Another year has begun in Free Christian School’s upper room. The student’s writings give you an idea of some beginning activities. Levi writes about life in the upper room from an eighth graders’ perspective. Casey and Jaron detail our science work so far. Emily, Anna, and Quinton write about our annual trip to Doon, Iowa, for combined chapel. One activity that is detailed in the pictures is our annual fall field trip. We went to Lake Pahoja in NW Iowa. It was a nice day though cut short by some rain. Read, learn, be entertained, and enjoy.

Being an Eighth Grader

The first day of school is like any other; except that you need to unpack all your supplies into your desk; and you meet your friends again every day. On the first day we don’t have all the regular assignment. Bible and math and a few other subjects is all we work on the first day. The second day is the day you work on all the subject; maybe not history because we have history due for Wednesday so we don’t have a special class. Wednesday we don’t have catechism in the morning anymore because we are in eighth grade and it is at 7:00 P.M. Thursdays are usually the same. Math, English, Bible, science, geography, and lit are the subject we usually have due. Fridays are the best days. We start the day off with Bible and then math, but for lunch we eat hot lunch. I like Friday the best because of this and because of art. After art we usually clean the school. If we get done early we get to play outside. This is usually what the week is like. I say usually because we might have a field trip, early out, no school, or chapel. Four weeks ago we had chapel and five weeks ago we had a field trip. Last week we had only two days of school because of teacher conferences. Being in the eighth grade is fun but sad. Sure you get to go to high school in all but in eighth grade you have fun with your friends and the younger kids in school. The recesses playing kick the cone, or football are the best. In eighth grade math is sometime hard, but overall it fun. There would be nothing that I would change in the eighth grade because it fun and I get to hangout with my friends. Math is a lot different because you do the odd numbers in class and the evens by yourself. English is just the same as last year. Lit is the same as last year. In history we just finished up the Civil War. In Science we just had a test on the classification of living and non living things. Geography we had an open book test on Europe.

Levi Fennema

Life Science

Science is the study of God’s creation. This year in science we have been studying biology. Biology is the study of life. We started off learning about the basics of biology.

The first thing we did for science was our study of insects. The upper room did this as one class. The sixth, seventh, and eighth graders did insect collections.

Insect Science

In the Upper Room at Free Christian School we start off the year with a study of science all together. Mr. Hunter has a rotation in which every three years we do something different. The three subjects include weather, the study of leaves, and the study of insects. All summer long the sixth through eighth graders will gather insects with which we make an insect collection. The fourth and fifth graders do not have to gather insects because they will have to do that later. After that the fourth and fifth graders went into there own science book and learned about insects. They also do different things. They wrote a haiku which is a Japanese poem. The poem was not as in detail as what the sixth through eighth graders did. We did at poem for two voices by Paul Fleischman. We split off by siblings and then learned how to say it. It was sometimes hard because you’re sometimes saying the same thing. The insect collections that the sixth through eighth graders made had to have a minimum of twenty insects and a minimum of five orders. On the test we had two know the orders of some insects. We learned a lot about insects, and about the orders of insects.

It was fun doing the insect collection and learning more about insects.

Jaron Brands

Chapel

We started our chapel day at Doon Protestant Reformed Church. Students and teachers from Northwest Iowa Protestant Reformed Christian School (Doon), Sioux Falls Protestant Reformed Christian School, and Free Christian School (Edgerton) were there. First Mr. Potjer opened with prayer and we sang some songs as a group. Then the lower room from Doon sang a special number and recited a text, Edgerton’s lower room sang Psalter 268 and recited Psalm 100, and the Sioux Falls school sang a Psalter number and recited a text. Then the middle room from Doon sang and recited from the same text that the speech was based on. Rev. Stephen Regnerus, the pastor of Lynden (Washington) Protestant Reformed Church, who was on classical appointment to Doon PRC, gave a speech on Colossians 3:12-17 and how to respond to those who have sinned against us through forbearance and forgiveness. Finally, there were three more special numbers. The first was by the upper room at Free Christian. We sang a song based on the Apostles’ Creed. The second was the upper room from Doon, and to close the chapel, all the students sang Psalter 15 together. Rev. Regnerus closed in prayer.

Emily Boverhof

The Upper Room      

          Today is chapel day. When the whole upper room got to school, we had a cookie and a juice. Then we played volleyball until we were called in. The first game we played was Wits and Wagers. This is how you play the game. You have a few small sheets of paper, and Mrs. Teunissen would ask a question, and we would answer it. All the answers were numbers. One question was what is the year of the last time public school in Edgerton went to State. We would have two wager coins, and you would put one on one answer and one on the another answer. If you wrote the answer the closest or the actual answer, you would get 3 tokens, but if you put a wager on it you got 2 tokens. My team, Kara and I, got second place.

We ate lunch after that first game. For lunch we ate a chicken hot dish, bars, bread, and milk. After lunch Rev. Regnerus gave a presentation about the church and school in Lynden, Washington. He said it barely snows there. Even though it barely snows, every thing is shut down. He said he has to travel a lot just for a pulpit switch. It was a really good presentation.

After the presentation we played a soccer game. The teams were good, but then we lost a person because Kate instead did the score board. Mrs. Teunissen joined our team because we needed another person. She is a really good player. Levi was our goalie. He was a good one. He blocked many goals, but he also missed a few too. The other team got 4 points and we only got 3 points. This soccer game we lost. When it was time to go home, we prayed and said goodbye. This is all what happened in the upper room with all our friends.

Anna Gunnink

The Treasure Hunt

We came in Doon’s school and ate a cookie or bar. After we ate them, we went to our classroom. Mr. Potjer said, “We are going on a treasure hunt, but before we go on this hunt, we have to make explorer hats.” He said we could make designs on our hats. After lunch we went outside to play parking lot. Then we went on a treasure hunt. The first clue we had was to look for the clue on the water fountain. The second clue was on the teacher’s poster. The third clue we had was to unscramble the numbers into letters and look under the fish tank. The fourth clue was behind the backstop outside. Now the treasure clue said that it was under the slide, but don’t get too excited because you have to dig for it. We all dug for it, and I was the person to find it. I gave it to Mr. Potjer, and we all had two gummy worms and one Jolly Rancher. After we ate them we went and played Bible Trivia. Then we went outside on the basketball court and prayed and went home.