From the Classroom to the Market Place!

Our interdisciplinary unit on Economics has ignited growth in vocabulary, money counting, budgeting, and creativity!

Young entrepreneurs have created their storefront signs, earned their beginning capital, purchased items from the warehouse, designed and built their first items for sale, and set prices that will ensure a profit!

Students have discussed the importance of a free market system and they have seen examples of people who have worked to change unfair laws in the market place. They have learned how factories divide the labor to build things more efficiently,  and read about the connectedness of products and suppliers, to less obvious contributors to their products, such as crews that build roads and farmers that grow the food we need to keep working!

Multiple skills are practiced during this unit, from proper capitalization of store names, problem solving with dollar and cent amounts, multiplication when purchasing in multiples, percent off in sales…the list is endless…all happening under an umbrella of fun and team building!

Amazing job on Spelling Tests! Students are learning challenging and new words to build their knowledge and vocabulary!

Students painted boxes for their animal habitats! Their habitat models and information posters were on display in the entrance of the studio!

We continue with our targeted instruction during rotations and are pleased to share your child’s individual growth during our conferences!

November is sure to be a month of excitement as shops will be operating at full speed and we will begin our next unit in Science. 

hint: It really ROCKS (and minerals).

Our students are working hard on our Musical "The Best Christmas Song Ever"! We have picked out our roles and lines and are now working on memorizing them and bringing them to life! This week our favorite song from the Musical is "I Give You My Heart". I am so pleased to have such a talented group of students.

They ALL have beautiful voices, are great dancers and excellent actors. I can hardly wait for you to see our performance of "The Best Christmas Song Ever" on December 20th.

We have had such a busy month in MTD/Tap! Each week, they start class with more determination and excitement from the week before! This month, they have learned and completed two dances in their entirety for winter recitals. They are also singing in both of these numbers!

We are finally getting the hang of shuffles, flaps, and the Broadway step! They have realized that practice makes progress and repetition is key to success!  We will continue to “clean-up” the dances and songs each week until they are performance ready! This means we make sure sounds are clearer, movements are sharper, and facial expressions along with energy is the best it can be!  These kids are always up for a challenge! It is evident they have been practicing outside of class. I’m so proud of their consistency and effort! Next month, we will be learning more aspects of the stage and how to utilize full spacing when on a big stage!

The students and I are continuing to learn about the 7 Basic Principles of Ballet Technique. Last month we learned all about standing at the barre correctly, and this month we are focusing on turning out and how to do that properly in ballet. 

• Our turnout begins at the top of our legs and involves the hips, thighs, knees, ankles, and feet.
• While we want to turn out, we do not want our feet to sickle in the process.
• We need to be consistent with practicing our turnout so that our muscle memory will learn it correctly.

Next month: Students will be exploring how to Move Across the dance floor correctly. We will learn how to hold our arms and engage our core as our feet help us travel through various steps.

Terminology:

1. Dégagé means to be Separate.
2. Elevé means to Lift.
3. Frappé means to Strike.

Each week is filled with a fun hands-on learning activity during Wednesday’s Explorer Elective! We practiced writing alphabet letters in shaving cream and colored sand which is a multi-sensory technique. It incorporates visual, auditory, and tactile pathways and accesses thousands of nerve endings that transfer patterns to the brain! We built wooden puzzles of the alphabet and dinosaurs, too! We ended the month of October by creating vision boards, using magazines and poster boards. Students practiced fine and gross motor skills while cutting out pictures of their favorite things! -Miss Nicollette

Students have learned technical fundamentals of Piano such as correct sitting, arms, and hand position along with essential Piano geography. He has also learned a few of the most popular children’s songs such as The Muffin Man, Itsy Bitsy Spider and Twinkle Little Star. Liam is able to play songs with my accompaniment or a backing track which incorporates the use of a metronome. For this upcoming month we will be learning rhythmic values (whole, quarter, half and dotted half notes) as well as learning notes represented by stems. -Mr. Ed

Students are continuing their way through the Four Elements of Jazz Dance, which are Flexibility, Coordination, Balance, and Rhythm. 

In addition to developing their technique in Ballet and Jazz, students have also been working very hard each week on their Winter recital dance. We cannot wait to hit the stage for the big performance in December!

Our musicians keep growing their music knowledge at a fast pace! This month we added the dotted half note to the rhythm figures learned last month and, with that perspective, they are now able to navigate between songs subdivided by 2, 3 and 4.That's huge! We learned that to play piano in the right position we can think about holding a bubble in a gentle, round and soft hand. "The bubble hand" is going to maximize their capacity of moving their fingers as they need to. The games keep our class fun!

We often see a "stinky sock" going around with questions about music theory. Their answers always show that they can memorize and apply music theory to practice. As Christmas gets closer, we advance our repertoire. Playing piano together helps in building social skills, creativity and teaches them how to work as a team." 

By the time the Israelites crossed the Jordan River, our young Bible scholars had learned so much about God's provisions and mercy for His people! The joy of the tribes as they followed Him, and the despair when they doubted Him, are such great examples for us to read about as we each take our own journeys through life! In class, we have gotten to the point that, when troubles arise for the Israelite tribes, students wait with expectant looks on their faces, knowing God holds the answers, and also knowing that the Israelites will go to great lengths to try to solve things on their own, before turning their eyes and hearts back toward Him. I wish you could watch as the students hear each story... If you could see the tiny nods and knowing little shakes of their heads when they understand that Israel has forgotten Who their help comes from, it would touch your hearts.

As tribes conquered and settled in the Promised Land, we found the same cycle of events: sin/oppression/repentance/victory/peace. We learned about three of the twelve judges God sent during the tribulations of His people and found that many of those people were flawed, weak, lacking faith, in need of confidence, or worse. We are seeing that God does His work through the least of us so everyone sees his Power and Majesty as He answers prayers! Every time he uses an unlikely hero to save His people, He is teaching His people to trust Him alone. Just as we should.

As we turn the pages of the Bible and find Israel's kings and prophets waiting to be revealed, we see God's hand on every page, in every choice, and we also see the results when His people become distracted by other things and take their eyes off of their Lord. We are watchful as we see the path that leads through the Old Testament to catch a glimpse of what is ahead: soon we will fix our eyes on Jesus, God's loving answer to our need for a Savior! 

Are you ready for the season change?

Do not forget to purchase your long sleeve or sweatshirts from our online school store! Please make sure that you order the correct long sleeve/sweatshirt specific to Private School!

You can always go to the private school website and click shop uniforms tab!