s Walkathon by continuing to support the USO. The funds raised from the Walkathon will be a part of this service project.

To complete our goal, our junior high students and families are encouraged to participate in donating items to supplement the Walkathon money.  This project will include students packing “goodie bags” for soldiers visiting the USO lounge and restaurant at Lambert Saint Louis Airport.  These “goodie bags” will contain items requested by the USO and as listed below.  Each junior high student will also compose cards and messages to our troops to encourage them on their travels and missions.

As Christ reflects His love for us this Christmas, may we also share His love with our soldiers this season and throughout the year.

      Please only select items as listed below!

 

Week 14: World Cup Stacking Day

Our week has been exciting and intense with Advent rehearsals, research on environmental issues in S.S.,  learning about Prezi, a new Religion unit (see tab above) working on Christmas art, World Cup Stacking Day, and health screening.  There was never a "normal day" - which keeps us on our toes! 

Kids were excited to bring home a kit this weekend sponsored by Ameren UE to help educate them on energy efficiency.  We will use some of the educational resources over the next 2 weeks to learn about renewable and nonrenewable resources.  The kit is yours to keep.  Please encourage your child to take the lead on finding out about your family energy use - taking the temperature in your refrigerator, measuring the flow of water from a faucet, learning how to change a furnace filter, etc.  What a wonderful opportunity to learn about caring for the precious resources God gives us!

I will send a survey next week to complete by Dec. 8 on how you will use the kit.  If we return a majority of the surveys, Ameren will donate an additional $50 to our classroom.  I told the kids to use what you can and pass on other items to a neighbor, friend or family member.  Feel like you have a little support now when you say, "Turn that light out when you aren't in the room!"

A note from Mrs. Dersch

In English, we have been studying sentence diagramming and appositive phrases. Friday students had a quiz on appositives. Our writing emphasis this week is a mystery story based off a writing prompt. For spelling, we worked on Unit 10 and had a quiz on Friday.

From our class photographers, Gavin and Lucas:

STUCO Delivery to Seminary

Week 13; What's Happening in 6th Grade

Here are the highlights of a few of our subjects.  Don't miss a lot of important events on Sycamore (link on the upper right).

Religion - Advent preparations!  We finished our unit on Luther and the Reformation and will be
                 returning to the  Old Testament with the Israelites and Moses.

Lit. - Our short story unit continues with exploring conflict and setting.  Enjoy a conversation with 
         your child about dialects!

Math - T-math is exploring equations and their application in word problems.  G-math has been
            laying the foundation for fraction work with multiples, factors, and GCF.  Factoring is a new
             challenge.

Soc. St. - We held the Great Lakes Debate today, looking at the state of the ecosystem after the
              challenges of pollution, invasive species, and habitat loss.  Students will be using on online
              presentation tool called Prezi as we broaden our investigation to environmental issues 
              around the continent.

Faith Families & Veterans' Day

Faith families have become an exciting part of the Zion culture!   This week we started in worship together at chapel, then had a devotion and service project with our grades 1-8 group.   We shared our thankfulness for things we can see and touch like food, family, and clothing, and things we can't see, such as our freedom.  We then made Christmas cards that will be sent to servicemen around the world.  This is such a fun time to build relationships with other students centered around Christ. 

Grades 4-8 were able to be in worship again today with a guest pastor/veteran and several veterans of our Zion family.  How important it is to recognize the blessing we have in our nation and the people who sacrifice to protect those freedoms!

Good Luck Spellers!

Blessings to our class representatives, Isaiah and Carter, and our alternate, Ana, as they head to the Lutheran High spelling bee on Tuesday!



Just a few photos of Literature discussion groups Thursday.  Students did a "walkabout" finding questions on setting, conflict, inferences and characterization posted around the room.  Good discussions were had involving all students!

Week 12: Field Trip Fun!

What an exciting week!  Students did a fine job listening and participating in our Weldon Spring experience.  I appreciated how intrigued they were with such important history happening right here in Missouri!  Our S.S. unit continues with the environmental impact of humans on our Great Lakes Ecosystem.  WATCH FOR an important letter to come home from Ameren UE next Friday as they have graciously sponsored us with kits for EVERY STUDENT to learn about energy conservation and how individuals can do their part.  Check out our photos below.

Our drama field trip to LHS has students laughing at the actors and themselves as two of the one acts focused on students and how "they" write a paper or take a test.  We saw many Zion alum on the stage and behind the scenes!  Photos can be seen at the Twitter feed @LHSSCTheatre.  

From Mrs. Dersch:  Spelling:

This week we handed back our Spelling Unit 8 packets and received our Unit 9 packets. The spelling packet and test will be due on Thursday, November 10th, which is a change from the normal Friday due date.

English:

This week we focused on appositive practice. We completed a packet and discussed ways to use appositives in our writing. We will continue studying those next week and have a short quiz sometime next week.

Advent:

Students were introduced to  our play this week and teachers will be selecting actors to start rehearsals on Monday.

MUSICIANS - we have changed the date for auditions to Tuesday, Nov. 15.  Please be practicing your songs

Dragon, Dragon in Literature

We had our own taste of drama in Literature.  We studied characterization in various stories and then students had an opportunity to transform one story into a drama.