One Big Bunch of God's Kids!

What a joy to watch all the colors come onto the athletic field initially as separate colors and then, as the drummers marched off, all of the bright colors exploded into one big joyful mess of God's happy children! Another beautiful illustration of Life Together! Thank you for holding hands, encouraging kids, laughing with parents and cooling our kids. We are so blessed by our supportive Holland Christian community. God is GOOD and we are entrusted to continue doing His good work.

WZZM
AKA Channel "13" news would like to film our little peeps for their salute which will air at the close of their broadcasts. They will film each class beginning at 10:00 on Tuesday, September 29. I don't have a good feel for how long this will take so we may have to make a few alterations to recess times. I'll cover duty on the playground. I'm SORRY 3-day K classes that this is on Tuesday. They only ever record 5 classes and had asked for Tuesday, September 29 :( We'll film who we have here and Amanda's class will divide into their encore class groups.

Assessment Day
In order to help with running records and assessments we will hold our assessment day on Thursday, October 1 from 8:30-11:30. Lia, Danielle, Michelle and I will man the crowd.

Report Cards
Report Cards will be printed and go home on Thursday, October 15 for 3-day K. Friday, October 16 for the rest of the crowd. Please have your grades entered in gradebook by Thursday, October 15 at 8:00. We'll fire up the printers.

Conference Times
Elementary parent/teacher conference times will be 4:00-8:00 on Tuesday, October 20 and 1:00-5:00 on Wednesday, October 21.

Grandparents' Day
Please plan to practice with the full stage on Wednesday, September 30 from 8:30-9:00. I'll get music and the program to you shortly-ish. Because we will need to park cars on the playground, we will move recess up to 9:45-10:00 on Thursday, October 8. Todd will open the gates at 10:00 and start letting cars in. Invitations will go home in Friday Folders. 3-day K, yours went home today!

Staff Meeting
Due to Grandparents Day, our next staff meeting has been moved to Thursday, October 15.

Pastors' Breakfast
Poor recess. We keep shuffling it around. To accommodate the pastors' breakfast schedule on the 7th we will be moving recess on Wednesday, October 7 to 9:50-10:10. Pastors may be visiting your rooms between 10:10-10:30. This might be a good time for snack and story as spontaneous interruptions will be doable with a story rather than a heavy duty exam.

Monday's PD
Breakfast will begin at 7:30 on main street. Learning Lab discussion and training will be in the auditorium beginning at 8:00. Lunch will be at 11:00. We'll kick off our first TNT at 12:00 and be dismissed by 3:00. Should be a good bunch of learning that day!

Pictures, Swimming, Field Trips, DIBELS...full steam ahead.

What a week it's been. It's good to have five days to cram what sometimes feels like 24 days worth of work into. ;) At the heart of all this busy, extra activity it's so good and right to witness each of you enjoying your students, building relationships, praying together, sharing stories in the gathering area and doing Life Together. God is doing good work for our children through each of you.

In case you need mood music in your room from time to time! ;)

Amy Woods
We praise God for answered prayer. Amy's surgery was successful! We miss her and pray for a speedy recovery. We also thank God for paving the road that provided Michelle Frieling to continue working with Amy's kids each day.

Pastors' Breakfast
3-day kinder classes, please send the pastors' invitations home today. All other K-2 students are asked to take the invitations home on Friday. Please copy and paste this note in your classroom blog:

"We are excited to announce that we will be honoring all of the pastors represented in our Holland Christian School student body, with a breakfast and special and special speaker.  This breakfast will take place in our high school cafeteria, Wednesday morning, October 7, 2015 from 8:45-10:00.

In order to have a successful breakfast we would like your help.  This week your child/children will be taking home a special invitation for your pastor.  Please help your child remember to take this invitation to church this coming Sunday and personally invite your pastor to the breakfast.  The pastors will also have the opportunity to visit your child's classroom on the morning of Wednesday, October 7.

We are eager to share the blessings of Christian education with your pastor.  Please encourage your child to hand deliver the invitation to your pastor after the Sunday service.  If your church has more than one pastor whom your child would like to invite, please request additional invitations from the elementary office.

Thank you for helping us honor your pastors.  We are looking forward to having these very special guests on our campus!

Contact Mike Verkaik with any questions by email at mverkaik@hollandchirstian.org."

Staff Meeting Change
Due to Grandparents' Day on Thursday, October 9, let's move our staff meeting to the following Thursday, October 15 over our lunch hour.

Discovery Assessment
One more week to fit in the two assessments. Please don't hesitate to ask to ask for support!

EGG Grants
Turn in your awesome big ideas on Friday, September 25.

Walk-a-thon T-shirts
In the office are the t-shirts for our students. Feel free to take them, have the kids try them on if you'd like, but please don't send them home. Our children will change into their new shirts on Wednesday before the walk-a-thon and they may wear them home (they're pretty cool). Please don't forget to thank Kylie Leeuw if/when you see her. She has put a lot of work into pulling this event off smoothly.

This and That

New Students! 
Join me in thanking God for three new students who have already or are in the process of joining us at South Side. Woot! Woot!

Amy's surgery
Amy, we will be in prayer for you as you undergo surgery next week. We pray for a successful procedure and a speedy recovery. No question about it: we will miss you on the team every day, Amy. You're supportive spirit, warmth, tenderness and leadership with our students is a gift! Truly. You make South Side a better place for both children and adults. Take the time you need to heal fully, but we'll be happy to have you back! In the meantime, we welcome Michelle Freiling to run Amy's LLI groups and push-in support in Amy's absence.

Grandparents Day
Per our discussion, we'll stick very close to our classic program. If you have a student, however, who you note has a special gift/talent or interest in participating in a special way, please let me know. We'll put them on the docket!

Pastor's Breakfast
Mike VerKaik has been working hard to organize the Pastor's Breakfast event for October 7. Please remember that we will hold our recess from 9:50-10:10 and then if each class would have snack and story from 10:10-10:30 we will be able to welcome any pastors that come and go from our classrooms. He is also preparing an invitation for our children to decorate next week. More information forthcoming as it is available.

Chapel on the 16th
We will hold chapel at the typical time, however, due to swimming, second grade will not be able to participate because the bus will be ready to pick you up just a few minutes after chapel is underway. So chapel this Wednesday will only involve first grade and kindergarten. We'll miss you second graders!

CEA Stipend and Overnight Opportunity
As we discussed in our staff meeting, please inform Karen VanMeeteren if you are planning to attend CEA if you haven't already. You will receive a stipend to help offset the costs of travel and staying overnight in South Bend. Here is a link to the hotel Erin Wyma and I will be staying in. Earlier this week there was still room in the inn. But I hear it fills quickly.

New Tornado Drill Locations
Thank you for interrupting your teaching time to practice the tornado drill. You move so confidently and quickly. Our students are in good hands! I have noticed that we have several classes who are assigned to curl up on the bathroom floor....the BOYS bathroom floor. Eh hem! EWWW! Nothing like trading in safety in the storm for a staph infection. Please take note of our freshly updated plan in the google drive. I will contact the fire department to ensure this plan is safe, but for now, no need to hide out in bathrooms.

Makers Space and Week
Per our discussion, you should have received a link to our new Makers Space calendar as well as a project list Google Sheets. If you did not receive this link, please let me know! Thank you for your willingness to embrace this new venture in educating our students!

Discovery Assessment
As you can see, the Discovery Assessment window opens on Monday morning and will be at the ready for your scheduling for two weeks.

Life Together

God is good. All of the time. Look at all these eager faces. Even on our little ones! We prayed for these little hearts and, while they may not have comprehended all that was going on around them, they certainly got a glimpse of the sheer size of what "Life Together" at Holland Christian looks like and sounds like. Beautiful! Have you viewed the smugmug photo album? It fuels my heart and soul to see the faces of the children, both big and small, that we are asked to live into and share God for this school year.

Closing Convocation 
Our HC closing convocation is scheduled for Wednesday, May 18. It is on the Google calendar, but also worth taking note as we make our plans this year.

Staff Meeting
As we did last year, we will hold our staff meetings during the lunch hour of the second Thursday of each month. This meeting will take place on Thursday, September 10.

Agenda Thus Far:

• Grandparents Day
• Love and Logic
• Makers Space
• HC Story Guide/Blogs
• Parent Feedback Survey

EpiPen Training
Hendrina will give us the refresher course on how to administer medication to a child using an epipen if the need were ever to arise. This training will take place on Thursday, September 10 in the afternoon. She was not available over the lunch hour.

Swimming Schedule
Our 5-day kindergarten, first and second grade classes will begin swimming lessons on Monday, September 14. Lessons will follow for the week of the 14th and the week of the 21st. Swimming lessons will be cancelled on Friday, Sept. 18. Pick up/Drop off times will be as follows:

8:38 a.m.-9:42 a.m. Second grade
9:28 a.m.-10:32 a.m. First grade
10:18 a.m.-11:22 a.m. Kindergarten

Discovery Assessment
Our first and second grade classes will need to take the Discovery Assessment (A) between the weeks of September 14-September 25. We will assess the students in reading and in math. As we did last year, we will be utilizing iPads for this assessment.

DIBELS
September 17 a team of teachers will be assessing our kindergarteners using DIBELS. This is an agreement HC has made with Ottawa County. That data will not impact your teaching/instruction, however, you may certainly have access to your kids' scores if you would like.

School Pictures
All school photos will be taken in the Makers Space room. Each staff member must have a photo taken for the yearbook as well.

Thursday
ALL present preschool classes and Junior Kindergarten students
Mrs. Becksfort and Mrs. Johnson's students

All Staff photo taken at front door at 11:55 (Jenna and Sarah have a learning lab at PR to scoot off to so please try to buzz to the front doors on time. You may need to ask a volunteer to watch your class in order to make it in time for our picture together).

Friday
**Swimming lessons will be cancelled on Friday, the 18th due to school photos**
Mrs. Strikwerda's class
All first grade
All second grade

Drills
Thursday, September 10 we will have a tornado drill at 1:40 and lead into recess.

Parking on South End
Our wonderful grounds-keeping crew has requested that we keep our cars off the grass along the staff parking lot. They are not able to mow the lawn under our cars. Shoot!