Our second and third graders spent an afternoon in servant ministry at the ESSE Center in Wheaton. Here they sing the song Peace Like a River.

On February 9th, we celebrated and thanked God for 100 Days that we have had to learn in this Christ-centered school. We all wore 100 items on our various pieces of clothing and wrote multiplication sentences for the arrays made with the items. We also did a 100th Day Journal and with our bodies formed the numeral 100 (as seen in the picture). It was a day of JOY!

Having been given a challenge to share the love of Christ with the people suffering from the earthquakes in Haiti, our students decided to sell cookies at lunch and raised close to $200 for the relief effort. Best of all we saw the Holy Spirit working in each and every child as they brought their allowances and baked for these people. Joy abounded!

Our students have been studying how other countries celebrate the birthday of our Lord. Sooooo... we we to the Museum of Science and Industry to see the trees from Around the World. MAGNIFICENT!

We have designated our chapel offerings for this year to the Voice of Care ministries. Pastor Kretzschmar is the chaplain of this worth organization.

Our chapel offerings this year are dedicated to the Voice of Care Mission. We made "Shine for Jesus" pumpkins to share with the people attending their fall event. It was fun to help others!

We have been studying Penguins and their ability to withstand the temperatures of the Antarctic. We discovered that they walk on their heels so as not to lose too much body heat from full foot contact with the ice. So, we stood on our heels on frozen cookie sheets and then felt the difference in temperature when our whole foot touched the surface. Much colder!!!

The third graders are studying about communities. As such, they have been assigned a long-term project of creating a scrapbook of Wheaton, Illinois. We have had field trips to various agencies to acquaint ourselves with the importance of these places in our community.

It is a tradition at St. John that all Third Grade students receive the gift of a Bible from the congregation. These are precious gifts! As such, we want the students to know how to use them! Pastor Marcus Nelson has graciously met with the children every Thursday morning for the past month explaining how to find God, Jesus, and ourselves in every story of the Bible. It has been a great privilege for all of us!

Petri Dishes ready for seed starts! Our budding scientists prepare their dishes for the proper breeding ground for seed germination. The dishes were placed in one of three environments (a sunny window, a dark closet, and the refrigerator). Our hypothesis is that the window group will do well, the closet and refrigerator groups will not. Look for our conclusions next week.

As we studied the concepts of statements vs. questions and subjects and predicates, we had a relay to assess our knowledge of the subject. They did extremely well.

Our student teacher makes math fun with hands-on experiences designed to motivate students to think critically and problem solve.

Our students spend time in class each day reading from books of their choice including those designated as Accelerated Readers!

Our third grade writers read to us from their latest works.

This was our first day in Third Grade and we were thrilled to be renewing friendships and learning about the world that God made for us!