Liberty Youth Academy Week 2

HERE'S A LITTLE OF WHAT WE DID IN OUR CLASSES: FUN-Damentals (Sister Hepworth's Class) RELIGION: We started our studies in the Old Testament this week and learned about the Creation of the World. The world is so beautiful! It is amazing to learn of the uniqueness of so many wonderful creations that God made with his own hands, including US! He must love us very much to provide us with such bounty and variety, and we are excited to learn more about His creation in Science this year.
 LANGUAGE ARTS: We learned all our letter strokes, reviewed the letter names of all the ABC's, and started learning the letter sounds and correct letter formation for a,c,d,and f. Please come in and buy a set of Riggs cards ($25.00) to help reinforce their learning at home. It would also be helpful for you to come to school at 10:00 a.m. on a day convenient for you and see how we test and practice our phonograms. MATH: The math worksheets in the folder reinforce the concepts learned this week.
 MUSIC: We sang, He's Got the Whole World In His Hands, and The Hokie Pokie in our class, and in Choir we are learning some Christmas songs and He Loves Me, Where We Stand, and Jesus Is Coming. SCIENCE: We are learning our lefts and rights and want to keep our hands clean. ( We are doing a Science experiment on germs.)
 ART: We made our own unique hand and foot prints and commit to use our feet to follow Jesus and use our hands for doing good.
 LITERATURE: We are still reading good Literature (Words That Light Our Way). We can learn a lot from the stories we read! Mrs. H 668-9392 hhep@aol.com

LOVE OF LEARNING (Sister Dale's Class) We are getting to know each other better and have learned that our class is a safe place where we can open up and BE OURSELVES!!! The students have also been working really hard on obeying the rules and have done an outstanding job! We've had most days where all students remained on a GREEN CARD! This means that they get an additional 20 Liberty Loot, and for every day that there are no red cards we get a point towards a "Movie Day". The class needed 15 points to earn a movie day and they already have 11. They will likely earn a movie sometime this week. I am soooo proud of their hard work, and this has been earned in record time! The movie chosen will be either a G or PG movie, that I've previously seen, and will have to do with either our History, Religion or Virtues that we've discussed. WAY TO GO LOVE OF LEARNING CLASS!!!
 ITEMS WE WORKED ON MEMORIZING THIS WEEK: Virtue of the week: Perseverance Article of Faith: #2 Scripture: 1 Nephi 13:37 Quote #1: "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." ~Thomas Edison Quote #2: "Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Quote #3: "Don't limit yourself and don't let others convince you that you are limited in what you can do. Believe yourself and then live so as to reach your possibilities. you can achieve what you believe you can." ~Thomas S. Monson All of the students worked on memorizing these quotes, some memorized all of the quotes, the scripture and the Article Of Faith ( Ask them to see if they remember). They earned prizes from the prizebox on Thurs. for doing so. We will have "pass off day" every Thurs. where they can pass off the quotes/script/AofF for that week. We talked about the importance of NEVER GIVING UP on our goals, or on ourselves! We read and discussed Nephi and his attempts to get the Brass plates from King Laban. He had perseverance and faith! His brother's chose to complain and murmur instead of having perseverance like Nephi.
 In History we are also discussing Columbus. He had to have A LOT of perseverance too. He spent 7 years of his life trying to convince the King and Queen of Spain that his ideas were worth their financing. Then when they were on the voyage, more perseverance was needed in order to make it. His crew and the captains of the other ships wanted to turn back. On the last day possible, land was sighted and thanks to Columbus's faith and perseverance, the new lands were discovered.
 RELIGION: We continued to read in the Book Of Mormon and spent time comparing and contrasting Nephi and Lehi's response to their hardships with Laman and Lemuel's. We all decided we want to be like Nephi!
 MATH: I am still doing some assessments, but all have started on their individual lesson plans and are working on their worksheets as a follow up to their lessons and math facts memorization. We will begin a new series called Life Of Fred this week. It is math in story form. Math concepts are taught in the way children learn best-THROUGH STORIES! Also, we will be adding some stories from Mathematicians Are People Too. Both of these curriculums, Life of Fred and Mathematicians Are People Too, teaches teaches the children about math concepts and the people who developed these concepts through the medium that children learn best-STORIES!
 LANGUAGE ARTS: We are doing a creative writing unit. One of very talented students, Megan Ford, brought in a story that she had written about her blanket named Kiki, that she's had since she was a baby. It was a delightful story that told about how she loved her blanket, how she loved it so much it is in shreds, how that happened, how her blanket has comforted her and that she still likes to sleep with it, as well as a night light. It is a beautiful story that inspired all of the other students in the class to open up and talk about their favorite blanket, or stuffed animals, and their need to sleep with a night light too. The experience really helped to build class friendships and trust, but it also inspired the children to want to write! I had planned to do some activities where we reviewed writing a paragraph, but decided to change lesson plans and we did some brainstorming activities instead. We reviewed some basics of creative writing and the students began working on their stories. We will continue to work on our stories and do some revising this week. The students also took their first Spelling Tests! New words go out this week and the test on these words will be next Thurs.
 LITERATURE: I read some short stories to the children illustrating Perseverance, and the children are LOVING the novel Ida B!!!
 HISTORY: As mentioned above, we began a unit on Christopher Columbus. We learned about his life as a boy, and how he felt impressed by the spirit to sail. We will be learning about the prophesy related to Columbus discovering the Promised Land in the Book of Mormon this coming week and learn more about the actual first trip to discover the new lands!
 GEOGRAPHY: We began learning about the Geography of the U.S. We are starting with learning about all of the States. I discovered when we were talking about Hurricane Isaac that the many of the students didn't know that New Orleans was in Louisiana, or where Louisiana was located. I decided to review states and then we will then move to memorizing the capitals. We also are learning about the mountain ranges and major rivers in the U.S.
 SCIENCE: The students really enjoyed learning about Fish and Birds. Sister Alexander brought in some fish to observe and sent home bird feeders to lure birds into your yards for observation. A Science homework packet went home as well and can be worked on until we have Science again
CHOIR: We continued to work on our songs about our virtues, learned a new one about Perseverance and worked on Christmas songs. We will begin learning about time signatures and how to properly lead music in choir this week