COVENANT CHRONICLE. Message from the Head of School THE. Service Day Friday, December 15

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1 THE COVENANT CHRONICLE Vol. XI December 8, 2017 Message from the Head of School Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Philippians 4:4 (NIV) Each Thursday morning, our teachers come together at 7:30 a.m. for a time devoted explicitly to prayer. It is a beautiful time of joining our hearts and minds in the unity of the Spirit while we lift up our school s activities, families, and staff. This week, Mrs. Griffith suggested we begin with offering up our praises to God. At once I began to think of all the ways He has richly blessed our school this year...our amazing staff, the wonderful CCS families I ve gotten to know, the Childlight conference, Trunk or Treat, Veteran s Day Tea, Thanksgiving Feast, Williamsburg Christmas Parade, and the joyful preparation happening now for our Lessons and Carols Christmas worship service on Tuesday. But there s more! I praise Him for all the meaningful day to day interactions I see among students and teachers as they grow in relationship with one another while growing in the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Even as I type this, I can praise Him for the joy and laughter I m hearing from students as they play a Living Clue Game during Delightful Hour. When I think of God s faithfulness to our school, I cannot help but rejoice. In Him, Christine School Verse Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry James 1:19 Habit of the Month for December: Thought of God Service Day Friday, December 15 On Friday, December 15, all Forms will participate in Christmas Service Day. We will begin by heading to Homewood Suites and the Comfort Inn on Bypass Road immediately after hymn study to carol briefly in the hotel lobbies. We will then travel to Envoy Nursing Home at 10 AM. All Forms will sing Christmas carols. Forms I and II will return to school while Forms III through VI will stay and play BINGO with the residents. Attire: Chapel Dress Uniform. Girls must wear navy blue tights or socks. Donations: Anyone wishing to provide BINGO prizes please send in by next Thursday to Mrs. Griffith. Suggestions: socks, small tissue packs, notepads, pens, decks of cards, crossword puzzle books, etc. NO CANDY! PARENT DRIVERS NEEDED! Please contact the office!

2 Form I and Form IV enjoy riding the float together! Form II Next week we will be studying the following: Bible: The Woman at Jacobs Well, John 4 Memory Verse: John 4:14 Math: Addition and subtraction review and assessment Phonics: Syllable division rules History: Conclude Ancient Egypt study Science: Rainbows Habit Training: Courtesy Please pray for the Monsi family. We discussed our memory verse, Jeremiah 29:11, at great length this week. I asked our Form II students the following question: Since you know that God has plans for you, how does that make you feel? I immediately heard the words, safe, peaceful, loved. Meaningful conversations about great Biblical truths are so precious! Form I Next week we will work on: Bible Memorization: John 3:7 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. Grammar/Phonics: Letter recognition, writing in student notebooks, sentence framing and word awareness. The use of nouns. Literature: Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton Handwriting: Capital letters and numbers Math: Understanding and comparing length History: Ancient Rome studies continue Science: What is the Freezing Point? Artist Study: Charles Schulz The Christmas season is in full swing at CCS and Form I has a beautiful classroom decorated to give us all a sense of the upcoming celebration of the birth of Jesus! I hope you and your children feel at home when you enter our doors. Have a wonderful week! Cute Form I elves peek out the window of our Tudor-Style House on the Christmas Parade float. Upcoming Events Dec 12 Lessons & Carols Dec 15 Service Day Dec 18- Exams Dec 20 1/2 DAYS Dec 21- Christmas Break Jan 2 NO SCHOOL Jan 3 School Resumes Jan 15 MLKing Jr. Holiday NO SCHOOL Jan 16 Blaze Pizza Night Jan 30 Covenant Open House Feb 2 Enrichment Day Feb 19 Presidents Day NO SCHOOL Form III For the week of December 11: Bible: Christmas Story Memory Verse: Ten Commandments (1-10, shortened version) Habit Training: Truthfulness History: Salt Dough Map of Virginia Writing: Polished Draft, 5 Parts of a Sentence Reading: Phonics, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever Science: Water in its Gas Phase Upcoming Assessments: Memory Verse Assessment Friday, December 14 Form III will not be taking exams during exam week. We will have school on the half days. However, we will be participating in fun Christmas themed activities with Forms I and II.

3 MIDTERM EXAMS All students grade 5 and up will bring home study guides for their midterm exams today, Friday, December 8. Next week, Monday through Wednesday will be dedicated to exam review. Next Thursday December 14 we will follow a Monday schedule and students will take their PERIOD 7 final exam. The remainder of the exams will be given the next week. Per a Monday schedule, tests will be given: MONDAY, December 18 8:20-9:50 Period 1 10:05-11:35 Period 3 TUESDAY, December 19 8:20-9:50 Period 2 10:05-11:35 Period 4 WEDNESDAY, December 20 8:20-9:50 Period 5 10:05-11:35 Period 6 PLEASE NOTE: FORMS I, II and III will not have exams but will have school on December 18, 19 and 20. They will be enjoying some fun Christmas activities and will also dismiss at 11:45 am. No aftercare will be available. Lovely Middle School ladies enjoying the Williamsburg Christmas Parade. Form IV This week in Form IV we are continuing to work on our study guides. This allows the students to not only review what we have covered this quarter, but to also practice their studying and notetaking skills. This week we are covering the War of the Roses through Ivan the Great in History, 1 Samuel 1-8 in Bible, the elements of story and poetry writing in Language arts, and some fun vocabulary words! Our class will be doing a Secret Santa next Thursday, so that everyone can participate. The students already have their gift recipient, and I have requested that we keep the gifts at $15.00 or less. I am also working on a fun class outing after our winter break, more detail on that to come! Intro to Spanish: This week the students continued to work in their teams to conjugate all 8 verbs learned this school year. It's great to hear the students get excited about knowing how to do this type of grammar. We reviewed the alphabet as a class and used dictation to practice. The students learned that the letter "c" has 2 sounds in Spanish - "s" or "k". It sounds like "s" when followed by "e" or "i". It sounds like "k" otherwise. We practiced sounding out with new vocabulary words that start with "c". "Deber" is a new word learned this week that means "should or ought to". The students practiced writing short sentences using the word deber. The class ended the week practicing their vocabulary words for both lessons 1 and 2 as they will have a vocabulary quiz next week. Middle and High School Spanish I & II: This week the students continue to learn lots of new vocabulary prior to each chapter in our new novela Brandon Brown dice la verdad. The students are familiar with many cognates which are English/Spanish words. We opened up the novel with our Character Connection questions in Spanish. Students then had to decipher the question and answer in English. These questions also use the vocabulary we learned to prep them to read the chapter. This book has more difficult grammar structures but the students are still able to read and comprehend based on context clues, cognates, and vocabulary learned. We ended the week learning about what family members live in the students household (Madre, Padre, Hermana, Hermano, perro). We continued to practice our Spanish Bible verse Romans 10:17 which we assessed Friday, December 8. Next week we will be reviewing for finals!

4 Middle and High School (cont.) History: Students this week have been developing Charlotte Mason inspired questions for each of the chapters we are reading in class. This is a skill that is difficult to master as it requires each person to read intently, absorb information, and ask in-depth, reflective questions that require a narrative response that captures the purpose of the chapter. I have been excited to read and use these questions in their study guides throughout the week. We will continue to do this in the coming week as we gear up for the exams. Students have also been reading all about the building of the Panama Canal and have developed, at length, either KWL (Know, Want, Learn) charts or Literacy Circle Roles. I am excited to continue this into next week. A high school student works on float assembly. Earth Science: As we approach the building of planets in Science, I am sure you are aware of the project that is quickly approaching. Students have spent a few class periods researching their assigned planets and answering a multitude of questions that have helped them learn interesting information about their planet. I am excited to see what this projects inspires them to create and I have no doubt they will learn a lot! Environmental Science This week we will continue to study the essay The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis by Lynn White Jr. Our focus will be on the dominance of science and technology by the West and the use of that technology to give rise to the Industrial Revolution. Building on this idea, we will be discussing the victory of Christianity over paganism in Europe and the effects this change in worldview had on man s concept of the natural world. Specifically, we will be discussing White s position that the usurpation by Christianity of pagan animism paved the way for man to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects (White). Based on the evidence presented by White, the students will be asked to think about God s blessing in Genesis 1:28 and decide if man has taken this as a cultural mandate to exploit nature for his own selfish ends or if God has intended something radically different. Language Arts: Our seventh-grade literature class closed out our readings of A Wrinkle in Time by narrating the final scene of the great rescue. They provided a written narration of the story in their own words and led a class discussion regarding the love and commitment Meg had toward her brother, Charles Wallace. In Language Arts, we practiced finding the subject and predicate of a sentence and learned which questions to ask when searching for direct and indirect objects. Literature II continued to move through our story of Frodo and his hobbit friends as they left the Shire and headed east toward Buckland. We narrated scenes where the travel companions found respite with an old farmer who knew them as lads, brainstormed possible reasons for the presence of Black Riders, and followed them on their journey into the evil forest. Our composition class explored one of the common topics for generating ideas for their third essay called comparison. With this information, they chose a term from their thesis to compare with a similar person or concept. This comparison will add more depth to what will eventually become a basic persuasive essay. Math: Pre Algebra: Geometric Constructions Ratios Rates Proportions Algebra II: Polynomial Functions, Graphs and Composition Multiplying Polynomials Dividing Polynomials Algebra: Introduction to Functions Solving Systems of Linear Equations by Graphing Solving Systems of Linear Equations by Substitution Geometry AAS and HL Congruence Quadrilaterals Parallelograms and Point Symmetry More on Parallelograms SCA Student Council will be sponsoring the following upcoming events: DECEMBER 14th Wacky-Tacky Sweater/Christmas- Themed Dress Down Day for $2 each DECEMBER 15th Christmas Movie Night at the School for Grade 6 and older. $5 each for the movie, snacks and fun.

5 From the Development Office Christmas Tea and Auction Thank you to all the many hands that made our 2nd Annual Christmas Tea and Auction a success! Thank you for all who sold tickets and attended: we had close to 200 people attend and wonderful support for our auction items thanks to the grace of God. It is very humbling to see the work of the Lord taking place in our little school! We still have our precious Covenant tea towels for sale for only $12 each. These make the sweetest gift you could possibly give to family and friends. Don t miss out! We also have new and improved Covenant Christian School car magnets for sale for only $5 each, $13 for three. Please see the school office or contact Priya Monsi (mosip@ccswilliamsburg.org) for additional details. As always... THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING COVENANT CHRISTIAN SCHOOL! LESSONS AND CAROLS TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12 at 6:30 PM Our Lessons and Carols service will be held at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church next Tuesday, December 12 at 6:30 pm. Students should arrive at the church by 6:15 pm dressed in their Christmas Sunday best. Following the service at 7:30 pm we will have a brief dessert reception. We will have a rehearsal with our music teacher, Mrs. Field, on that Tuesday afternoon December 12 from 1:30 to 3:00 PM at Grace Covenant. PLEASE PLAN TO PICK UP YOUR CHILDREN AT REGULAR PICK-UP TIME AT GRACE COVENANT THAT DAY. If you are able to help transport children to the church at 1 PM, please contact the school office. Grace Covenant is located at 1677 Jamestown Road.