Fine Arts Student of the Week

Freddie Butler is our Fine Arts Student of the Week! Freddie, and the rest of the students in Janet Ford and Jamie Fambrough's Creativity Class, chose a favorite teacher on which to focus. The class members created clay busts and an environment for the clay busts. They also each presented their favorite teachers with the works of art. Click on this link to see all of the amazing works and the favorite teacher/student duos! Freddie is pictured with PU teacher Bryan Sellers.

Thank You to Tracey Rae!

Thank you for the wonderful Pizza Party for Hannah and Advisory mates - we had so much fun! Thank you Ms. Baileigh Allen for the amazing banana pudding for our August/September birthday party - you are are not allowed to make it anymore, it was way TOO delicious!

--Shilpee Kathuria, Upper School Instructor

Class of 2017

Bert's BIG THANK YOU

Mill Springs continued our annual tradition of participating in the Big Thank You. The Bert Show's Big Thank You has a goal: getting a hand-written letter of gratitude into the hand of every single troop deployed outside of the United States on Thanksgiving Day. This makes such an impact on these troops that have to be away from their families during the holidays. This year, as a school, we were able to submit 112 letters to The Bert Show to mail to our troops overseas. I would like to give a special thank you to the Lower School students as some of them wrote two or three letters to send over! And thank you to the staff members and other students that participated as well! Watch for a few of the letters throughout this edition of the Weekly News.

--Carissa Nelson, Lower School Instructor

What Stuck With You This Week

In U.S. History students are learning about the building of a new Government after the Revolutionary war. Topics that we discussed are the Constitution, how the separate parts of congress were developed, the three-fifths compromise, and the three branches of government. At the end of each week students do a "What stuck with you this week" post. Using a sticky note students write about something that they learned that was interesting, fun, or informative that will "stick with them". In the photo Lauren Scobee has just made her post and what stuck with her is that "in the senate there are two people from each state and that the number of people from each state in the House of Representatives depends on the state's population."

--LaToyia Armstead, Middle School Instructor

Square Roots and the Pythagorean Theorem

This week in Algebra 1 the class learned about square roots and the Pythagorean Theorem. In these fundamental lessons, students discovered how to find a square root both with a calculator and without. They also learned how to find the missing side of a right triangle when given two of the three sides. Students had to use the Pythagorean Theorem (a2 + b2 = c2) in order to accomplish this. The greatest challenge came from the word problems where students had to substitute values in for the variables in order to solve complex formulas that included square roots. I continue to be very impressed by the way my Algebra I students challenge themselves with even the most difficult problems. Keep up the great work guys!

--Josh Hersko, PreUpper Instructor

Personality & Communication Parent Workshop

Wednesday, November 1

6:30 - 7:30pm

Upper School Great Room

Our speaker will be Dr. Jeannine Jannot, the Balanced Student, and she will discuss how to make parent-teen communication more productive through understanding the influence of our personality types (particularly Extroversion - Introversion) and our Love Languages.

Please RSVP HERE if you can join us.

Big Thank You - 1 of 4

Dear Soldier,

Thank you for everything you do for our country and for the peace in the whole world. You are a very special person because you go to another country to protect us and to have us safe. You are brave and you leave your family. That is hard. I hope you are able to see the soon. I hope you have a nice Thanksgiving and other holidays. I think you are amazing and all of you are my heroes.

Your fan,

Zach

College Day

Parents - you are invited to join us for College Day!

 Our annual College Day college fair will take place on Friday, November 3 in the gym from 10:30am - noon. All parents are invited, as are students in grades 8-12. We are expecting 40+ colleges and programs to be represented at the fair. If you are planning on attending, please RSVP so we know you are coming. We are very excited about this year's fair.

Annual Fund Update

• Raise $300,000
• Achieve 100% Participation from Parents, Staff/Faculty, and Board of Trustees.

If you have not yet made your gift, please help us reach both of our goals by making your gift or pledge today.

REMEMBER ... making a gift to the Annual Fund is THE most important gift you can make to the school each year.

NO GIFT IS TOO SMALL.

Big Thank You - 2 of 4

Dear Soldier,

I go to Mill Springs Academy and I'm in fourth grade. I like the way you protect our country. Be strong and fight with all your might and let your heart lead the way you need to go. I trust you soldier and I like that you are honoring our families. I love you soldier.

With love,

Lexi Murphree

Winter PM Program Registration Open

We are very excited to announce our Winter PM Programs! These programs begin on Tuesday, November 7th and run through February 22nd. This is a NEW season which means that if you were in KK's Club, Chess Club, etc. in the fall, you must register again for the winter season to continue in that program. Please notice that many of the programs have changed. We are offering a new program this season called Bricks Challenge, a STEM program using Legos, facilitated by e2 Young Engineers.

Review the Winter PM Program flyer, it has detailed information on programs, rates, directions on how to register online, and transportation. Don't hesitate to contact me with any questions.

Register online here: www.millsprings.org/pm

Winter Line-Up

• Monday: e2 Young Engineers Bricks Challenge - Lego Club (Grades 1-6)
• Tuesday: Chess Club (Grades 3-12)
• Wednesday: Art Barn (Grades 1-6) and Explorers' Club (All Grades)
• Thursday: KK's Club (Grades 1-8) and KK's Mentor Program (Grades 7-12)

Distributive Property

This week in Algebra 8 we learned about the Distributive Property. In this important lesson, students learned how to distribute a number through a set of parentheses by multiplying the number by each term within the parentheses. Occasionally, students had to combine like terms once they had finished distributing. Later in the week we took our second quiz of the semester over the the first four lessons from Chapter 2. We are moving right along at a nice pace, and I am pleased with how well the class is retaining the information they are learning based on what I saw on their quizzes.

--Josh Hersko, PreUpper Instructor

What is ALL SET?

If you were at Founde''s Day, you saw several people wearing black t-shirts with ALL SET on them. What is ALL SET? The letters stand for Audio-visual, Lighting, and Layout; Student Event Team. This group of volunteers is eager to help MSA's events become seamless and to learn the skills necessary to plan and coordinate large group happenings on campus. So far, the team has helped the counselors set up for presentations to staff and parents and with Founder's Day. A huge thank you to the team for being willing to step up and serve our communities. If you see these students on campus, let them know their work is appreciated. The group is led by Shilpee Kathuria, Thomas Berg, Patrick Rose, and Cindy Thorne. If your student is in 9th-12th grade and would be interested in joining the team, have them contact Cindy Thorne.

 Pictured left to right: Anthony Papasidero, Nate Foster, Hannah Rae, Robert Papasidero, Max Woods, Liam Couch, Cole Reed, and Reese Urban.

Bus Survey

We want to make sure we have bus routes in areas that it makes sense to have bus routes. If your student is not currently riding the bus and you would consider putting them on a bus if one stopped in your area, we want to know what area that is. So here is your chance to tell us. Fill in our short survey and we will review the responses. If we can find enough students in a similar area, it might help all of us if there were a route there. We will let you know what we discover.

Take the Bus Survey today - it will only be open for a week.

Big Thank You - 3 of 4

Dear Soldiers,

I am proud of your courage and heroism that you put toward our country. Your loved ones would be extremely proud of your actions put toward the battles that we are facing. I am thankful for your bravery, courage, and dedication you have for your country to go out and fight for your life, knowing you are able to come home to your loving family and know you have done well for your country. You are a leader for our country! Have a relaxing, loving, memorable Thanksgiving.

From,

Jin Butler

Farm Fun

Lower School students took a field trip to Pettit Creek Farms. The students got to pet and feed animals, play in bounce houses, build a scarecrow, go through a corn maze, and of course take a hayride. The hayride took us on a tour to see the animals at the farm. while Pettit Creek Farms has your typical farm animals; goats, sheep, pigs, and horses, they also have exotic animals. The students got to see zebras, kangaroos, llamas, camels, capybaras, and reindeer! Everyone had a wonderful time at Pettit Creek Farms. You should check it out!

--Branigan Hughes, Lower School Instructor

Solving Equations

This week in Pre-Algebra we moved on to an interesting lesson on Solving Equations Using Addition and Subtraction.  This is our first major venture into solving equations, and I am very pleased the class is responding well.  At this point, we are following two simple steps which is to draw a balance scale down the middle of the equal sign (in order to remember to keep both sides of the equation balanced).  Next step is to perform the inverse operation by doing the opposite operation on the variable side of the equation.  Once this was complete, students were able to fully isolate the variable.  The class even learned how to check their solution by substituting back into the original equation.  Later in the week, students learned how to Solve Equations Using Multiplication and Division.  Steps were the same here, but students had to use multiplication and division this time to isolate the variable.  Great job this week Pre-Algebra!

--Josh Hersko, PreUpper Instructor

Grandparents' Day is Coming

This special day is Friday, November 17th. Invitations have been sent. If you did not provide an address for your grandparents during the admissions process, or if you can't recall, please send it to Leila and she will take care of it. If your child doesn't have a grandparent that can attend, tell us about a special person that can come instead.

Attendance at Grandparents' Day has been growing every year and we often end up with no empty seats. Because of this, please know that this special event is for our grandparents only and we are not able to have parents and students attend the breakfast. Students will be able to be with their grandparents after the breakfast for visiting and pictures! We are looking forward to a wonderful event! If you have any questions contact Leila Smith.

Dear Helper,

Thank you for protecting our country. This world would be nothing without you guys. You make us feel protected and safe. I'll risk a limb for you guys. You guys are also the most bravest people ever!

Love, Max Young