Jenn's Journalings

MS Banquet – Frozen theme

Our annual middle school banquet had a Frozen theme this year. It was fun!

The evening began with each middle school boy finding a girl (classmate or teacher) and standing behind her chair. The boy was supposed to ensure that the glass of the girl he stood behind was full all evening. I’m glad our boys had an opportunity to be gentlemen.

We played a song game and the winning table was allowed to line up for dinner first. A line from a song showed on the screen and you would raise your hand if you knew the song. Then someone from your table had to sing part of the song. Since I helped choose song lines I didn’t guess the songs, but I helped sing one or two. My table ended up winning, but we didn’t cheat. 🙂

Dinner was wonderful! Some of our parents helped make the pasta (white or red sauce), salad, and bread.

After dinner it was time for the ice cream eating contest. I did not participate in this game, although it was fun to watch. Some teachers participated.

One of the dads was our speaker. He did a fantastic job weaving a powerful message together with some themes from the movie.

It was neat to see how God is continuing to work in the lives of our kids as the themes of the message related to what the kids have been learning since OE. In the early part of the message he challenged each of us to consider what areas we need to work on in our lives.

The key point that he ended with compared that in the movie an act of true love was needed to thaw a frozen heart and that Jesus’ death was the act of true love needed to thaw hearts frozen by sin.

I am so thankful for the dear friends and students with whom God has blessed me!

OE- Wednesday

Wednesday was reef day. We took bancas from the base camp to the reef. (Here’s a picture of a banca, although it’s from Google and not a picture of one we actually were on.)

My squad had a banca just for us (and our stuff and the water to took to the reef site). Our banca had some motor problems, so although we were one of the first to leave we were one of the last to arrive. We had fun singing on the way there. We sang quite a few songs; the following list tells some of them: God’s Not Dead, How He Loves Us, I Will Follow, Our God, Who’s the King of the Jungle?, Let It Go, Do You Want to Build a Snowman?, and some of the Tagalog songs we sang the day before too.  (I included links, so if you want to hear some of these songs on Youtube just click on the title.)

Here’s my girls on the banca on the way over.

When we arrived we had a bit of scuba diving orientation, site orientation, and an entertaining demo for putting on sun screen.

The squads were split into 4 groups to rotate through the activities. We started with squad time, so we had a merienda (snack) of watermelon and had squad devotions. A few of my girls went on a short hike with another squad. Here’s a few of the pictures they took.

The next activity was either scuba diving or a craft. 3 of my girls went diving and the rest of us painted a rock. It was fun.

Next we went snorkeling. The water was a bit cold, but then it was fun. We didn’t get many pictures since we were swimming.

Our last activity was the squid dissection. It was pretty cool!

We had free time, dinner, a speaker, and then squad time. We had great squad devotions this evening.

We sang on our banca ride back to base camp the next morning too. We didn’t sing as much, but we sang lots of praise songs. The banca driver talked to me afterward. He was encouraged by our songs and said he was Brother ____. It was neat that we were able to minister to our banca driver on our way between sites.

OE – Tuesday

On Tuesday my traveling group stayed at base camp. In the morning we built sand castles.

Then we had ministry time at a local Filipino elementary school. We took lunch to the students and played games with them. My squad had 3rd grade; there were 78 kids in one room. It was really full! After everyone had food we gathered together for a Vacation Bible School type lesson. We sang songs with the kids – in Tagalog and English. There was a Bible lesson on Joseph, and our kids helped act out portions of the story. The last couple pictures are a few of my girls eating lunch on the way back to base camp.

The special event at base camp was the chicken kill. We had to kill our chickens for dinner. It was actually kinda cool. (Please note: These pictures might not be appropriate for small children or squeamish people.)

Then we had free time for a couple hours before preparing the rest of our dinner. The kitchen crew boiled our chickens and then my squad chose to use the rotisserie to BBQ them. We also cut up potatoes and carrots and cooked them in foil in the fire. Our dessert was muffins poured into orange peels, wrapped in foil, and baked in the fire. They were amazing!!

OE – Monday

OE this year was Victory on the Volcano. We flew out of Davao VERY early in the morning; I think we met at the airport around 3:45 or 4 am.

Here’s our group~4 adults & 42 students.

We had a 3-4 hour bus ride to base camp after arriving in Manila.

Here’s some of the traffic.

There’s always something interesting to see out the window ~ like unique water towers.

We arrived at the base camp early, but that turned out ok. I was thankful for some down-time after the travel. Our kids did great…despite the many “are we there yet?” questions. 🙂

Base camp had a dorm, swimming pool, kitchen, chapel, basketball court, and was on the beach. My kids took some beautiful shots at the beach.

The first day of OE consists of travel and some orientation. Each group does their squad intro and we have a speaker in the evening. You may have seen clips of the squad intros if you watched the videos in my previous post.

OE Overview

Someone from Faith Manila made a video about our Outdoor Education trip in February.

The squads from my school are the following: Jolly Jalajala Jellos, Indian Heaven Angels (my squad), Lethal Bachelors, & On-Take Off. (Each squad had to include a volcano name in their squad name.)

Also, I made the slideshow with pictures from our students. The songs in the background were 2 that we sang during the week and the kids really enjoyed. I hope you enjoy these 2 videos!

Look for coming posts with lots of pictures and descriptions of each day of the trip.

Fun with Proportions

In math we’re finishing up a chapter on ratios, proportions, percents, and a bit of probability. Yes, that was a lot to put in one chapter. 🙂

Anyway, since I was teaching in a classroom with students (versus cyber) I thought I’d try something I had done during my first teaching position. A fun way to introduce or practice ratios is to use recipes of some kind. The cheaper way (rather than making cookies with terrible proportions) is to use powdered drink mix.

So I split my class into 2 groups and they took water and iced tea mix and had 5 tries to determine the best ratio of water to mix.

They had to measure the amount of water and mix.

They taste-tested with spoons, so as not to pass the germs around.

Don’t forget to record what you did and what you think about how that ratio tasted!

We had some REALLY strong iced tea (as you can see on the left) and some more weak iced tea.

It was a fun way to start off the chapter. We’ve continued having fun using Nips (sort of like M&Ms) with probability too. It’s made for a slightly lighter chapter leading up to Christmas break. I hope you enjoyed the pictures!

School Carnival (w/ dunk tank)

On Friday, November 15, we had the school carnival (fairy tale / fantasy theme). This is put on every other year; International Day occurs during the other years. Different grades have different booths and the kids and parents and teachers take rotations manning the booths. The 7th graders had a dunk tank, which our employees built. It was great! The kids asked students and teachers to take shifts in the dunk tank.

People purchased tickets and each booth had a sign identifying how many tickets were needed.

3rd grade had a Rapunzel rope for people to climb and then they went own the slide afterward.

4th grade had a bean bag toss game. If you landed on a square with a frog you had to kiss a frog (there was a bucket with a bunch the kids caught from around school). If you really didn’t want to kiss a real one you could kiss the plush one. Then you could get a piece of candy.

I think it was 2nd grade that had the limbo game.

5th grade had golf games with a Minecraft theme.

Here’s the first grade booth.

8th grade had mystery boxes. The kids were searching for keys amidst the dragon intestines (spaghetti noodles) and other “nasty” substances.

The high schoolers had a face painting booth.

The 6th grade booth had water guns to shoot off ping pong balls (the heads of giants who had captured a princess). (I think that’s the proper explanation of this booth.)

The 7th graders had a dunk tank. Our employees built it during the 2 weeks before carnival. It was a big hit! Most of my pictures are from this booth.

The 7th graders took shifts being in the dunk tank (some of them), collecting tickets, retrieving the soft balls after a person threw them, and manning the back of the target in case it malfunctioned (and the person needed to be dunked manually).

Mr. Becker, our band and music teacher, took a turn in the dunk tank. This is his oldest son dunking him.

My student teacher took a shift.

Some of the students were so excited to dunk a teacher.

Some of them threw really hard too!

The wooden target fell off, so here it is being attached more firmly. The throws were so hard it loosened the screws.

Some of the high school students took shifts as well.

There was always a line of people ready to have a throw at the dunk tank!

This kinder student had a great arm.

Even some of the parents enjoyed dunking people.

One of our middle school teachers, Mr. Miller, had a rather long line.

I took the last shift in the dunk tank.

After drying off a bit a couple of the girls wanted a picture. We had a fun day!

Spirit Week – Part 2

I just realized I never posted pictures from the rest of the week. I realize this is about 2 months late, but here is part 2!

Thursday was nerd day.

Here are some of our middle school boys.

And some of our middle school girls!

Some of them really got the look down well!

And others took a creative approach!

Friday was backwards day. My look only lasted before classes began.

Some of the kids looked almost creepy with how well they did their costumes.

Here are some of my girls.

And some of my boys.

One of our teachers shaved part of his head and had a face there!

Calling all teachers!

We recently completed a new recruitment video for our school – Faith Academy Mindanao!

It gives you a glimpse into the school campus, some of our teachers, and (most importantly) some of our students!

It is such a joy to teach here and I am so blessed to work with “my kids” every day at school.

If you’re interested in serving here please send me an email or comment here on the blog and I’ll get you connected with the right people.

Spirit Week – Part 1

We just finished spirit week here at Faith Academy Mindanao. It was a lot of fun! I have a feeling this post will contain many pictures so I may make it more than 1 post.

We first had team color day and I was helping with the yellow team. I didn’t get a picture of myself, but here’s one of my team. I had students from kinder through grade 8.

Monday was sports day. I decided to dress like a runner (not super creative but that’s what I was able to do). 🙂

Here are some of the students on my team.

Tuesday was favorite character day. Another teacher let me share her idea and dress up like a minion. I couldn’t see too well through my mask. The kids were creative, but I didn’t get as many pictures this day due to my mask.

Here are two of the girls on my team.

Wednesday was season/weather day. I dressed up like a thunder cloud with lightning.

We had lots of creative ideas on this day. Here are the four seasons (baby sister joined for this one too).

Here we have the news reporters for the storm and a few ideas for the rainy day look.

Here’s the rainbow!

Here is one of my middle school girls as Miss Autumn.

Here’s winter / snow.

Next we have a poor boy who went in the sun and forgot his sunscreen. Great job with the pretend sun burn!

Here’s a storm cloud and rain.

And here is a tornado!

This is another of my middle school students. She looked fantastic; the complete outfit didn’t last too long in this tropical weather though! It’s just too hot.