General News

The monthly theme for the month of October is Intellectual Carefulness.  “Those who are intellectually careful earnestly want to know the truth and so consistently make sure not to rush to hasty conclusions based on limited evidence. They are patient and diligent in their thinking, careful that they do not overlook important details.” (Philip Dow in Virtuous Minds)

“You visit the earth and water it; you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide their grain, for so you have prepared it. You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth. You crown the year with your bounty; your wagon tracks overflow with abundance. The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy, the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy.” (Psalm 65:9-13)

Greetings everyone on this cool, wet, autumn morning (after a couple of days of pleasant fall weather) as we bring to a close another week of learning and teaching at John Calvin, and look forward to celebrating Thanksgiving; whether at home, camping or at a cottage. As we look back on the past year, we have indeed much for which to be thankful. The words quoted above, a harvest psalm, glorify God the Creator as reflected in the beauty of nature. Nature helps us understand something of God’s character. The people of Israel believed that God’s care of nature was a sign of His love and provision for them. Nature shows God’s generosity– giving us more than we need or deserve. Understanding God’s abundant generosity should make us grateful to God and generous to others.

This afternoon we could participate in our annual Thanksgiving assembly. Miss Buist and Mrs. deVisser led the assembly and focused on the gift of First Fruits. Special mention was also made about the amount of non-perishable items that was collected for the West Lincoln Food Bank and delivered there this morning by Mr. Witten and a group of Grade 7 students. May our Father continue to bless the work that is being done to provide for the needy in West Lincoln and surrounding communities.

Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with those in our community who are grieving the recent death of a loved (Mrs. Oosterhoff’s aunt) or who are dealing with serious if not terminal illness in their immediate or extended family. May our Heavenly Father continue to surround them with His love and grace.

A few items for your attention:

*Wow! Over $3300.00 was raised for the Grade 8 Ottawa trip through the soup veggie pack fundraiser. Thank you everyone for your participation.

*Most of the money from the chocolate bar fundraiser is in; however, there is still some that needs to be returned. Let’s get that in by the end of next week so that we can wrap up the fundraiser.

*Fire Prevention Week concludes this weekend. The West Lincoln Fire and Emergency Services conducted a fire drill earlier this week and will follow that up with an inspection in the next week or two.

*After a pre-meet run at the Kinsmen Park course on Tuesday and a short training session on Thursday at the school, the runners were ready today, in the rain, to meet the challenge of the cross-country course at Dundas Valley Conservation Area. At the time of writing, we don’t know the final results but we do know that the runners gave their best effort and, hopefully, most if not all of them were able to run their personal best for the 3.2 kilometer course. Thanks again Mrs. Heemskerk for training the athletes for this year’s run.

*Poultry Farming Theme Week: The entire school is planning to celebrate this event from October 14-16. Activities for the week include: Poultry Food Day on Thursday- students can bring from home various poultry foods, e.g. a boiled egg for lunch, left-over turkey or turducken from Thanksgiving dinner, etc.; Poultry Dress-Up Day on Friday- put on the colours of the various types of poultry or wear a poultry costume. We also hope to have a guest speaker tell us more about poultry farming on Friday afternoon. During the three days, the students will also have opportunity to participate in a colouring contest. A prize will be awarded to the best-coloured picture in Grades K-2, 3-5, and 6-8. They will also be able to participate in a rooster crowing contest on Friday afternoon where the top “crower” from each class will compete to determine who will be crowned the top “crower” in the school. We also hope to include some physical fitness that afternoon by having the entire school participate in the Chicken Dance. If you have any poultry farming “stuff” that we can borrow for the week, please drop it off or send it to school with one of your children. That would be much appreciated. We are looking forward to an exciting three days.

*Dental Screening: A Public Health registered dental hygienist is scheduled to visit John Calvin on October 20 & 21 to provide dental screening to students in Grades K, 2, 4, 6, and 8 and other children as required under the Health Protection and Promotion Act. During this time, the registered dental hygienist will perform a visual inspection of each child to determine his/her dental needs. Parents will be contacted if their child requires immediate dental care. Public Health dental programs may financially assist children who do not have access to required dental care. Please contact the Public Health dental program for any of the following: 1) If you do not wish to have your child participate in the dental screening; 2) If you child is not in one of the targeted grades and you would like him/her to participate. Call Dental Health Information at 905-688-8248 or 1-888-505-6074 ext. 7399 or email dental@niagararegion.ca

Reminders:

*Due date for the News and Views contributions is Tuesday, October 13.

*Tuesday, October 13 is a PD Day. Students may stay home and enjoy an extra day “off” while the staff will be busy working on Social Studies, History, Geography curriculum and interim report cards.

*Interim report cards will be going home on Friday, October 23 with Parent-Teacher conferences (by request, teacher or parent) to follow on Wednesday, October 28.

*You are invited to join us for the Reformation Day assembly planned for Wednesday morning, October 28 beginning at 8:20. Mr. Bergsma will be leading the assembly.

*The CRTA Teachers’ Convention is scheduled to take place in London on October 29 and 30. The students (and parents) may enjoy another extra long weekend.

*A heads-up to the students in Grades 7&8: The annual ANCHOR WORK DAY is coming up at the end of the month. The usual information about the event will be sent home next week. Perhaps the students and parents can begin to think about the odd jobs in which students can be involved.

*The Calvin Chronicle will not publish the week of October 26 because of the short week.

*Picture orders are due next week Friday.

Enjoy the long weekend everyone and have a blessed Sunday and Thanksgiving. We’ll be in touch again next week, D.V.   G. Hofsink

Classroom News

Kindergarten

What are you thankful for? What are our children really thankful for? We have been so blessed growing up being taken care of but it is important also to show our thankfulness. How do we show our thankfulness? These are some of the things we have been talking about this week. It will be a short week next week with the Mon/Tues off and Memory work Psalm 75:6 is due the 15/16th and we have now learned letters S,A,T,I, so please feel to ask your kindergartner the sounds of the letters and even the song that goes with it. For songs please look in the letter booklets sent home the first week of school. Have a Blessed Thanksgiving weekend.

S.L. M.D.

Grade 1

Memory Work for Friday, Oct. 16: Psalm 116:1;Gen 17:7

We have enjoyed another week of beautiful fall weather this week. God is good and continues to provide us with many blessings each and every day. We have finished the first chapter of our new Math book this week and have wrapped it up with a unit test, which should have come home by now. In the next chapter we will be working with shapes, sets, and counting. We have also finished our first reader and have seen a lot of growth in word recognition in most students. Readers will be in your child’s backpack today. Please encourage your child to read to you, as parents, siblings, grandparents etc. They will be eager to do that be it with some help at times. Please send the readers back to school next Friday. You will be able to see the results of the time you spent reviewing the agenda and spelling words with your child, thanks again. Today we will have enjoyed an assembly led by Mrs. DeVisser and Miss Buist. Thank-you, ladies. On Thursday, Oct. 15, we hope to visit the Safety Village in Welland. If the weather is favourable we will have our lunch in a nearby park. No microwave lunches that day. We wish you the Lord’s blessing as you may enjoy an extra long Thanksgiving weekend with your family. Have a good Sunday. Til next week. jvb/hb

Grade 2

Memory Work: Ps 43:4

Words: really, what, our, line, whom

Next week will be a short week. We are very excited to participate in the festivities that are planned. We can’t wait to see what kinds of foods and outfits show up in the school! Please practice your rooster crowing over the weekend and your math facts while you’re at it 😉 Have a blessed thanksgiving weekend! RG/HV

Grade 3

Psalm 19:1; Text: Ten Plagues

Words: laughed, pretty, prettier, prettiest, schools

Bonjour tout le monde! Ca va? Greetings and yes, we are all well, thank you! We are hearing the stories of Genesis and the students have many good questions and connections. Keep this up, grade three! We have a trivia question for the PARENTS of grade three. Who is the oldest man in the Bible and can you tell us the age too? A little prize will be given to the first three parents who respond correctly! 🙂 Ask your child about the covenant God made with Adam and Eve. We are starting to write stories with good ideas and adding details to make them more exciting. We are careful to do beautiful work for the Lord. We continue to study the lives of the pioneers. Don’t forget to work on that outfit. In our Art classes we are busy with lines and shape. Ask us about our Still Life picture. We also wrote friendly letters to each other!! Can’t wait to get a letter back! Just a reminder… please make sure your child practices the Bible passage that is read for the Bible Reading and Prayer for each day. Oh, one more reminder… students needs to bring their PE clothes on Monday and Wednesday for 3B and Monday and Thursday for 3A. Have a blessed thanksgiving weekend. J.B./M.P.

Grade 4A

The students have enjoyed learning/reviewing the first unit in Bible History.(Samuel&Saul) Tests have been completed, and they will receive have the Unit Test back. They did a great job with a 97% average! In LA we have finished our first Unit, and next week we will begin our first novel study: “Owls in the Family” by Farley Mowat. The students are looking forward to this, even though they really enjoyed the stories from the ‘Together is Better’ theme. in Science we have been working hard, and the groups have also finished their habitat posters-and they look wonderful! Please help your child remember to bring their gym clothes on Mondays and Thursdays. Next week we will have some added fun learning about eggs and poultry, with the upcoming theme week- EGGciting stuff!

Wednesday: Library

Thursday: PE

Friday: Memory work: Ps 130:2,Text: 1 Sam 15:22, Mission Money

Grade 4B

Happy Thanksgiving to all. We ended our week, this afternoon, with an Thanksgiving assembly led by Miss Buist and Mrs. DeVisser in which we could do a lot of singing about what, and more importantly Who, we are thankful for. Today we began our day with the writing of our Bible test. We will now be switching over to Church History and we will be learning about the Family of Churches. In Math we have begun (re) learning our 3 and 4 times tables. Mom ands Dad, please take the time to quiz your child on these. We are also learning how to do long division and multiple digit multiplication, two very difficult concepts but the class is really trying and working hard to understand these. Keep up the good work, Grade 4B. In Writing class we are focussing on character development and the students are quite enjoying coming up with their own characters and describing them. Science still has us discovering the importance of non-living things in communities. Why can a lizard live in the desert but not a fish?

Have a great long weekend and a blessed Sunday. SO

Monday: Thanksgiving Day

Tuesday: P.D. Day

Wednesday – Friday: Poultry Week

Grade 5

Memory Work: Psalm 29:1, Luke 2:10-14

Spelling Words: accident, equipment, gorilla, capture, difficult, disease, electric, fifth, temperature, guide, whole, jewels, thumb, knew, wrote, argue

Spelling Quiz – Thursday

Bible Test – Friday

The Spelling Lesson this week is a review lesson. I hope to give sufficient time on Wednesday for students to complete their lesson work. On Friday we will have our first unit test in Bible. Students will be encouraged to make sure that their notes are up to date, so that they will have sufficient material from which to study. Punic Wars booklets are due on Thursday. Please review the assignment sheet with your child so that he/she hands in a complete assignment. The students have been leaning about nutrition in science, and have just written a pop-quiz. They should have done extremely well on it, since they were told about it s likeliness two days before, and had done it as an open-book test then. Check how they did. Are they working to the best of their abilities? Enjoy the Thanksgiving weekend.

Grade 6A

We had a very enjoyable and educational trip to the Warplane Museum. It was good to have a review of the material taught during this unit. Making a water sprayer, watching experiments, going in the Buffalo, and flying our gliders were some of the highlights. We even heard how the Lancaster was used to bring food to the starving Dutch families and how this was called the Manna Flight. Next week we will start new units namely, Genesis, Number the Stars,and Canada and its Trading Partners. Have an enjoyable long weekend rejoicing in God’s blessings. CV

Devotions: W-Abby   Th-Caleb F-Austin

Ps.1:2-Oct.16   Vocab Quiz-Oct.16   Gen.9:12-16-Oct.15

Grade 6B

This week Grade 6B has been busy with finishing up our first units. On Tuesday we were able to go to the Canadian Heritage Warplane Museum to learn more about planes! The trip was enjoyed by all! We saw a few experiments, built our own spray guns and model airplanes, learned some interesting facts about flight and saw a lot of planes, including the Lancaster! Students are busy writing a paragraph about their favourite part of the day. Students have been busy finishing their shape quilts in Art and we are busy putting one together as a class! Next week we hope to finish our Church History unit and begin looking at the book of Genesis. We also hope to begin our novel study next week. Please remember to sign and return tests and to sign your children’s agenda! Have an enjoyable long Thanksgiving weekend! MDB

Church History Test: October 16

Vocab Quiz: October 15

Memory Work Song: Psalm 1:2 (October 16)

Memory Work Text: Psalm 8:6-9 (October 15)

Devotions: W. MDB, T. Emmalyne, F. Gabriel

Grade 7A

We wrapped up our Bible History unit on “Job” with a test; your child will come home with it next week. Just in time for our Memory Work, Hymn 28:1,2 and Oct. 31, we will learn about the Reformation beginning in the Holy Roman Empire, in the territory of Saxony. In Math we’ll be working with LCMs and GCFs as we carry on with number theory. Be sure to ask your child how the trip to West Lincoln Community Care or to Dundas Conservation Area went. In Physical Geography we’ll leave the geographic inquiry theme of “region” and move on to “movement”. Enjoy your long weekend.

Grade 7B

It’s been another busy week in the classroom. Students completed another Bible History unit by writing a test on the book of Job yesterday. Today, ten students are off to Dundas Valley for the cross country run. Enjoy your Thanksgiving weekend. KB

Devotions week of October 12 – Juanita Deruiter

Memory Work – Hymn 28:1

Grade 8

This week in Gr.8 we analyzed population stats in human geography, continued our preparations for the JCS Election, and wrote two tests in math and science. Please discuss with your child how they did. Next week is a short week, here’s some highlights: Wed: Debate prep; Thurs: Spelling quiz; MW – Ps. 28: 5; Devotions: B.T. Cheers, Mr. J