Mrs. Hallford’s Class Newsletter

May 21^st

Hello!

The class has been hard at work, finishing up their Rembrandt picture studies, autobiographies, and study of the Pilgrim Fathers, as well as their work in various other subjects. I am very pleased with how hard everyone has worked, and we have really had a great semester together!

Here is some information about the last week of school:

Monday, May 25 – No School!

Tuesday, May 26 – Field Day! Please bring your child to Veterans Park rather than Flint. If you need to drop your child off before 9:30, we will transport them to the park. Field day and school are over at 2:00 PM, so please be prepared to pick your child up at Veteran’s Park at that time.

Remember, parents are encouraged to participate in Field Day. We have always had a lot of fun in the past!

Each class has designed their own unique T-shirts. For our class, the students generated a list of names/themes that they liked, chosen from various subjects we have studied this year. They then voted on the top four ideas. The winning vote was “Mrs. Hallford’s Radiant Light Beings” which is in reference to a line from the novel Surviving The Applewhites that we read last semester. The main character of the novel started out as being very badly behaved, and was surprised to find himself being described by another character as a ‘radiant light being’. The students really enjoyed this description and our discussion about how external appearances and even behaviors do not necessarily reflect who someone is as a person., or their eternal soul. After that, I would refer to the students as radiant light beings whenever they were being naughty, as a joke. Thus, “Mrs. Hallford’s Radiant Light Beings”!

If you haven’t sent in $10 to pay for your child’s T-shirt, please do so. Also, snow cones will be available for $3 each at the park, if you would like to give your child some spending money.

Wednesday, May 27-We will have our regularly scheduled classes, with an emphasis on wrapping up any unfinished work. I will also be sending home your child’s final progress report for the year, so be sure to check their folder!

Thursday, May 28- Last day of school! Our class will be cleaning up our classroom, watching the movie Robinson Crusoe, playing our Jamestown game, and participating in the upper school water balloon fight. You may want to send your child with a change of clothes, or have a towel ready for them to sit on in the car! I will be sending home a good deal of completed work with each child.

Also, our very first graduation ceremony will be held the evening of May 28^th, at 7:00 PM. This is a very special event for our school, and I think it is very important that all of the upper school students attend if at all possible. They need a chance to see what they are working so hard for, and to help celebrate the hard work of our first graduating class!

Thank you so much for a wonderful year, and enjoy the summer!

~Mrs. Hallford

I hope everyone had a great Mother’s Day weekend!

Don’t forget that the golf tournament is this Monday-it was a lot of fun last year, and a really great event for our school!

This week I need to collect $10 for each student for Field Day T-shirts. We will be working on the motto and design together, as we have done in years past, but we will not be painting them ourselves this year. Please send the $10 in your child’s folder this week.

The class has been hard at work on their Rembrandt picture studies, and have made some wonderful progress. I can’t wait to display the finished products! We will continue to work on these picture studies this week, and hopefully will be able to wrap them up by the end of the week.

In history, we have studied the various factors that contributed to Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion against the Governor of Virginia, and learned about the details of this rebellion. As this was one of the first examples of a rebellion against British authority in the Colonies, the students have enjoyed discussing how it contributed to future rebellions.

This week we will continue wrapping up the autobiographies that the students are writing, modeled after the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. They have worked really hard on this assignment, and their autobiographies are fascinating to read!

We are also planning to FINISH reading Robinson Crusoe this week!  A part of the classical education philosophy that we embrace at Flint encourages us to read worthwhile books slowly, to savor them. We have certainly done that with Robinson Crusoe, and it has been a wonderful literary experience. The students have learned quite a bit of new vocabulary from this novel, and are becoming skilled at following the storyline even when the language becomes confusing. We are going to try and find a copy of the 1950’s film version of Robinson Crusoe to watch together as a class, but that will probably not happen this week.

God bless!

~Nicole Hallford

Dear Parents and Guardians,

We have been having a great time since I’ve returned from maternity leave!  Week before last, our class enjoyed some in-depth lessons on the Biblical foundations of Easter. We read and narrated passages from Exodus regarding the first Passover, and passages from Luke regarding the Last Supper, Crucifixion, and Resurrection,  then discussed similarities between the Old and New Testament stories. Our class also watched The Prince of Egypt and had fun coloring Easter eggs!

The students have been hard at work developing their Jamestown board games! The artwork and the trivia questions are nearly complete, and are turning out to be absolutely wonderful. We will continue studying the progress of Virginia this week, and also learn about the 17th century artist Rembrandt. We will learn information about his life, and begin picture studies replicating his artwork. Instead of having the entire class working on a picture study of the same painting, as we have done in the past, I will assign a different painting for each student. Rembrandt’s paintings are noted for their intensity and the use of light and shadow. We have had his work displayed in the classroom all year, and have now reached his time period in our study of history.

In our Writing class, the students are making a lot of progress in their autobiographies, which are modeled after the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. They are working hard, and I have been impressed with the depth of insight and self-awareness that they are displaying!

Thank you to everyone who attended the Spirit Night at CiCi’s Pizza!

Looking forward to a great week,

~Nicole Hallford