The Friday Addition Board wishes everyone a very Merry Christmas during this season of celebrating our Savior's birth! During this season of advent, may each family have wonderful moments together anticipating the coming of Jesus so long ago!

Invoices for second semester at Friday Addition were emailed out on December 1 (if we had an email for your family). These bills are due at the end of the month (or the first payment is due if you are on a payment plan). The board appreciates your diligence in paying these by the end of December. Along with the invoice, you will find the helper schedule for second semester. Please take a moment to

put the date you will be helping on your calendar. The program really runs best with our parent help-ers! Thanks for all your support in the classrooms this semester, and we look forward to seeing every-one next semester as well!

Coming up on December 12, there will be an Open House for K-7th grades immediately following classes on that day. At 4pm we will be meeting in the sanctuary upstairs! Families will watch a brief rendition of THE THREE LITTLE PIGS and LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD by the high school Spanish students, followed by a worship song the K-7th students have learned this semester. After instructions are given, families will be invited to the gym at 4:15pm to enjoy music and class projects, converse with teachers, participate in putting together the gift bags for nursing home residents, and celebrate the first semester with food and fellowship! Stay for a short time or relax and spend time with other home school families for a while longer!

Do not miss filling up the class bags! The goal is for each class to bring in 50 items (chapstick, hand sanitizer, hard candy, lotion, pen and paper, socks, Scripture verse cards, etc.) that will be used to make gift bags for nursing home residents! The bags will be put together during the Open House on December 12. Families will have a chance to join other FA families in delivering the gift bags to a nurs-ing home on December 19 (after high school classes are finished for the day). Please look for more details in the next couple of weeks!

Future Friday Addition board members are needed! Are you motivated? Dedicated? Detailed? Have vision? If you want to be part of an energetic team of parents who want to provide a great program for their own children and other homeschooled children as well, then consider being part of the Friday Ad-dition board! Friday Addition is currently searching for couples to join the FA board to plan and imple-ment the 2015/2016 school year! For further information contact Brian and Kim Luurtsema at bkluurtsema@fridayaddition.com or 616-896-7327.

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FA NEWS/CALENDAR DECEMBER 2014

FRIDAY

an exalting, enriching & equipping experience

Believe it or not, NOW is the time to begin planning for the 2015/2016 school year! For this reason, the FA board is asking all families to fill out a survey! We value your input! So please take time to let us know your thoughts on the Friday Addition program. FA is a parent run program, and it exists to support homeschooling families! The survey will be sent to you via email, and there will also be hard copies available on Friday! The board wants to hear from you, so anyone who takes the time to complete a sur-vey will be entered into a drawing that will take place at our Open House on December 12! If your name is drawn, you could win a home school book, a giftcard to Bigby or the Homeschool Bookstore! Thanks for participating in advance!

Dec. 5 Bring items for "Fill the Bag"

Fill out a parent survey!

Ice Cream Sundaes from Student Council- 8th-12th (during lunch)

Dec. 9 Homestead Holiday at DeGraaf Nature Center (1-2:30pm)

Dec. 12 Pizza Day!

Open House for K-7 immediately following classes

Last Day of Classes for K-7th

Movie Night for 8th-12th at First Baptist (5:30pm-9pm)

Dec. 16 Homestead Holiday at DeGraaf Nature Center (1-2:30pm)

Dec. 19 HS classes only!

Last Day of classes for 8th-12th

Deliver Gift Bags to Nursing Homes

Dec. 22 10am-12pm All school roller skating

Dec. 26 No FA classes!

Dec. 31 Payment for Second Semester is due

Jan. 2 No FA classes!

Jan. 9 First Day of classes after the break!

FA NEWS/CALENDAR

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STUDENT COUNCIL

Who: 8-12 grade

What: Dinner and Move Night!

When: December 12 from 5:30-9pm

Where: In the elementary lunch room at First Baptist

Hello everyone! We'll be having dinner at 5:30, and the main meal is provided by Friday Addition. We need boys to bring chips and girls to bring desserts or pop. For the movie, please send parent-approved suggestions. We will let everyone know what the decision is by this Friday. Please RSVP to bluurt8@gmail.com by December 9th, and girls let us know if you are bringing dessert or pop. We hope to see you there!

Hello! All students who attended the summer program at the studio have been tested, broken their boards, and re-ceived their belts. All the other students will be testing in February. Coming up on December 13th at 7pm, there is going to be a Christmas party at the main studio in Wyoming. All stu-dents, parents and their families are invited to join in the fun, food and games! Sparring Gear: Sparring gear is required for all students red belt and higher, and it is part of their test. Some students are at purple and blue belt. This is the time to seriously start thinking about getting your sparring gear ordered. If they do not have their equipment, they fail that part of the test. We can offer sparring gear kits for $84.80 - includes: head, chest, hands, feet, mouth piece protection and groin protection for the men. This is a huge savings of $37.10!

BILL CHURCH/JACI KINNER—KARATE

BARB BOERSEN—KINDERGARTEN

Can you believe that this is our last news notes for this year. We have just two more weeks

of Friday Addition. The kids have been such a blessing to me this year. I want to say thank you to

all the parental support that our class has received. I have enjoyed having parents in our class as

helpers. You have all been great helpers.

Most of you have had an opportunity to watch as the kids look for their sight words in the

morning message. It is exciting to see them growing to readers. Each week we find more words

while we review our old words. Our messages are getting very colorful. Each week there is less for

me to read and more for the kids to read.

As we wrap up our first semester, we will be doing another day of cooking for the open-

house. Each child will be asked to bring in an item for soup that we will be preparing for the open-

house. Please watch for a note that will let you know what items we will need.

In December and January our sharing will be as follows:

Dec. 5: Anything they want!

Dec. 12: Item for Soup

Jan. 9: Musical Instrument

Jan. 16: Winter Memory (can include picture or item)

Jan. 23: Something that weighs less than a quarter

Jan. 30: Favorite Bath Toy Have a great holiday break!

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The first graders have been busy!

Science has been filled with adventure. You should have seen the kids’ eyes when I told them they were going to have the opportunity to eat all the parts of a plant. Sunflower seeds, carrots, celery, spinach, and broccoli were the fare. When we learned about seeds, we dug out the potting soil and grass seed. I can’t wait to hear about all the “hairy heads” and “haircuts”! We also read an interesting book about a special seed and ate popcorn. For our two weeks in December, we are going to study the differences between living and nonliving things. Two dif-ferent kinds of worms will help with our understanding of this topic.

In December, we are going to travel to Australia and Antarctica. The children have en-joyed the power point presentations and national anthems for the countries each week. Their passports are filling up fast.

The children love to paint and do a fabulous job at following directions so things don’t get too messy! In celebration of the fall snow, we made “snowy” leaf prints. Some kids experi-enced leaf rubbings for the first time, and everyone had fun mixing primary colors for their beautiful sunflower paintings. These next two weeks, we are going to do aboriginal art and a project for some extra special people!

I hope that you were able to enjoy your child retelling the events that led up to the first Thanksgiving. The bead bracelets are a wonderful way to practice recalling, summarizing, and sequencing the events of this story.

We spent an extra week on Spanish colors because the kids loved playing the colors BINGO game. Café (brown) is the favorite color word, bringing giggles and laughter every time it is said. Our next set of vocabulary words will be classroom objects.

Math is an exciting time. The kids have learned how to play Skip-Bo and Animal Su-doku. We will continue to use dice and dominoes to practice addition in fun ways.

I look forward to seeing all of you at the Open House. Several of the kids’ pieces of art-work will be on display, and there will be some fun activities too.

We tend to get busy during this time of year, and it is always good to step back and pon-

der what a wonderful gift God has given us through His Son and our Savior Jesus Christ! I

wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

CHERYL GORDILLO—FIRST GRADE

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7th GWL

Non-fiction book reports are due before leaving for Christmas break. Some students have already turned them in! There is a Christmas section in the literature book which I hope the students will read during their break. I have been greatly encouraged reading your students’ journal entries. Parents, you are doing a wonderful job raising young people who love the Lord and others! We are on schedule in writing with lessons 8 and 9 being covered this month.

8th GWL

Our second non-fiction book report for this semester is due before Christmas break. Most reports have already been turned in. It looks as though we will finish the grammar handbook this school year! Yeah! There is a Christmas section in the literature book which I hope the students will read during their break. Parents, you would be so encouraged if you could read what your students have written in their journals! I brag about your young people to everyone I know!! We will spend several more weeks on report/essay writing.

High School GWL

Research, note taking, outlining – done! Now to write the paper. We start that part of the process in January! Along with that is typing up the works cited page. The book we’re using has a lot of good ex-amples to help us learn all these techniques. Well, Macbeth has met his comeuppance! We move unto the Renaissance with language a bit easier to read and understand. Parents, you would be so encouraged if you could read what your students have written in their journals! I brag about your young people to everyone I know!! It also looks as though we will finish the grammar book by the end of the school year! Yeah!

LINDA LAKE—GWL

LYNDA LEUSCHNER—SCIENCE

Human Anatomy -

We continue learning about nerves as we move on to study the central nervous system: the brain & spinal cord. We will learn about which areas of the brain are responsible for which functions of the body. Then we will study how God provides protection for this vital organ. Students will also gain an understanding for how a reflex works. They accomplish all this before heading home to enjoy the Christ-mas holidays with their families. I pray you all have a very Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!

8th General Science -

We spend this month looking at the fascinating subject of fossils & general features of the fos-sil record. We will begin to compare two different perspectives on how to view the fossil re-cord: uniformitarianism and catastrophism. Then it's time to head home to enjoy the Christmas holidays with our families! I pray you all have a very Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!

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K~1 Our introductory activities included games such as Pound Puppies, Snowball Tag, and Snatch

the Fox's Tail which focused on running, dodging, tagging, agility, aerobic exercise, and accuracy

throwing. Base Race and Sharks and Seals focused on all the locomotor skills, base running, baton

passing, and quickly starting and stopping. Our skill learning included foot dribbling and trapping,

hand dribbling, kicking, base-running, and fielding.

2~3 Some of our warm-up activities included the games Fruit Salad, Dog Catchers, and Steal the

Tails which focused on listening, dodging, tagging, aerobic endurance, and agility. Our skill learning

included ball handling, manipulation, and control. The students practiced the correct dribbling tech-

nique, working on right and left dexterity, peripheral vision, and offense and defense. The students

worked on the skill of kicking with the game One-on-One Kickball. Lastly, we practiced overhand

throwing and dodging with the activities Donkey Dodge and Team Dodgeball.

4 During our basketball unit, we have focused on all the skills of basketball. The activities that fo-

cused on dribbling on the run included Dribble Tag, Dribble-the-Hoops Relay, and the Hoop Dribble

Game. Another dribbling game, Basketball Pirates, focused on speed dribbling, defense, ball control,

and ball stealing. We practiced the proper technique for the chest and bounce pass with the activi-

ties Bull-in-the-Ring, Guard the Pin, and Shuttle Pass and Follow. Another activity, Figure-8 Scram-

ble, taught the skills of speed dribbling, ball control, and shooting. We also concentrated on basic

body and footwork skills and terminology. Lastly, we practiced proper set shooting with a game

called Number Basketball.

LISA LUURTSEMA—PHYSICAL EDUCATION

MARIA QUESADA—SPANISH

Hello FA Families!

It has been a blessing and a true joy to be teaching your kids during these first months! They are doing a great job in this process of learning a new language like Spanish. It’s amazing how excited they are to com-municate, understand, memorize and do games and activities in Spanish. I appreciate that a lot!

During November, we reviewed vocabulary, grammar and basic conversational phrases in order to set a foundation for next year. We also did a fun project: Making My Spanish Dictionary. The kids designed their covers and then they wrote down everything they learned in Spanish and English. They did a great job. Here you can see some of the results:

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We also started working on making Christmas Cards in Spanish. They are expressing their creativity and working hard using the words they know in Spanish. Here is a picture of the first results!

Hope you all have a great Christmas Break! See you next year!

2nd - 6th Grade Science Looking Back:

Happily, our Rotting Fruit Jar Experiment is living up to its name. Students are beginning to need rulers to measure the liq-uid in the bottom of their jars and curious odors occasionally waft through the room. Imploding cans with air pressure, creating clouds in a jar, and learning that snow comes in many different six sided shapes have been some of our discoveries this month. With our melting ice experiments, students courageously completed the final step in the Scientific Method by communicating and presenting data in front of the class.

Looking Ahead: Our final experiments for 2014 will demonstrate how weather fronts collide to create storms and how the rotation of the earth affects weather.

MARIA QUESADA—SPANISH

CARRIE SEARLES—SCIENCE

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7th Grade Science Looking Back:

Throughout the year, we have discovered a small portion of how this amazing world God created for us works. In our weather studies, students gained an understanding of what things make up weather and how they work together. Temperature, wind, pres-sure and moisture are some of the elements we have discussed. Students performed an experiment on the Coriolis Effect, showing how winds tend to curve because of the rotation of the earth. Groups presented information to the class about clouds and air masses.

Looking Ahead: Our first semester will end with experiments on weather fronts and storms, as well as the end of semester exam. Be aware, the end of semester exam will be taken in class on December 12th. Students will be given a study guide and more information in class.

CARRIE SEARLES—SCIENCE

LUCY SEAY—5th/6th WRITING

The fifth and sixth graders have made such great strides in their writing skills this fall! I am so proud of how each student is growing through class participation and in practice through at-home writing assignments. Each week in class, we spend the first few minutes reviewing feed-back from the most recent at-home assignment so we can learn from mistakes and from each other’s creativity. Then we launch into the next new concept to be added to our writing as we construct a new paragraph on the board together. Time flies, and we do a lot of laughing along with our learning.

Throughout November, we’ve been learning about different ways of opening our sentences in order to make our paragraphs more interesting. These have included subject, “ly” adverbs, ad-verbial and “because” clausal openings, and “-ing” words. In December, we’ll be adding two more sentence openers: prepositional phrases and VSS (very short sentences). It’s hard to believe the first semester of Friday Addition is coming to a close!

I encourage you to keep your students writing over the holidays. One of the most practical

ways to practice writing skills at Christmas is through writing “thank you” notes for gifts re-

ceived. Offer your students some note cards and a quiet spot in which to write to others as

they reflect on all of their many blessings. We are all so very blessed. Merry Christmas!

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Music

Our first semester was an exploration of the four Families of Instruments in the orchestra: The String Family, the Woodwind Family, the Brass Family, and the Percussion Family. The stu-dents learned about many new instruments and discovered many interesting aspects of how instruments were made and played.

In December, we will continue our review and help them hear the distinctiveness of various instruments. We will also explore the human voice as an instrument created by God. Christ-mas music is the best time to discover the wonders of the human voice since Christians have composed great vocal music for over 1000 years.

Christian Worldview

We are completing our overview of the sweeping ideas of the Christian Worldview -- Creation, Fall, and Redemption. Students are piecing together elements of many things they have learned through their own studies at church and exploring how this great story fits together in the mind and activity of God.

Now that this foundation is built, our journeys into thinking more "Christianly" will begin to take us into our culture as we explore the arts, politics, and other aspects of our society that we must think more clearly about. We won't be able to answer all the questions; but one of my goals is to prepare each student to know how to think better, ask the right questions, and learn how to discover the answers.

We are in the midst of studying the chemistry of life. Students will learn about how proteins are made and the chemical processes that occur in life. Next module we will be learning about the cell. The or-ganelles that are in the cell work like a city; students will be leaning the function of each organelle. This module will culminate with a project of building a cell model. Students may choose any medium they like (usually it is with food, and they have a great time "eating" their cells). Great group of students, I have really enjoyed working with each of them!

MARK SOOY—WORLDVIEW,MUSIC

SHANNON TYLER—BIOLOGY

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BRANDI VAN HOUTEN—ART

Hello FA Families!

Art class has been a busy, busy place as the students moved through work incorporating lines and patterns with color and texture. The work is challenging and detailed, but your kids have really sur-prised themselves with the level of work they are producing. We have also spent a few sessions on ex-perimenting with folk art from Australia and Mexico. These specific art forms use all the line/dot, sil-houette, pattern and texture work we have built on from the beginning of the year! The very diverse na-ture of these cultures allowed us to have deep conversations about faith and art. We learned that though we all speak and believe differently, art bridges a gap between cultures and provides a universal lan-guage. Through art we can learn about others and give personal testimony. The students were so open minded yet incredibly convicted. It was a powerful couple of sessions!

The 2nd and 3rd graders have completed Positive/Negative Man, patterned paper cutting, Abo-rigine Snake Dot paintings, and Mexican Folk tradition masks (Dia de los Muertos).

The 4th and 5th graders did the very time consuming Positive/Negative Hands, Aborigine Lizard Dot Paintings, and Mexican folk masks.

The 5th and 6th graders were challenged to complete detailed Zentangles Tiles, Aborigine Terra-pin Dot Paintings, and Mexican Folk masks.

For the rest of the semester, we will hang out in the 2D,but are going back to basics. Perhaps your kids have told you about the new ways to portray the human face they learned. All grades partici-pated in the pencil drawings of a human face with correct proportions, and all the students really im-proved their portraiture skills! These skills are going to be used in self portraits. 2nd and 3rd grades will complete their self portrait in the style of Lego Figures. 4th and 5th grades will make Paul Klee inspired self-portraits. And finally, WWII style self portraits made from newsprint and charcoal will challenge the 6th and 7th grades. These are going to be awesome!

Most of this work is up on Artsonia. If you remember your passwords from years past, you should be able to view it. For our new families and incoming 2nd and 3rd grades, I will need to get you passwords.

This will find us working right up to Open House time on Dec. 12. Please take all your children's art home that night. I will not be able to attend the Open House because it’s also opening night for a play I am directing, but I wish that I could be there telling you in person how proud of your children I am and of the kindness, bravery, and honesty they have shown this semester. Those are our three class-room rules and the kiddos have been reflecting them through their words, actions, and art!

Thank you for letting me be a part of their creative imaginations. What a fun time we've had to-gether. A special thank you goes to all my classroom volunteers! God Bless your Christmas season!

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