What Matters Most

This Week In School

Virtue of the week: FAITH!

Article of Faith-#3

Scripture-Moses 7:47 And behold, Enoch saw the day of the coming of the Son of Man, even in the flesh, and his soul rejoiced saying: The righteous is lifted up, and the Lamb is slain from the foundation of the world; and through faith I am in the bosom of the Father, and behold, Z ion is with me!

Quote #1-"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other" John Adams-2nd U.S. President

Quote #2-"God who gave us life gave us liberty! And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift from God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever." Thomas Jefferson-2nd U.S. President (excerpt taken from the walls of the Jefferson Monument in Washington, D.C)

We spent time during our school devotional talking about Faith, what it is, who in history and the scriptures has had it and the effect they had on history. We discussed the Stripling Warriors, Ester, and David (in the lion's den). We also talked about the faith of our Founding Fathers and real life people, who live today and who exercise faith and see great miracles in their lives. We also learned two new songs about Faith during choir!

Humanitarian Project

The Humanitarian Center has an immediate need of 1680 School Kits. They have some already made bags at the Center, what we need is the supplies for them. Scissors, rulers, unsharpened pencils, colored pencils in boxes that are already sharpened, notebooks, rulers, 2 inch erasers and pencil sharpeners. The notebooks have to equal 450 pages per bag so varieties (150, 100, 70 pages per notebook) will be needed. The erasers have to be 2 inches, the scissors have to be blunt nose metal children’s scissors and the note books the 8 by 11 size not small ones.

We are asking that all LYA students have their donations to the school by Sept 16th! Stephanie Dale's ward will be putting the bags together. We will let you know if they need help on the night when this will be done. We would LOVE for the LYA children to help with this if possible.

And one more exciting thing! Our wonderful Karate instructor's wife has committed to use Bobby Lawrence Karate Studio and their students to help us get donations together! They will be asking their students to donate items too! It is wonderful to see people rally together to help children progress educationally!

If you have any more questions, contact Stephanie at 435-668-4804. Thank you for all your wonderful help!

AFTER SCHOOL LEADERSHIP CLASS!

Come join us for Liberty Youth Academy's Leadership Class, open to the public

We will learn how to:

- Be an effective youth leader

- Organize self, time, and finances

- Prepare and deliver a public speech

- Show Christlike service in every day acts

We will be using the following books which should be purchased or reserved at the library ASAP!

Leadership and Self-Deception by the Arbinger Institute

7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Covey

We will have guest speakers, field trips, a service project, and an end of class party.

Each participant will receive a "Leadership Workbook" to keep track of all they are learning.

Ages 10 and up (younger students on an individual basis)

Cost: $10 per student and includes workbook (field trips may have a small additional fee, less than $5) Make checks payable to: Liberty Youth Academy

Time: Class starts Sept. 7th from 2:45-4 p.m. and is held every Tuesday, the final class being December 7thwith an end of class party. No class on October 12th and October 19th.

Location: Liberty Youth Academy, 558 E. Riverside Drive #105, Saint George, Utah

Tell your friends and give me a call asap to reserve your child's spot-668-4804

Virtue of the week: FRIENDSHIP!
Article of Faith-#2
Scripture-Proverbs 15:1-2 A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger. The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright: but the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness
Quote #1-"I will speak ill of no man, and speak all the good I know of everybody" Benjamin Franklin
Quote #2-"Kindness is the essence of greatness and the fundamental characteristic of the noblest men and women I have known. Kindness is the passport that opens doors and fashions friends. It softens hearts and molds relationships that can last lifetimes" Joseph B. Wirthlin

School Song

First Week of School

We had a great first week in the Love Of Learning Class! For the most part we were getting to know each other and developing relationships. Here's a little bit of what we did:

SCHOOL DEVOTIONAL: Every week, first thing, we meet as a school and have a devotional. Your children lead the devotional. We focus on a virtue of the week, and every day we work on an Article of Faith, a scripture related to the virtue, and two quotes, one short and a longer one for those who want that challenge. The children have an opportunity to earn a prize from the prize box if they have memorized one of the above, two prizes are awarded for memorizing all 4 above mentioned items. Last week we had 4 students who memorized all 4! Below are the things we worked on this week during devotional time:

Virtue of the week: FRIENDSHIP!
Article of Faith-#1
Scripture-Proverbs 18:24 A man that hath friends must show himself friendly, and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother
Quote #1-"If you judge people, you have no time to love them" -Mother Teresa
Quote #2-"Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for tis better to be alone than in bad company" -George Washington

LEADERSHIP CLASS

We will be offering an after school Leadership class for students 9 and older. We will be opening this up to the community and to homeschoolers. There will be required reading and a charge for the book. It will run roughly 6 weeks. Sister Knudsen has some fabulous ideas and guest speakers lined up. It's going to be a wonderful class that teaches children about being mission driven, developing good habits and routines etc. We will be meeting after school on Tuesdays. Please let me know if you are interested, and let your non-LYA friends know about it as well:)

READING CONTEST

We have a reading contest that we began this week. The children are encouraged to read at least 30 minutes each night and on the weekends for homework. The top three children in each class who read the most minutes will win a new book. Time spent reading scriptures as a family, in the library, or when you read to your child can all be counted as reading minutes. A chart to document your child's reading minutes will be sent home each weekend, and needs to be returned on Mondays with the rest of the completed homework. In addition, the children will be asked each morning if they read the night before. Parents are encouraged to remind their child when dropping them off in the morning how much they read the night before. We know that this may not be perfectly accurate, but have found that even the smallest children are pretty good about remembering to read and to tell their teacher how much that they read the night before. The winners will be awarded their new books on Thursday October 7th prior to our Fall Break!

First Day of School

What an amazing first week of school we had! Your children are all wonderful! The new students were immediately embraced by the returning students as friends, and by Thursday you would have thought that these children had known each other forever. We have a very special group of children. I can't wait to see the incredible things that they will do this year!

Again this year we will be focusing on HEROES! We will discuss the heroes of the past, what makes a hero, and how we can be a "hero" to someone else. We at LYA believe strongly that a hero is anyone who follows Gods plan for them and in consequence blesses the lives of others. We also have found that the great heroes from history and those in our own lives have some things in common. They each embrace certain "virtues" or attributes. We will be discussing a virtue each week and encouraging the children to work on attaining these virtues, in that way they are preparing for their time to step up and be a hero!

This week's virtue was FRIENDSHIP! We learned a scripture about friendship, and memorized two quotes, and we learned about how Mother Teresa and George Washington were good friends to those whom they served.

We also taught the children the school song (Steadfast In You), school poem (Heroes by William Canton) and taught them the policies and procedures of our day. Everyone caught on quickly and had a really good time! Smart kids! We began our assessments in Math and Reading and will continue those next week. We will also begin our units on Egypt and the Solar System next week!