Honor Roll Comes to Shalom Mennonite School!

It was time for the first honor roll party to be held at Shalom Mennonite School.  The 7th and 8th grade teachers decided to hold a "Bible Times" honor roll party for the students.  I made the invitations by burning the edges of the paper with a candle, tea-staining them, and then baking them in the oven until they were a little crunchy.   Rolled up and tied with a ribbon, they looked like little scrolls.  

The evening of the party the all-purpose room was transformed into a Bedouin tent by adding rugs, sheep skins, candles, strings of lights, pottery, plants, and draped fabric.  A large piece of fabric hid the locker area. 

 When the candles were lit and the lights turned off it looked more like this.

The  students arrived and were led down the stairs to the room by candlelight where they were asked to remove their shoes.  We then seated them in groups on the rugs and they reclined on the pillows there were asked to bring.  The teachers served their students grape juice, bread with olive oil dip, cheese, raisins, grapes, fish, and fig cookies.  Next we all enjoyed a candle-lit reading of "How the Leopard Got Its Stripes" by Rudyard Kipling.  The evening ended with one of our favorite games, pass-the-pillow.   (If the students are asked to bring an item [in this case a pillow] we incorporate it into the evening.  First they reclined on the pillows while they ate, then they were used in a game.]

 the 7th and 8th grade teachers:   Jeff Swanson, Whitney Burkholder, Kyle Zook . . .  

 (and friends)

To read about more Bible Times Honor Roll party ideas, click HERE and HERE (and scroll down a bit).  

Sherman's March to the Sea Honor Roll Party-- Attack of the Deserters!

       For the last honor roll party of the year, the seventh through twelfth graders planned an evening for the first through sixth graders, since the third through sixth graders had planned the previous honor roll party for them.  

      We decided to have a Civil War-era party since we had studied that in American history, and we eventually settled on a Sherman’s March to the Sea theme as we had found the study of this especially interesting to discuss because of the “total or absolute war” concept, and its devastating affects on the south and the inhabitants of Georgia who were unlucky enough to be in its paths.  (There were actually three different routes the army took.) 

     

       I always try to encourage my students to do something different, rather than just doing the same thing over and over again.  One of them had the idea to make a newspaper story invitation, and another had the idea to just make one big one and hang it up on a bulletin board for the students to see.  Both ideas were novel; we had never had a newspaper invitation, and we had never just hung one big invitation up for all of them to see.  To make it, I printed a real front page from the December  22, 1864, New York Herald newspaper.  Next I made an overhead out of it on the copy machine, then we projected it onto paper hung on the wall and copied it.  They were told to arrive at the school at 5:30 on May 7th, and asked to bring their art projects to wear a watch. 

      Next, we had to make their art projects the day or two before.  These were no-sew haversacks.  To learn how to make these, click here. 

      The students arrived at “Oak Valley Plantation” (the front entrance to our school) with their haversacks ready to go.  I read them some background on the March to the Sea, told them that Sherman’s army was on their way, that they had to find all the older students, and then get safely away before the army arrived.  (We were fleeing evil.)

   
     I read the first clue in the form of a poem, and as they found each student behind doors all over the school, fellowship hall and church, the discovered student would in turn read a poem clue to find the next student.  Several of them also gave the students something to take with them in their haversacks, including band-aids, peppermint sticks, a photo of their parents (we got these before hand and printed them in sepia tone), fake coins, and fake dollars.  

 

      Behind the last door was Uncle Jed, the principal, who handed them train tickets.  We ran to the parking lot behind the school just as our “train” (a bus driven by one of the brothers from our church) pulled up.  As we boarded the train, we looked across the field and saw the “burning of Atlanta” (boxes piled really high lit on fire by two of the older students and another brother from church.)  We screamed and jumped on the bus.  

     We went on a nice little drive out in the country, until up ahead there was a road block.  The train tracks had been torn up by Sherman’s army, and we had to pull over and turn around.  When we did this, three deserters from the Confederate army jumped aboard the train.  As they boarded, Uncle Jed told us all to be non-resistant and to give the men whatever they wanted. They wanted food, but we didn’t have any, so they demanded money and any other valuables we had.  There went the watches!  (One young man was especially distressed--his mother had bought him a watch just for this.)   

       We could not continue on with the tracks torn up, so we headed back for the plantation as we hoped it was now safe to return. 

       Once back at the school we discovered the deserters hiding.  We told them that we would share our food with them.  They accepted our invitation and gave us back the money and watches they had stolen from us.  

We entered a school room that had been blocked off during the scavenger hunt.  We had moved all the furniture, covered it up, and made the room look as different as we could, and set up tables with dollar store silver platters and goblets I had gotten at a thrift store which we have used a few times before for the Medieval honor roll party and possibly something else.  (I keep bins of all this stuff up in the attic and we reuse them whenever the theme fits.)

 

 

We had a lovely Southern meal of corn bread muffins, bacon, grilled corn-on-the-cob, beans, coleslaw, and lemonade, served by our paid servants, the older students.  For dessert we had brownies and ice cream.  

 

      When the evening was over, we had the traditional game of kick-the-can, and the older students helped us clean up.   We took a few pictures because we had worked really hard on these dresses!  (The home economics class had found amazing dress patterns at a store-closing sale for about a dollar each, and while we had planned to make them in the summer after school was out, when we decided on theme for this party we got our sewing machines out . . . .)

 

And what do Southern Belles wear under their hoop skirts?  Converse tennis shoes, of course!

It was a wonderfully historical, exciting, end to a fabulous year together.  

Emigrant Shipwreck Fishing Village Honor Roll Party

The Crew

The Invitations

A Few of the Passengers

     I honestly don’t remember who had this idea, but someone did:  Let the orange room (grades 3-6) plan an honor roll party for the rest of the school.  So we did.

     They decided to have an “Emigrant Shipwreck Honor Roll Party”, and they even spelled it right!  That was from our 6th grade vocabulary book; emigrants leave a country, immigrants arrive in a country.  They wanted a dock, a ship, and a trek out into the woods behind the school.  So we did.

     We began at the Irish emigration office where each of the emigrants had their picture taken with their ticket, which was also their invitation to the party.  They were told that we were leaving Ireland because of the potato famine.  

      Next we had a clothes relay where they had to exchange a vest, scarf, and hat.

     Then they lined up on the dock and boarded the ship, walking along a twisting gang plank.  If they touched the grass, they had to go to the back of the line and try again.  This was made a little difficult by the fact that many of the bricks that were supposed to be used for holding up the planks ended up being used to hold down the "ship".  We had some great ideas to make the hull of the ship and the sails, but the blustery March winds blew away the sails, the hull, and even the chairs we tried to use instead. 

     Once aboard the ship we enjoyed hardtack, cheese, and tangerines so we wouldn’t get scurvy.  (That was a student’s idea, too.)  The younger students “fished” over the side of the “ship” and received little prizes.  The older students got fake coins and flower seeds.

 

      Then the storm clouds came (supposedly) and the whaling song changed into thunder and storm sound effects.  (We had a stereo hidden underneath the landscaping plastic hull of the ship.)  The crew, the boys in grades 3-6, began to spray us all with water.  We leaned and rocked back and forth, feigned sea sickness, sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” “Peter, James and John Had a Little Sailboat,” and “I Will Make You Fishers of Men” to calm our nerves.  Then the ship “wrecked” and we all passed out.  

 

Our captain (principal) informed us that we had landed in Greenland, and that according to his map, there was a little fishing village about a mile’s walk away.  After leaving the first mate and another crew member to "fix" the ship, we took off.

     

     After a long trek through some muddy trails and bramble bushes, we found a kind Christian fisherman (a brother from our church) who happened to be out fishing.  He took us to his little fishing village and shared what they had with us.  We sat around a fire beside a pond and enjoyed fish, rolls, carrots, stuffed baked potatoes (there was no blight in Greenland), and blue jello with gummy sharks swimming around in it.  After we had finished, we were informed that the crew members had repaired the ship.  We thanked the fisherman, sang him a song, and headed back in the dark through the mud and brambles to the ship.

      After a bit more comic relief from our captain and crew, we landed safely in America where we were informed that we had to learn a new American game, kick-the-can.  The younger students played, the older students helped us clean up all the stuff, and I really enjoyed working with these fabulous humans I am so blessed to have for students.

     To date we’ve hosted twenty-five honor roll parties, and I think this one ranks in the top three.  Why?  Because of the way the students worked together.  The wind messed up our original ideas for the boat and the sails, the rain and all the mud made the trek to the woods much more difficult, and at one point I thought the whole thing might not work and we’d have to call it off.  But, we pulled together.  The students had great, creative, ideas and used things we’d learned in history.  We improvised, worked alongside each other, and prayed together when things didn’t go right.  I laughed so hard at the five funny crew members and their captain on the “ship” that I had tears running down my cheeks.  None of that would have happened if everything would have gone perfectly, or if I didn’t “bother” to let my students have a part in it.  One of the sixth graders said something that made it all so worth while.  She said, “Now, we’ll know what to do for our students when we are teachers some day.”  Mission accomplished.  

    Sometimes things don’t go the way we had planned, or the way we would like them to, or even in a way we think we can handle.  It is then that I remember that God will never leave me nor forsake me, that His ways are not my ways, and that He will not ask more of me more than I can handle.  I cling to those verses.  My hope is in God.  Him will I serve.  Master, here am I.