"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path"  Psalm 119:105

After a summer filled with demolition, new construction, drywall work, painting, cleaning, organization, planning, sorting curriculum, filing, placement testing, technology updates, meetings, and much anticipation...  our school was given to open for the second school year.  

On the bright and sunny morning of September 7, our student body of 42 children, with staff, volunteers, parents, grandparents, and friends met in the chapel at school to open the school year.  After the opening address by Mr. J. Fluit Sr. and some words of welcome to the staff and students by the administrator, we closed with singing.  Immediately following the program, we enjoyed refreshments in the gym, after which the students began the school year in their respective learning centers.

LEARNING CENTER NEWS

Kindergarten

We are already several weeks into the new school year, and are having such a nice time and learning so much!  Our new room is freshly painted and decorated with a special story corner, a nice new whiteboard, tack strips to hang our alphabet letter cards on, and a marker table.

In addition to our daily Bible stories with Mrs. Rotich and the rest of the lower elementary students, we've been practicing our reading and writing skills.  We learn new letters and sounds every day, and then make projects with the letter we are working on.  After learning how to write numbers 1 through 10, we've also learned about shapes, patterns, symmetry, and sequences.  Leya also made some fun necklaces applying these concepts.

In Science, we are starting a unit on plants and the needs of plants!  Speaking of plants, remember our Kindergarten student from last year, Kylie?  Her pumpkin seed that was planted in May produced a monster pumpkin over the summer...  The pumpkin weighs more than Kylie!

During story time, we've been reading from "The Hive of Busy Bees."  Each bee teaches us a lesson!  Some of these lessons are about "Bee Honest," "Bee Loving," and "Bee Obedient."  For each bee we read, we add a bee to our hive on the wall!

Elementary Learning Center

The Elementary Learning Center is bustling with activity this year!  The new school year has settled into a nice, daily routine and learning is well under way.

This year, our elementary students are divided into two groups for some of their day.  Kindergarten through 3rd grade have Bible class together, taught by Mrs. Rotich.  They are studying the life of King David.  Grades 4-6 have Bible class together, taught by Mrs. K Fluit and Mrs. L. Fluit, as well as Church History with Dr. Willekes. They started at the beginning of the Bible, and are now studying the life of Abraham.  These same groups of students have their "special" classes together in the afternoons.  On Monday they enjoy circle time with Mrs. Rotich where they learn about appropriate behavior goals, teamwork, and building social skills.  On Tuesdays they get library time with Miss Annie in the loft.  On Wednesdays the students get active with PE and on Thursdays they have art with Mrs. Lisa Fluit.  Art is a highlight for many students!  The inside and outside of the school has become a cheery display area for the different projects they complete.  The students made birdfeeders out of old jugs and bottles, decorated them with different paints, filled them with birdseed, and hung them in the tree just outside the gym doors!  Another project was a 3-D image of watermelon for the younger grades, and donuts for the older students.  They enjoyed real donuts and watermelon when the pictures were finished!

Above:  Silent reading after recess

Below:  Enjoying Art class and one of the displays

A new aspect of our learning center this year is that Grades 1-3 have their math taught to them by Mrs. Rotich, which will help them build a strong foundation in math concepts.  Grades 1-3 are also working through a teacher-led science program, and the students are really enjoying all the hands-on activities that are part of this curriculum!

First photo:  Third graders learned about the planets and the solar system.  Besides making a planet mobile, they also used different size balls to put the planets in order according to size.

Second photo:  Sixth grade science students love experiments!  Here they added different things to cabbage juice and watched the colors change based on the amount of acidity in the substance that was added.

The elementary room is centered around a farmhouse theme this year, and - just like in any farmhouse - there is plenty of hard work happening. This is primarily centered around learning, and the students have demonstrated so much diligence!  There are also daily chores that need to be done (raising the school flags at the beginning of the day, washing lunch tables, feeding the birds, sharpening pencils, etc.) and the students take turns helping with these jobs.  We also have a class chicken!  Her name is Pepper (don't worry, she's just a soft and fluffy stuffed animal), and she lays "eggs" for us.  The students can collect the eggs for completing PACE's, good behavior, and extra credit projects.  They can save their eggs until they have enough to trade them for a nice experience, like being the line-leader for a day, having Pepper with them in their cubby for a day, spending time in the high school learning center, etc.  These eggs might crack and be lost though, if homework is forgotten, or not finished, students forget about classroom rules, or they need a hall pass!  It took a few weeks to get the egg collections going, but lately the students have really been enjoying trading their eggs!  And since no farmhouse is complete without milk and cookies, we have a wall display of plates on our classroom wall.  The students are working on book projects and presentations, and for every project they complete, they can add a cookie to their plate on the wall.  They are required to read at least two religious books, two non-fiction books, and two fiction books, and can choose from a nice variety of projects to go with them.  The class has already enjoyed several great powerpoint presentations from their classmates!

While there is a lot of PACE work that happens every day, there's always plenty of other interesting and enjoyable things to do.  Between shooting hoops or playing four-square at recess, to making science projects and experiments, to baking johnny-cakes as part of a literature study,  or enjoying delicious hot lunches every few weeks, there is lots of activity, smiles and happy children!

Secondary Learning Center

Over the summer months, two walls were removed from adjoining smaller rooms in order to accomodate our 22 students in the Secondary Learning Center.  The classroom is now spacious, fresh, and inviting for our students.  With Mr. Fluit as the secondary learning center supervisor this year, along with a variety of skilled teachers and tutors, our students have full and varied schedules!  Several classes are live-taught this year, including Bible, Spanish 2, and Speech class, as well as the elective courses.  With multiple tutors, we are able to provide specific help in subjects such as Algebra, Geometry, Physics, Chemistry, Advanced Biology, and English.  We wish to thank all those who help out for us so willingly, both in and out of the classrooms for the benefit of our students!  

Our Bible classes are split this year into a junior high (grades 7-9) and a senior high (10-12) session, held in our loft classroom, above the gym. Grades 7-9 have completed their first unit in Bible: Creation, the Fall and the first world, and will be moving on to the Flood soon.  They enjoyed a bit of time in between units to see pictures of Mr. Fluit's trip to Israel in 2018.  Grades 10-12 began learning about the setting of Jesus' ministry.  They learned about the political situation leading up to the time of Christ, briefly studying the four main empires of those days and specific rulers such as Herod and his sons, Pontius Pilate, the Roman emperor etc., and their roles within the empires.  They also looked at each of the gospel writers, and the emphasis of each writer on a different office of Christ.  In addition to the Biblical studies, the students also spend one day per week studying the Compendium (7-9) and the Catechism (10-12) in detail.

The Learning Center is a busy, productive environment with many subjects and so much to learn!  From parts of speech, to origins of language in English, to the discovery of America and its founding principles, documents, and fathers in History and Civics, to the vast array of scientific topics such as the study of birds, ecosystems, space exploration, and the bones in the human body...   The students have their work cut out for them!  A new class offered for Juniors and Seniors this year is Speech class! After discussing and learning about what makes communication practices effective, they then presented both good and poor communication skills in pairs, as their first speech to the entire Secondary Learning Center.  The students got to choose the location on the school grounds and were allowed to bring props to help them.  There were interesting things like airplanes, pilots hats, drones, and bows and arrows that were used to enhance these presentations!

Another new course that has all the high school students (and teachers!) running is the PE class.  Taught by Mr. Fluit, the students started the course with Ultimate Frisbee, which quickly became an intensely competitive, all-inclusive, and highly active sport on the back lawn of the school grounds.  Who knew that a simple frisbee could be so effective in whipping teachers and students into better shape within a few short weeks!  During one of the recent beautiful fall afternoons, the high schoolers went to Johnson park that has a frisbee golf course and applied some of their skills to a real course.  It was a challenge, and had everyone running!  It was immensely enjoyed by all.  Next up is volleyball!

ELECTIVES

This year our students are enjoying a new variety of elective courses.  Through the hard work, generosity, and volunteer efforts of many people, we are able to give our high schoolers some exciting opportunities.

Spanish 2

Spanish II has started the year off learning about Costa Rica! We began with a short novel and covered interesting topics such as ceviche, a popular Costa Rican dish, howling congo monkeys, and the Ring of Fire. The students are being challenged to speak more Spanish than ever this year, if they want to keep earning pesos (dried beans...) for their classroom bank accounts! Speaking English when you go upstairs before lunch may just cost you a peso or two, so the students are careful to stay in the target language as much as possible. The opportunity to spend their pesos can be found at the "market," which offers a variety of Mexican sweets, pencils, etc. Many students are budgeting carefully in order to buy a pass to the Taquería restaurant next door for a taco trip in November! 

Photography

Three high school girls chose to explore the world of photography, guided by an online course, and tutored by Emily Van Dyke, who owns a photography business herself!  Every Wednesday afternoon, the girls and Emily cover a variety of photographic concepts like adjusting settings and shutter speeds with the camera on manual mode, aperture, and editing photos for lighting, color hues, noise reduction and more. Recently the girls studied reflections, as well as agriculture photography, and enjoyed a sunny afternoon shooting photos of harvest scenes in local farmland.  They also learned about still-life photography and practiced taking photos that could be used as backgrounds or props.  They've submitted a few of their favorites (see below!)

Practical Applications of American History

Many of the other girls in the Secondary Learning Center are thoroughly enjoying this hands-on, interactive, new elective option, taught by Mrs. Kersten and Mrs. Rotich.  This course is designed to give the students a first-hand experience of what life was like for the early settlers as they learned to survive across the American frontier.  Already in these first few weeks of school, they've learned about pioneer clothing and the typical animals that were raised and what they were used for.  Behind the school we have an actual chicken coop with three laying chickens from which the girls are responsible to collect eggs from, as well as provide food and water!  Beside the chicken coop, the girls have built a raised garden bed with hand tools and planted a winter garden, from which they hope to harvest vegetables such as leek, cauliflower, kale, celery, lettuce, and woolly Lamb's ear before the snow flies! The class visited a local market garden and tried their hand at some preserving and canning of different foods, herbs, carrots and peppers.  One week they learned how to make compost, another week the girls made cornhusk dolls complete with hair, braids and brooms, and they soon hope to visit a local bee-keeper.  It sounds like they might even have the opportunity to skin a real deer, tan the hide and make some edibles out of the meat...  Stay tuned for further developments on this!  

Woods class

The secondary boys traded their wrenches for hammers, saws, drills, and power tools as they began a new adventure in the woodworking field, taught by Mr. Travis Van Dyke, Mr. Fluit and Mr. Marshall.  Each of the boys personally purchased a tool that would be of use throughout the year as they tackle different projects, for everyone to use as needed.  They began by building several picnic tables, including an octagon-style table, and have now started on a horse shelter.  Although some picnic tables are spoken for, please contact Richard Slingerland (616-881-0299) for information on purchasing one!  The boys are hoping to sell much of what they build to raise funds for their Woods and Shop class.

A FEW HIGHLIGHTS

Above:  Fresh donuts and apple cider is a real treat at recess!

Below:  Something new this year is our lunch together in the gym.  We purchased fold-down picnic-style lunch tables which make it easy for the whole school to eat together.  We enjoy the time to mingle with students and other staff, and appreciate opening and closing each lunch hour as a group.

Our library got a new home this year - up in the loft above the gym!  With a fresh coat of paint, built-in bookshelves, reading nooks by the 'Reader's Reef', string lights and a beautiful sea-life mural, (painted during the summer by a group of students!) it has become a favorite space at school.  Elementary students have library time with our librarian, Miss Annie, on Tuesdays and they always look forward to hearing about a new "book of the week".  Thank you for all your work with the library, Miss Annie!

Address:       Coopersville Bible Church

        35 Hillcrest Street

      Coopersville, MI

- or -

P.O. Box 19

                  Coopersville, MI 49404

Donations to the school, regardless of the dollar amount contributed, are greatly appreciated, and can be given by mail, or by clicking the Donate Here button below.  Above all, may the Lord remember our school staff, volunteers, students, and board as we continue with our second year at DLIGR.