General News

On Sunday, we celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Next week, we continue with our monthly theme of the Fruit of the Spirit by focusing on the second cluster of Fruit: patience, kindness and goodness. At this event on the Christian calendar, we can ponder these words found in Hymn 50; the last line is especially relevant in light of this evening’s event:

“The Spirit came, as promised, in God’s appointed hour;

and now to each believer he comes in love and power.

And by his Holy Spirit, God seals us as his own,

and through the Son and Spirit makes access to his throne.

The Word, the Spirit’s weapon, will bring all sin to light;

and prayer, by his directing, will give new joy and might.

Be filled then with his Spirit, live out God’s will and Word;

rejoice with hymns and singing, make music to the Lord.

Hello from the school parents, grandparents, and supporting community as we bring a very busy week to a close. This week featured learning more about Canadian Reformed missions (including an assembly where Rev. DeGraaf told us more about his work in the mission field of Maceio, Brazil), the process of a School Evaluation, and the annual school concert; besides the regular classroom instruction. We thank the Lord for the many blessings we received during the course of this week. May He continue to bless the work of the teachers and parents as, together, they teach His covenant children about how He has revealed Himself to us in His Word and in His creation.

Miss Buist continues to recuperate at home. May our Heavenly Father continue to be near to her during this time and please remember her in your prayers.

Construction update: This week has been another productive week on the addition- windows have been installed, exterior brick has been completed on the east wall and started on the north wall of the addition, drywalling is set to begin, and various other sub-trades continue their work, e.g. HVAC. Also, siding has been installed on the upper part of the exterior gym wall above the new storage room and the kitchen. May the Lord continue to bless the work being done and the progress made.

Again a reminder of early dismissal at 2:00 this afternoon (to allow for a bit more time for people to get ready for the concert). We hope to see many of you this evening for the performance of Spreading the Good News. May the Lord bless the efforts of the students, the director, and the accompanists. The students need to be in their respective classrooms by 7:15. Please pick them up again immediately after the concert from their classroom. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Finally, today being Friday the 13th, be careful that you don’t end up in Port Dover by getting swept along on a sea(lake?) of motorcyclists.☺

A few items for your attention:

*Staffing update: With the decision to split the current grade five into two classes beginning next year, means that we needed to hire another teacher. Thanks be to the Lord, Mrs. Katrina Groen (currently practice teaching with Mrs. Poort in Grade 3B) could be hired to teach Grade 5B for next year. This means a slight change to staffing as was listed in last month’s News and Views. Mrs. DeBoer will not be teaching Grade 5B but will remain in Grade 6B.

*What a great turnout of parent, grandparents, seniors, and members of the supporting community at last week Friday’s Open House. The students and staff had an enjoyable morning interacting with everyone and hopefully you did as well. Thank you PTA for organizing the coffee and baking and Ladies’ Auxiliary for preparing a delicious lunch that the grandparents and seniors could enjoy.

*Thank you everyone who came out on a beautiful Friday afternoon and participated in the annual community walk to raise money and awareness for McNally House. We also want to thank the people who looked after the checkpoints, the Ravensbergen and Stel families for the water and candy station, and the Ladies Auxiliary for the popsicle treat received. Most of the money has been collected and brought in but there is still more that needs to come in. Please bring it to the school as soon as possible as the due date was today.

*This past Wednesday, the students in Grades 7&8 wrote the Gauss Math Contest. The response sheets have been sent off for marking and we should know the results by the middle of June.

*School Evaluation: The evaluation team (Mr. Hans VanDooren and Mr. Kevin Hutchinson) concluded the evaluation on Wednesday evening with a meeting of board and ed com members and the principal. They had a busy couple of days at the school visiting classroom; meeting with teachers, students, and principal; meeting with a group of parents at a “town hall” meeting; and checking out the building and the grounds. All this in addition to reading and processing the questionnaires and documentation sent to them prior to the site visit. Over the next couple of weeks they will be writing a report of their findings, along with recommendations for the school board to work with.

*Please note that the date of the Spring Membership meeting has been changed. It will take place on Wednesday, May 25 at 8:00 p.m. in the school gym. Information packages will be in your mail slots at church.

*Year End Trips: Before we know it, it will be the month of June and all of what that month represents on the school calendar. One of the exciting events is the annual year-end class trips. This year Grades K-6 are planning to visit Marineland on Tuesday, June 21, and Grade 7 is planning on going for an overnight stay at Fort George on Thursday, June 2 before heading off to Niagara Falls on the Friday. Once again, we will be following the same procedure as last year for parents who wish to accompany the classes on the trips. Class moms and classroom volunteers will be given first opportunity to accompany the grades they serve, free of charge. If more parents would like to come along, they are welcome to join but they will need to pay the group rate with is $15.00 for Marineland, and $25.00 for the Grade 7 outing (Niagara Falls only, not Fort George). If there is no room for parents on the buses, they will have to car pool to Marineland. Parents were reminded of the protocol for class trip volunteers (it’s been included with this edition of the Chronicle). Parents who wish to join the trips may not take along their pre-school children. All parents who come along will be assigned a group of students to chaperon for the grade that they wish to accompany. Parents need to email the school if they are interested in coming along on a year-end trip.

Lost and Found: The box is past overflowing so when you are in the school please take a look on the table by the box or in the box itself for missing items. All remaining items will be take to the GBF at the end of the month.

Reminders:

*Due to construction, please do not park in the parking lot by the kitchen during the day.   Thank you for your cooperation.

*With the onset of warmer, sunny weather comes the spring and summer wardrobe for students. We would like to remind parents and students of the dress code regarding shorts and tops as found in pp 11-13 in the Policies and Procedures section of the Parent Handbook.

*Please continue to be wary of ticks and mosquitoes.

*Baseball practices continue after school for the boys’ and girls’ baseball teams on Monday and Thursday of next week. The tournament is scheduled for Saturday, May 28 in Dorchester, the same venue as last year.

*Victoria Day on Monday, May 23.

*Teachers College graduation on Friday, May 27. The Lord willing, three graduating students will be teaching at John Calvin School next year- Miss Janita Bouwman, Mrs.Katrina Groen, and Mr. Tim Breukelman.

Enjoy your weekend everyone, albeit a bit cool according to the weather forecast, and a blessed Pentecost Sunday. We hope to communicate with you again via the Chronicle in a week’s time.

1. Hofsink

Classroom News

Kindergarten

We have now learned the whole alphabet, and we are beginning to review in most areas. We can’t believe how quickly the end of the school year is sneaking up on us. As I am writing this, I anticipate that the concert will be a great success and the children are excited! After teaching about Ascension and Pentecost, we head back to the Old testament and will begin learning about Jonah, and then Daniel. Have a beautiful and blessed weekend. S.L and M.DBS

Memory work Hymn 8, and Isaiah 12:2 Due on May 14/15th.

Grade 1

We have had another busy week in Grade 1. Our final program practice was on Tuesday and we look forward to singing for you on Friday night. We also had a few visitors pop into our classrooms. We have finished with the stories about Guido de Bres as well as Stephen and Peter. We will begin next week with the stories dealing with Paul as a missionary to the Gentiles. We will be having a test to wrap up the unit near the end of the week. Check the agendas for more information. Continue to practise the Spelling and agenda words during the week. Thanks. We hope to see many of you on Friday night. Have a great weekend and a blessed Sunday. jvb/hb

Memory Work for Friday, May 20 – Psalm 121; Isaiah 53:6

Grade 2

We hope you enjoy the concert this evening. The students are eager to perform for their loved ones. Next week, we are going to learn many of our reading and math concepts around the theme of frogs. We are looking forward to a trip on Tuesday to St. John’s Conservation Area. Thanks to the parents who have volunteered to come along. It’s always such an exciting trip! There will be a Science test on Thursday which will cover the first half of our unit on animals. Have a great weekend! RG/HV

Memory work: Psalm 146:1

Words: work, your, thought, trip, favourite

Grade 3

Well, the McNally House Walk and Open House are completed but we would still like to thank ALL those who participated with us. A special thank you to Miss Edith Homan for walking with us too! Thanks to Mrs. Groen for teaching grade 3A a cool lesson in math… outside! Ask us all about it! Rounding can be SO much fun! And… this week Mrs. Groen will be teaching on her own in grade 3B. We wish her God’s blessing and strength for this task. We are busy working on our community projects. Thank you parents, for all the help in getting information! Well done! On Monday, Rev. deGraaf led us in an assembly on Mission Work. We thank him for his lively presentation. Ask your child how far it is to Brazil in bananas? We enjoyed various mission activities this week, including writing letters to the Dethan family. We look forward to the responses. Let’s remember to pray for our missionaries and their families. We hope to see you all on Friday at 7:30 in the Smithville church for our annual school concert! (D.V.) Just remember the students need to be in the classroom by 7:15. Merci! J.B./M.P.

Psalm 80:7; Text: Psalm 24:1-3 (two weeks)

Words: mission, missionary, mission field, gospel, nations, sending church, supporting church

Grade 4A

After one last full practice this week we hope that we are well prepared for the Friday concert. On Thursday, our special Mission Day, we took the chance to study in an old Bible, to be exact, a family Bible that is 280 years old, and saw how important family and Bible reading is for Mission outreach. Ask your child what they discovered and you may share in some joy about the Lord’s work among his people. We are almost finished our unit about the kings of Judah (test soon), and after that we will do a more complete unit on Mission Work. In Music we learned the next joyful song and “dance” to the beat and the rhythm, while singing in rounds. Always fun. We hope to see you all at the concert and share the beauty of music, song and joy in the Lord.

M:PhysEd clothes, W:library, Th:PhysEd clothes, F:Mission Money, Memory Work, Spelling Dictation

Devotions: T: Carter F:Titus

Psalm 11:1; 2Timothy3:16,17

Grade 4B

My, how time is just flying by! We have come to the end of another week and our concert is tonight! We hope to see many of you in the church tonight. The students are eager to sing their praises to God in your presence. In our morning classes, we have turned our focus on to Church History and we will be looking at Preaching the Gospel to All Nations . This is a most interesting unit in which the students will look at all the different ways we are blessed to spread God’s Word to “the four corners of the world”. We have finally begun the long awaited Medieval unit. There is so much to discover in this time period and so much of it relates back to how we live today as well. There will be a letter going home at the beginning of next week, with regards to the Medieval Feast/Festival. Please keep an eye on your child’s agenda. Don’t forget to help your child work on their costume for that day. Please feel free to write me a note or call me if you have any questions. We have come to the point in our French classes that we should be presenting our plays. I am trying to free up an afternoon so that you (both Grade 4A & 4B) may be invited to watch them. Please encourage/remind your child to memorize their pieces. They should have been practicing them for about 4 weeks now but there are still some who do not know their parts. Have a wonderful weekend and a blessed Sunday. SO

Memory Work: Ps 11:1; Text: (two weeks) 2 Timothy 3:16,17

Devotions: M. Tristan, Tu. Mya, w. Stephen, Th. Eli, Fr. Alayna

Grade 5

Here are a few things we are working on this week: Math – prisms and pyramids, Church History – test on Monday, and then we are beginning a new unit on the early church, Social Studies – we are continuing with our studies on Canadian government, PE – baseball (please bring your gloves 😉

We hope you enjoy the program this evening! You’ll be sure to hear the fifth grade – they are wonderful singers 🙂

Spelling words this week: calendar, countries, again, Wednesday, heads, means, January, Monday, July, older, August, since, November, Thursday, taken, June.

Devotions: M- Clarissa, T-Elyse, W-Liam, T-Jordana, F-Evan

Have a wonderful weekend! DB/SB

Grade 6A

The students are making up ads that would fit in with their novel study and will be a part of their newspaper booklet. We are learning some new gestures in French and aim to finish going through the story next week. The following week the students will be assigned their parts for the story to memorize, act out, and dress up for. We will study the next forerunner, namely, John Hus. This week we spent some time discussing the challenges that the Wycliffe Bible translators encounter. Have a blessed weekend. CV

Devotions: T-Kaitlyn W-Meah Th-Lydia   F-Amy

Ps.105:15-May 20 Josh.1:6,7-May 19

Vocab Quiz-May19   SS Quiz-May 19

Grade 7A

This past week as part of “Mission” week, we each researched a country which tries to quench the flame of the word. Ask your child which country she researched and how that country persecutes followers of our Lord. As we wrap up measurement in Math, we’ll learn about plane geometry next. In Science we’ll continue working with solutions and mixtures and learn about processing mixtures from underground. John Calvin will get kicked out of Geneva next week and we’ll find out why Geneva would want him to come back for a second stint. As and ending to our poetry unit, we’ll welcome Miss. C. VanAmerongen to our class to discuss and share her poetry with us. Enjoy your weekend.

Grade 7B

Another good week has passed in school where we were especially able to focus on mission work, and how Christ continues to be busy in this world by spreading the gospel through his servants. We continue in that line also in Church History as we study the life of John Calvin. In Language Arts we have begun our novel study on The Hobbit, while in History students are making a newspaper on the Rebellion of 1837. KB

Devotions week of May 16 – Benjamin Bos

Devotions week of May 23 – Shelby Bos

Friday – MW Psalm 119:9

Grade 8

It has been quite the busy week with concert and baseball practices happening as well as a school evaluation. Today we began construction on our ‘dream house’ projects. Next week we return to a more normal schedule. MW: Ps 124: 2,3; Col. 3:15-17. Cheers, Mr. J