Good Kings and Saints

The Christmas services concentrating on God's merciful salvation are now finished.
The church was full of saints worshiping the King. The fullness of God's house impresses me every year!  The voices of the congregation praising God in unison fills the heart of everyone worshiping at St. John today.  Then add all of the students singing beautifully and speaking the Christmas history clearly.  It is easy to see why so many people felt inspired by the Lord as they spent time together.

Thank you to the upper grade students who led with their confident voices speaking, singing, playing instruments, reading portions of the message, and acting out parts!  The lower grade kids could proudly look to your example.

Thank you to the Christmas Committee of Mrs. Hahn, Mr. Breitwisch, and Mrs. Breitwisch for organizing our service, guiding practices, and encouraging us all along the way.

Our 2nd Grade classroom task for the rest of the school year can be summarized from the service.
We should walk in the footsteps of our King as Saints giving His love to others in all we do.

We are Gifts to our Families

Sometimes we exert more energy on finding gifts than we do on showing others what a gift they are to us. During this Christmas season, my prayer is that you'll continue to… Spend more time playing with your family than you spend shopping for them. Remember that the gift they really yearn for is you. Hug them and smile into their eyes as often as possible. Show them through your never-ending love what a precious gift they are.

Goals for Thursday!

The students have 3 goals for the morning!

1.  Listen to their teacher say "WOW" every time she grades a reading workbook on Thursday!

This will happen if students...
...Complete any reading worbook pages that have Fix written on them, 
...and make sure today's work of pages 192 and 193 is fantastic!

2.  Dance with Mrs. Fritz 

This will happen if I have all Religion Books numbered 2 and 3 on Thursday morning.  

We are working on Book number 4, but I do not have Books 2 and 3 all of my students.
Students may need you to check Religion books they brought home today,
or if they wrote a note about missing a book, help them find it, check it over, & send to school Thurs.

3. Listen and Watch a story on the Big Screen!

This will happen if students read their AR books and pass the AR tests on Thursday!  

(One point books may take longer than one night to read)
Several students are trying to earn pizza certificates for December by passing 4 tests.
A few students have almost passed 10 tests to earn an AR point toward a $5 coupon of their choice.

All the Good

The second graders usually end the day with a prayer we say together.

Jesus, Savior, Thanks today 
for all that has been good today.
Help us every day to be
good and gentle just like thee!

Sometimes after the second line we stop and begin to list those "good things."
The list today was quite long, and we realized just how blessed we are!
The students even made sure to thank God for OUTSIDE RECESS!!!
I hope they can tell you about the many wonderful parts of the school day!

We are like the Packers!

If you watched the Packer game you know how much fun it was to watch the 4th quarter!  We  were not expected to win that game.  It seemed like the predictions were true, but as loyal fans we would continue to support our team and dream big hoping for a close score.

The box top race has been like that for the second graders.  We have been bringing in bags of boxtops and it seemed we were going to remain in third place or maybe make it into second place.  We are the biggest class of students at St John and the total boxtops we collect are divided by the total number of students in the class.  The second graders seemed to be stuck as a close contenter, but just in the last days of the contest several kids in our class remembered their bags of prize gathering boxtops.........

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!   2nd GRADERS  YOU WON!!!!!!!

The students were inspiring as they spoke their parts and sang a few songs for the St. John Ladies Aid meeting on Thursday!  Mrs. Hahn played piano for us and the Lord shined through the message of the birth of His Son!

We continue to prepare for our Christmas Worship Service on Dec. 22nd.  The speaking parts and songs also communicate the birth of Christ. The message of Christmas is celebrated every day as we give of ourselves to help others!  

The students have learned a little bit about Good King Wenceslas which becomes part of our church service celebration.  Hopefully they remember some ideas to share with you.  Especially the idea that we are all saints!