What's Up at St. Mark's?
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people. 1 Timothy 2:1
In chapel Mr. Luedders used the verse above to challenge each of us to expand our prayer list beyond our own needs. On our journey of faith we need to remember to pray for others who are close to us, our leaders at all levels of government, and people everywhere. It's impossible to pray too much!
Preschoolers and Kindergarteners and their parents had a great time learning together at "Mother Goose Night", the first Student-Parent Activity Night of this school year. Activities throughout the cafeteria included making pig puppets, upper and lower case letter matching, finding rhyming words, examining trays of shells with magnifying glasses, playing with "wave bottles", matching numbers, and reading to each other. After about 45 minutes, Mother Goose arrived and showed everyone how to use a "wave bottle" and then read some stories to the group. Unfortunately, Mrs. Gramenz was out of the room the whole time that Mother Goose was there and didn't get to see her! Later everyone enjoyed eating Pigs in Blankets.
First and Second grade sang "Listen!" for the handicapped accessible service in September. We will sing an opening song for that service every month we are in school. We also sang "Father Welcomes" in church on September 24. Mrs. Bowlin's baby was baptized at that service! We are learning about sequence in reading. We have also learned about characters and setting. In math we are starting to solve problems.
Second grade had such an exciting week! Mrs. Bowlin visited with Brady. We loved her visit and time shared with baby Brady. We brought our insect collections in to school. They are a hit! So many people stop to see them in the hallway downstairs. And, Mrs. Beattie from Ag in the Classroom paid us a visit. Mmmm! The apples and juice she brought were so good! We learned so much about apples and made an apple craft.
Third grade read a fiction story called Wolf! It was about a wolf that met some book reading farm animals and the struggles of the wolf as he learned to read, too. We then read several other fiction and non-fiction stories about wolves and shared what we learned. Finally, we wrote our own wolf stories. It was a howling good time.
Fourth grade ate dried cranberries to remember one of the interesting crops of New England. They are busy working on their first set of scrapbooks to review for their test and soon will be making their first postcards of places to visit in the region.
Fifth grade read "Sleds on Boston Commons" in their reading unit on Heroes Young and Old. They also studied prepositional phrases and typed the final draft of their paragraphs. The Bible stories included Jesus trip across the Sea of Galilee and His ministry in Galilee.
Sixth grade learned about the Tower of Babel and the new languages people spoke after God scattered them far apart. They discovered that Jonah visited Ninevah during the time of Mesopotamia that they are studying in world history. They also studied Nebuchadnezzar and realized that Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were in Babylon during this time period.
Seventh grade talked about the Mexican "Day of the Dead" and the custom of Carnival in the Caribbean. In church history the class took a test and began to talk about monks and early pre-Reformation history. The 7th and 8th grade girls worked on drawing cartoon characters.
The Eighth grade began their study of the competition of European countries in the exploration of the Americas.
Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixy, some thirty. Matthew 13:8
Mr. Zobel led chapel based on Jesus' parable of the sower. He used flavored drink mix and water to remind us of the importance of using God's Word to help grow our faith while we continue on our journey of faith.
We want to thank Mrs. Martha Hunter for the six weeks she spent teaching 2nd grade during Mrs. Bowlin's maternity leave. God's blessings, Mrs. Hunter!
Kindergarten and Preschool has been making an apple orchard with different colored apples in class. They've also added apple trees to their communities' mural in the hallway. In religion the classes learned about Noah's Ark. Kindergarten worked on the letter H with the help of Henrietta and Harvey Hippo who had a Hullabaloo!
First grade has been practicing a choral reading about growing up to present to the grandparents who visited on Monday, September 26. We also made a booklet about what a grandparent is to give the grandparents. We have been learning about sequence in reading, and continue to work on writing sentences with capital letters and end marks. We are learning about shapes and patterns in math. We continue to hear how God took care of the people of Israel as He led them out of Egypt.
We have been doing a lot of geography activities! It has been fun to learn about our world, its continents, our country, its states, and facts about our local area. As we learn our other subjects, geography always comes up. How helpful to know where we live in relationship to the world!
Third graders are becoming archaeologists! We are practicing excavating dinosaur fossils buried in sand blocks. Our "Diggin' Up Dinosaur" kits are a gift to us from Mr. Zobel's parents. Thanks for being our partners in this exciting learning opportunity.
Fourth graders finished their first scrapbooks and everyone made a postcard from the region for his/her postcard collection. These activities helped them prepare for their New England test.
Fifth grade and other choir members sang "All Night, All Day" at St. Mark's Sunday service. They began division in math and studied how the Spanish came to America in history. The class also studied heredity in science.
Sixth grade made an "exploding" art project using the letters U, V, and W. They also worked on prepositional phrases and tested on the story "Gecko Glue".
Seventh grade shared Vivaldi's "Autumn" on the bookwhackers in chapel. The class also wrote compare/contrast essays on the science fiction stories they read.
Eighth grade is comparing the stories "The Monkey's Paw" and "Aunt Misery" and learned about double negatives and comparative and superlative adjectives in English.