A December to Remember

Merry belated Christmas and happy New Year, everybody! I hope you had a fantastic holiday season. I know we did! In fact, the Astronauts and I were so busy doing fantastic things that I decided to postpone the blog post until after Christmas break so I could show you everything we got up to. Christmas is always very special time at Florence M. Lombard Christian School. We sing songs, learn all about the birth of Jesus and why he came to Earth, learn songs for our Christmas Pageant, and decorate the classroom.

 

 

 

Throughout the festive season we make sure to keep hard at work, although if the Astronauts had it their way they'd be singing Christmas carols and playing Christmas games all day long. However, we never lose our good cheer. The kids were in high spirits, praising each other's work and helping each other and putting their best effort into their projects.

 

 

 

 

 

We also practiced our leadership skills. Astronaut MD asked if she could lead out our Calendar Time one day, and before I knew it, we were all taking turns. The Astronauts love being able to ask the questions, making their peers raise their hands, calling on people to answer, and writing everything on the big board. Even our shyest Astronaut led out!

 

 

We had a visit from the superintendent, and I can't believe I didn't get more photos! He was super great with the kids, helping them with their work and getting down on the floor to do puzzles with them. They absolutely loved having him in our classroom, and can't wait for him to visit again!

 

Astronaut JD is talking to the superintendent at the very edge of the left of the photo. That counts, right?

 We had our Christmas Pageant on the 20th of December at Saco Faith Chapel, after spending a whole week doing almost nothing but practicing. The Astronauts worked extremely hard to make sure it was a great show that would touch the hearts of everyone in the audience, and I'm pleased to report they accomplished just that! The Pageant was a medley of singing, reciting, reading, and acting, and everyone had an important part to play. One of our awesome school board members made us some really cool costumes, so not only did the Astronauts sound great, they looked great too!

 

 

We had our Christmas Party the following Monday, on the last day of school before Christmas break. It was a lot of fun, as you can tell from the carefully composed photo we took in front of our Christmas tree.

 

We're a class act here at FMLCS.

 We baked and decorated cookies for the people in the neighborhood (with help from the lovely Pastor Brenda), then delivered them door to door. Several times we actually got to hand them out to people rather than just leave the bags at the door, and our neighbors were tickled pink by the Astronauts - especially when the Astronauts decided to serenade them with a unique rendition of Jingle Bells.

 

 

After a great pizza lunch (thanks Mrs. D!) and a movie, and after we delivered the cookies, it was time for presents! Each Astronaut was assigned one of their classmates, and we had a lot of fun opening and unwrapping. It's a good thing Mrs. D was there to take pictures, because even I got to do some unwrapping! (By the by, big thank you to all my Astronauts and their parents for my lovely Christmas gifts!)

She also took the best class picture ever, although sadly missing Astronaut RN.

 

 

And the best picture of our occasional class pet, Todd.

 

 Thank you all so much for being a part of our school, whether you simply follow our blog or actively volunteer. Your support makes all the difference! The Astronauts and I had a fantastic first semester, and are excited to see what second semester holds in store. Tune in later this week for our December Month in Review and Pageant videos, and on January 18 for our regularly scheduled blog post. Have a great start to the new year, everyone!

 

 

Farewell, November

Hello and happy belated Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope you had a fantastic holiday and - for my students - a fantastic break. The past few weeks have been busy of the unphotogenic kind, mostly full of school work and meeting the 20,000 wordcount goal on our novels (which we did, by the way) and practicing for our Thanksgiving concert (which, for those of you weren't there, was super great), but we did manage to do a few cool things! For instance, we kickstarted our new science unit off with some fancy astronaut (i.e. freeze dried) ice cream.

 

 

Then we learned about matter in space, and what happens when two objects collide. They had a lot of fun making craters in the kinetic sand using metal balls, experimenting with distance and force.

 

We had our second annual Thanksgiving caroling trip at the Monarch Center, an assisted living facility within walking distance from our school. We perform things from our Thanksgiving concert, which gives the astronauts a great chance to practice in front of an audience while at the same time providing the opportunity to bring smiles to people who need them and be pictures of Jesus' love. The residents love when our astronauts come visit, and often sing along with us.

Unfortunately I didn't get any video of the kids performing, but I did get a few pictures of the warm-ups! A couple Monarch Center staff members came in and had an impromptu jam session - one of them even knew how to play ukulele!

 

 

The one who played ukulele told Megan what chords to play and what pattern to play in, and they did an entire song progression together. It was pretty cool!

After we went around to all the different rooms, the Monarch Center provided us with muffins and juice as a thank you.

 



The next week, we had our Thanksgiving concert! I'll be posting the recording tonight, but here are some pictures to tide you over (taken by Astronaut M.D.'s family - thanks guys!).

Also being posted tonight is our Month in Review video, so watch out for that as well. We're officially into the Christmas season, so we'll be decorating our tree this week and practicing for our upcoming Christmas pageant (11:00 a.m., December 20 at Saco Faith Chapel SDA). Come back on December 14 for our next blog post, and have a happy two weeks between!

 

God bless,

Mia