LETTER FROM SHARON HOLSCLAW, HEAD OF SCHOOL

The Christmas season has always been one of my favorite times at St. Martin’s-in-the-Field School, and celebrating with your children is the reason. Whether they are three-years-old or fourteen, their enthusiasm for this special time of year is apparent and infectious.

Nothing is more precious than the expression of wonder and pure joy so evident on the faces of our younger Pre-School through second-grade students as they hear the beautiful story of the Nativity in their Wednesday Chapel or sing Christmas songs to Santa when he visits them at their class Christmas party.

I hope your heart fills with joy as much as mine will as we listen together to our children singing the beautiful songs they’ve learned for their Christmas Chapels on December 17 (Elementary and Middle School) and December 18 (Nursery through second grade). This Advent season—"this time of waiting"—is the perfect time for your family to gather together around your own Nativity scene and remind each other of the true meaning of Christmas: the birth of the Christ Child.

Children’s Chapel Song:

I have a secret, what can it be? Someone is coming. Wait and see. Come, let’s get ready. Hurry, let’s start. Jesus is coming. Open your heart. He is our Savior. Jesus is near. Born in a manger. He’ll soon be here. Worship and love him. I’ll do my part. Jesus is coming. Open your heart.

As I participate in Chapel and Eucharist and visit the classrooms, I realize how blessed our entire staff is to have such delightful and compassionate students. I am so proud of the way they welcome new students into their classrooms and readily get involved in projects that help the less fortunate. Thank you, parents, for your wonderful gift to us—children who care about others and are excited about learning. When you have a quiet moment, be sure to read the article, "Parents and Episcopal Schools: Partners in Developing Children of Character." It discusses five family behaviors that develop children of character. I’m sure you’ll find it as interesting and thought-provoking as I did.

I also realize how blessed I am to have teachers and staff who love teaching children and show it through their work ethic and their constant daily effort to meet the needs of every child. It is the children, committed teachers and staff, and parents who make St. Martin’s Day School so special. I am truly grateful for you all.

May your Christmas be filled with hope, peace, love, and joy.

Blessings to you and yours,

Sharon

ANNUAL FUND KICKS-OFF—PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SCHOOL
The 2009-2010 Annual Fund Giving Campaign has kicked off. Information was sent home on November 30th.  Class Captains from each class will be contacting their parents and will answer any questions concerning Annual Fund giving. Very shortly we will have an online link for donations. In the meantime, envelopes will work!
Class captains are still needed for the following classes: 2 Day AM Nursery, 3 Day AM and PM Nursery, Pre-K2 PM, Pre-K3, and grades 5 and 6. If you are interested in volunteering for this important role, please contact me at 410-647-7055. This is a volunteer opportunity can that be done entirely from home.  Everyone’s child benefits from the success of the Annual Fund.
Annual giving is tremendously important to St. Martin’s Day School. Tuition and fees do not cover the total costs associated with a St. Martin’s education. Gifts to the annual fund support every area of the school’s operation, providing the resources we need to supplement our operating expenses. This year the Annual Fund will be directed to technology support, a new sign for car pool line, additional music and art supplies, and teacher and classroom requests.
For the 2009-2010 Annual Fund, our two major goals are: (1) 100% participation from all current Day School families and 100% participation from faculty, staff, and the Board of Trustees, and (2) $55,000 to supplement the operating budget. We are asking all members of the Day School community to participate at some level.  All donations are tax deductible.
Your gift every year is critically important.  We hope you will consider a gift to the Annual Fund.  Donations of any size are welcome and greatly appreciated. Mary Henry, Director of Development.

MIDDLE SCHOOL FUTURE-CITY COMPETITION
Sixth, seventh, and eighth grade middle school students are well on their way to engineering their “green” city of the future.  After much research and work on the SimCity computer aided design activity, they are about to begin building their model cities and writing the essay that details the living space in their class models.  Their first deadline falls on December 16th when the SimCity computer-aided design and the essay that addresses the living space in the model are due. The Future City regional competition will be held all day on Saturday, January 16 at the Baltimore Museum of Industry.  One seventh grade team of three students and one team of three from eighth grade will be competing.  The sixth grade class is “in training” for next year.
The Future City competition is held throughout the United States and is organized by over 5,000 engineers.  Since engineering is not generally taught in schools, these events were organized, beginning in 1992, to expose students to the world of engineering.  Our students are discovering basic principles of and ideas about engineering as well as building team, communication, research, problem solving, technological, oral presentation, and writing skills.

LETTERS ABOUT LITERATURE
Our 4th and 7th grade students are writing a letter to an author (living or not) who wrote a book that profoundly affected them in some way. This is a reading and writing program organized by the Library of Congress and the Maryland Humanities Council. The authors and books are chosen by each individual student. Here are the authors the students are writing to this year:
Fourth Grade:
Kate DiCamillo, Because of Winn-Dixie
Lynn Plourde, Thank You, Grandpa
Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl
Richard Atwater, Mr. Popper’s Penguins
Stephen Crane, Red Badge of Courage
Matt Christopher, books on sports
Carl Hiaasen, Flush
Watty Piper, The Little Engine That Could
Ben M. Baglio, (books about animals)
Seventh Grade: Martha Southgate, Another Way to Dance Katherine Patterson, Bridge to Terabithia Stephen Ambrose, Band of Brothers Carl Hiaasen Dr. Seuss Susan Patron, The Higher Power of Lucky Carolyn Keene, The Nancy Drew mystery series John Grogan, Marley Joan Bauer, Hope Was Here Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe’s Eagle

PICTURES FROM PARENTS NEEDED FOR YEARBOOK
If anyone has pictures taken of students on field trips, school fundraisers, holiday events such as fall festival, or outreach and mission activities, WE NEED PICTURES for this year’s yearbook. Pictures from all grades will be useful. We can never have too many to choose from. Please either email the pictures to smaloney@stmartinsdayschool.org or send in on labeled disk. Label the disk by school year, month, event, and, if desired, student names. If all else fails, give your camera to Harriet Petrocelli, and she will download the pictures. Please continue taking pictures throughout the year, and all the options will still be open for getting the pictures to the yearbook. Thank you! -Yearbook Staff

LETTER FROM THE GREEN TEAM
Hello Green Families! This has been an exciting month for our Middle School students. Both the 7th & 8th Grades visited the Millersville Landfill and the Recycle America “sorting & transfer” station in Prince Georges County. It was so exciting (and sad) to see what happens when you throw “away” your garbage. It doesn’t exactly go “away.” Quite the eye-opener for all in attendance. We hope to offer this field trip to other grades in the future. The sorting station showed us how the items are sorted and baled for pick up or delivery to plants that use the recyclable material. Now when you hear someone say, “Don’t bother recycling. It ends up in the dump anyway,” you can refute that. Invite them to contact “Recycle America” and take the tour! Anne Arundel County is pushing for everyone to recycle as much as possible because of the limited space at the landfill. The current cell #8 will be filled to capacity by 2014 if we don’t slow down what we throw out. That will leave ONE cell at that landfill! If we don’t recycle more and keep it out of the dump, who knows where we will have to put our garbage after that?
With that in mind, PLEASE drop off your newspaper & junk mail in our yellow & green ALTIBITI container. St. Martin’s gets paid for that paper, and it frees up space in your recycling bins for more recycling at home. All it takes is for you to bring it with you to the carpool line and deposit your paper in the bin on your way out. Please read the label on the container to make sure your items are appropriate for deposit in the container. Thank you!
The Middle School Green Club is up and running with numerous students 5th through 8th grade students as team members. Students participated in the School and Church clean-up that was held on November 21. The Green Team is eagerly awaiting the painting of the rain barrels by the Elementary School children. The attractively painted barrels will be connected to the downspouts at the Middle School. We hope to complete that project before the weather gets too cold. The Pre-School and Elementary Club are awaiting further news from Terra Cycle on recycling the Capri Sun bags. We hope to have an official “kick off” our school-wide recycling campaign when the additional recycling containers arrive. Stay tuned!
In November, the Association of Independent Maryland Schools (AIMS) had a conference that featured, among other meetings and workshops, three seminars on the benefits of a green school and worthwhile projects. I was
fortunate to attend the seminars; I came away with a clearer idea of how to earn recognition of St. Martin’s-in-the-Field as a “Green School.”
GREEN TRIVIA:  It takes about one million years for a glass bottle to breakdown in the landfill!

OUTREACH AT ST. MARTIN’S Creating a Compassionate Life Worthy of a Child of God
Just as we cherish our students as children of God at St. Martin’s-in-the-Field Day School, so, too, do we want our children to cherish and help those who are less fortunate than they, because each human being is loved by God. In caring for others, we feel His love.
As educators, our purpose is to foster an imaginative empathy that enables our students to see the hurt of others and want to step in and help lift the burden. A full education involves learning how to lead an ethical and moral life as a living expression of one’s character. At St. Martin’s Day School, we pursue a number of outreach programs that encompass all grade levels and embrace both the local community and children in other nations. The common thread is that our children are personally and actively involved in making life a little gentler for those who suffer or are in need. Some of our projects are seasonal, some go on throughout the school year, nearly all are sustained from year to year—and each one involves work, dedication, and generosity from our students. Here is an overview of our outreach activities.
SPAN:  The Severna Park Assistance Network assists neighbors with food, financial assistance, referral services, and budget counseling. Grades 1 through 8 support SPAN by creating artwork for note cards. This year, three students had their artwork selected to be part of SPAN’s Note Card Collection. Proceeds from sales help those in need locally.
FOOD BASKET DONATIONS FOR THE HOMELESS:  Students in Nursery through 8th grade collect food for the homeless at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
CHRISTMAS DONATIONS FOR THE HOMELESS:  Also an all-school endeavor that collects new or slightly used toys and clean winter coats for distribution to Baltimore shelters through Giving Back, Inc.
THE MITTEN TREE:  Pre-School and Kindergarten children collect new mittens, socks, and packaged underwear for those in need at Christmastime. Collected items are distributed through Giving Back, Inc.
BACKPACKS FOR HOMELESS MEN:  Elementary and Middle School students fill backpacks with items such as socks, mittens, hats, long johns, sweat shirts and pants, and toiletries. Distributed through Giving Back, Inc.
HOMELESS SHELTER:  Working with our church, day school students provide and serve dinner to homeless men in the Parish Hall in February or March.
CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL, WASHINGTON, D.C.: Pre-School and Kindergarten students prepare gift bags at their class parties for children in the hospital over the holidays of Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Easter.
ST. JUDE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL, MEMPHIS, TN:  Pre-School and Kindergarten children participate in a Trike-a-Thon each year, contributing their “earnings” to this world-renowned pediatric oncology research institution.
CONNECTING CLASSROOMS THROUGH CREATIVITY:  In 2009-2010, Elementary and Middle School students are exchanging letters and art with students at an orphanage in Uganda. Artwork will be displayed in each school, and children will learn about others on a person-to-person, school-to-school basis.
HEIFER INTERNATIONAL:  Beginning in 2008-2009, Middle School students hosted an all-school cookout to support this well-known, small-scale farming program. Recipients agree to “pass on the gift” by giving the animals’ first offspring to others in need, thus building stronger communities. We asked that the livestock we bought be sent to Haiti.
LA RESURRECTION EPISCOPAL SCHOOL, GROS MORNE, HAITI: Our sister school. Our relationship with La Resurrection School goes back more than twenty years. Fund-raising projects are planned, some of which include “Hop for Haiti,” cook-outs, dress-down days, and bake sales. Each year, a portion of our Auction donations are sent to Haiti. In 2010, Head of Middle School Anne Andrews and 7th graders Charlotte Kurtz and Haley Carney with their mothers will travel to La Resurrection to get first-hand ideas on how we can better contribute to strengthening our sister school.
In addition to these projects, the Middle School has this year established a Student Leadership Council. About half of our Middle School students have volunteered for this service, which will structure and coordinate our school’s service and mission experiences.

BACKPACKS FOR THE HOMELESS
St. Martin’s students will again be organizing the Backpacks for the Homeless campaign during December.
Families of students in Grades 1 through 8 will receive a letter requesting a donation of $3.00 toward the purchase of new clothing and also a contribution of a toiletry item to fill 12 backpacks at our school by December 11th. Each backpack will have thermals (top and bottom), a sweatshirt, socks, hat, and a warm pair of gloves. We will have bought the clothing items in bulk, at discount, with the help of your donation.
Here is a list of possible toiletries (each grade may be responsible for one type of item—details in the letters home):
Toothpaste and toothbrushes
Deodorant
Comb and brush
Soap and a plastic container
Bag of hard candy
Gum
Lip balm
Shaving cream.
On December 16, students will fill each backpack. Grade 1 will buddy-up with Grade 5, Grade 2 with Grade 8, Grade 3 with Grade 6, and Grade 4 with Grade 7. In this way, our students directly participate in showing care for others. The filled backpacks will be delivered to the The Giving Back Foundation’s collection point at the Annapolis Farmers Market on Riva Rd.
The Giving Back Foundation is a nonprofit organization that sponsors the “Help the Homeless” drive in Anne Arundel County, Baltimore, and the greater Washington, D.C., area. See their website at www.homelessdrive.com
If you wish to drop off clothing, baby items, and gently used household goods, The Giving Back Foundation will have a staffed collection site at the Annapolis Farmers Market on Riva Road from Sunday, December 20, to Wednesday, December 23, from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
As a school, we are happy to do our part. Area schools provided about 1,000 backpacks last year, and the need is even greater this year. The backpacks, filled with new clothing and toiletries, are distributed on the street and in shelters on Christmas Eve through The Giving Back Foundation, which was founded in Annapolis more than twenty years ago.

PRE-SCHOOL CHRISTMAS GIVING TREE
Each year we ask the Pre-School children of St. Martin’s-in-the-Field to donate newly purchased socks, mittens, and underwear to give to less fortunate children at Christmastime. From December 7 through December 17, we will have a Christmas tree in the Parish Hall upon which you and your children may place your gift of socks, mittens, and/or packaged underwear for children ages 2 to 6. This is a special opportunity for you to share with your child the importance of giving to those who have less. The homeless shelters in Baltimore and Social Services in Anne Arundel County are in desperate need, especially this year, of these items for children. They do not need to be Christmas-wrapped, but they must be new.
Donations of men’s warm winter coats are also welcome. Please place these in Mrs. Holsclaw’s office.
All items will be donated to the homes and distributed on Christmas Eve by The Giving Back Foundation. For further information, see www.homelessdrive.com

HAITI PARTNERSHIP TRIP
On January 13, seven people including students, parents, parishioners and church and school staff will travel to Gros Morne, Haiti to visit our partner school, La Resurrection. Our school family has raised thousands of dollars over the years of our partnership through annual “Hops for Haiti” and various appeals, and the money we raise goes to keep the school open, pay teacher salaries, and provide students with the one meal they will eat each day. This year we have been asked to go in person as a way to strengthen our relationship with the school and to be a presence of hope.
The team of seven includes two students, Haley Carney (Grade 6) and Charlotte Kurtz (Grade 7); their mothers, Kim Hale-Carney and Anne Minor Kurtz; Anne Andrews (head of middle school), the Rev. Julie Nelson (associate rector and day school chaplain), and Dan Tootle (Haiti outreach coordinator for St. Martin’s church). The group has been arranging for passports, getting the necessary shots, reading about Haiti, planning for days without electricity and running water, and beginning to learn phrases in Haitian Creole. Each traveler hopes to take an extra suitcase filled with school supplies and items to be left with the school. Our St. Martin’s students will be helping to organize donations for that purpose.

ALUMNI NEWS - BART GEORGE, CHAMPION GOLFER
Alumnus Bart George, a junior at Broadneck High School, began playing golf competitively while in the 8th grade at St. Martin’s. Now he is the Capital-Gazette Communications’ Golfer of the Year and Broadneck’s top finisher in the boys’ county, region, and state golf tournaments. He was in our first 8th-grade graduating class. He is presently a member of the Public School All-County Golf Team, with a 1.60 par average. As a junior, Bart still has his senior year of high school in which to be an even more formidable force.
Alumni of St. Martin’s:  send your news and updates to cbarry@stmartinsdayschool.org. Keep in touch!

2009 MIDDLE SCHOOL MILE RUN RESULTS

Top 5 Boys	Top 5 Girls
Jack Kunowsky  6:30	Lana Humes  6:51
Nick Brown  6:52	Katie Pawlikowski  6:59
Michael Burton  7:11	Charlotte Kurtz  7:00
Joonas Tyler  7:15	Madeleine Farnham   7:15
Brad Carson  8:07	Casey Glick  7:45

Top 5 by Grade
8th	7th	6th
Lana Humes 6:51	Jack Kunowsky 6:30	Michael Burton 7:11
Nick Brown 6:52	Katie Pawlikowski 6:59	Joonas Tyler 7:15
Maria DuCoty 8:07	Charlotte Kurtz 7:00	Brad Carson 8:07
Yasmin Lockhart 9:30	Madeleine Farnham 7:15	Michael Altmann 8:12
Miranda Durner 9:38	Casey Glick 7:45	Ginger Ellis 8:15
Class Average = 8th 9:58, 7th 8:15, 6th 9:18