What's Up at St. Mark's?
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God…1 Peter 2:9
Mr. Bob Polanski, director of Camp Wartburg, led our chapel service last Wednesday based on the text above, showing how we are connected to God by being chosen by Him. He also talked to the students about the many camp opportunities there are at Camp Wartburg. This year there will even be a family camp where whole families can come together and grow in their appreciation of God's creation. There are specialty camps for about everything interest that you can imagine: art, music, animals, climbing, hiking, paintball, etc. There are flyers with information in the school office or you can go to the website HYPERLINK "http://www.campwartburg.com" www.campwartburg.com for more information or to register.
Preschool worked with the oval shape last week. They also created Valentine boxes and, together with the Kindergarteners, had the opportunity to watch bears live at five different zoos online. Together the students continued discussing healthy hearts and kept up with their healthy eating charts. The classes also enjoyed eating "Dirt" Dessert.
Kindergarteners studied the letter D by reading the books Down by the Bay and Dinosaurumpus. They made a class dinosaur book with each student contributing a dinosaur and finishing a sentence telling what action the dinosaur was doing. They made dinosaur puppets and began a new individual reader, I Did It. In math the class practiced creating and reading graphs and paid with pennies for items in their class store. When making their Valentine Boxes, the students had to follow step-by-step directions.
1st Grade has been learning about weather in science. They finished pictures depicting some type of weather and sent them to the Southern Illinoisan newspaper in Carbondale. They usually publish a picture each day with eir weather sections. On Feb. 10, 2011, Claire's picture was published. The neswpaper rotates pictures by school and the type of weather that is occurring each day. I will call and let you know if/when your child's drawing appears in the paper.
2nd Grade read Now One Foot, Ten Another by Tomie DePaula. They studied the sun in science and learned about the Wedding in Cana in religion.
3rd Grade has been focusing on American heroes in Social Studies. We've learned about people like Rosa Parks, and Eleanor Roosevelt. We've spent time in groups learning different things about Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. To compliment this we are writing an essay in English for the American Legion. We've had to think about what we love about our country and how we can encourage others to show pride in America.
4th Grade is studying the Great Lakes States, the region in which they live! They ate some dried cherries and cranberries to remember some of the specialty crops of the area and talked about Henry Ford and his use of the assembly line to make inexpensive cars. Because of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH they are listening to some early rock n' roll music and Motown music from the Detroit area.
5th Grade continued with the Sacrament of Baptism for memory and the events of Holy Week in religion. They began to study what the country did after the Civil War and began a new chapter on "matter" in science. They also read "Trapped in Tar" about paleontologists' work with dinosaur bones and discussed how these things could have occurred according to the Bible and Creation.
6th Grade is finishing their study of ancient Greece and its relations with the world around it. They learned about Cyrus the Great, who God used to return His Old Testament people to their homeland, and about Alexander the Great and his affect on neighboring areas.
7th Grade celebrated their own "Baked Potato Day" by bringing in potatoes, sweet potatoes and all their favorite toppings to science class. They made and sent Valentines to their Swiss pen pals.
8th Grade discussed the many problems that the new American nation faced after winning their indepence. The class is also starting to think about what stocks they might want to purchase as they begin the Stock Market Game.
Both 7th and 8th grades are doing many review activities in Constitution to prepare for their U.S. Constitution Test.