The Lion's Roar! Museum of the Ancient World At the start of December, the 6th grade class was given the task of creating parts of a museum. Each student had to research a topic relating to either Rome, Greece, or Persia. Each student had to create a bibliography from all of the things they researched and use a gathering grid to format the information that they gathered. After collecting all their information, the students took on the task making a physical representation of their studies. On Monday, December 17, the class brought their projects to Nearburg Hall and created a museum of the ancient world. Many classes visited the museum and looked at artifacts from Greeks, Persians, and Romans. Sadly, all things must come to an end. All 6th graders had to take home their projects the next day. All in all, the museum was a great experience and helped the 6th grade students learn more about Persian, Roman, and Greek culture.
Holiday Traditions Our school is very diverse, and there are many different cultures that make up St. Mark’s. From Chanukah to Chinese New Year, we celebrate many different holidays with many different traditions. Linyang Lee interviewed two people from very different cultures, David Gershenson and Joseph Sun. Interview with David Gershenson About Chanukkah Q: What do you eat? A: On Chanukah, we eat these jelly donuts called sufganiyot. As well, we eat potato pancakes called latkes. Q: What do you do during Chanukah? What are the traditions? A: During Chanukah, we light a menorah, but it has nine branches and it is called a Chanukiah. We also use a dreidel, or a spinning top because our ancestors pretended to gamble while the oppressors were watching. But when they weren’t, my ancestors studied the Torah. Q: What do you do at services? A: At services, we have extra verses we recite. At the end of the service, there is a celebration of the festival of lights.
Interview with Joseph Sun About Chinese New Year Q: What do you eat on Chinese New Year? A:We eat many special foods. We eat noodles because my predecessors believed eating noodles are good because they are long and so life will be long. Q: Do you celebrate anything other than Chinese new year over the winter? A; I do, my family celebrates Christmas. Q:What are some traditions that you do over the holidays? A: Our family goes skiing each year. My brother and I also receive presents and red packets (红包).
Lessons and Carols
Lessons and Carols is the most important chapel service of the year. The service has nine lessons read by the St. Mark’s community, followed by carols sung by the choir. The service always starts with a solo fifth grader singing the first verse of Once in Royal David’s City. Some carols on the list for 2018 were titled What Sweeter Music by John Rutter, Adam Lay Ybounden by Frank Boles, and See Amid the Winter’s Snow, arranged by David Wilcocks. The service also includes an Upper School only piece and a fourth-grade only piece. The ceremony ends with two traditional hymns, O Come, All Ye Faithful and Hark, the Herald Angels Sing. The service of Lessons and Carols that we use at St. Mark’s was started in King’s College in Cambridge, in the year of 1918. With the St. Mark’s choir, we always follow the service with a reception, and a few days later, we travel to the Northpark mall for another performance. This service has been going on for a very long time, and it is an integral part of the St. Mark’s community. Link to King’s College Choir singing Once in Royal David’s City (Copy and Paste): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHLy6bu955M
Jokes When Bob catches me gossipping about him, he slams my head into the keybohfugnbtmvj If a horse is uppercutted by a professional boxer, does it become a giraffe? (Jimmy and his Dad are reading.) (Jimmy is three years old.) Dad: What’s this word, Jimmy? It starts with W. Jimmy: Water! Dad: Wow! That’s a difficult word. Jimmy: Don’t worry--you’re doing fine. I don’t like people who talk too much. It’s kind of annoying. By the way, have you ever tried mint chocolate ice cream? You probably have, but it’s my favorite! I also like vanilla and bubblegum. Oh! I still didn’t tell you about the time when I blew a bubble so big with bubblegum that when it popped, my face was covered with it! By the way, I don’t like people who talk too much…
Extras Did you know the croissant was invented in Austria? Did you know the average human brain contains around 78% water? Did you know that lobsters have green blood? Did you know that salt water freezes at 28.4 degrees Fahrenheit? Did you know that Nero might have invented ice cream? Did you know that the Library of Congress has around 10 petabytes of data stored in books? Did you know that bees are only not found in Antarctica? Did you know that the original group of Santa’s reindeers didn’t include Rudolph until the 20th century? Did you know that a tree can produce 9,000 sheets of paper? Copy this link exactly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w
Try these cool Google tricks! 1. Type in “Play Snake”. This will let you play as a blue snake, trying to eat as many apples as possible. 2. Type in “Play Pacman”. This is a Pacman game, where the obstacles spell out “GOOGLE”. 3. Type in “Google Pirate” and click “I’m feeling lucky”. Some of the words have been Pirated! 4. Type in “Zerg Rush”. This makes a bunch of O’s fly across the screen and eat your search results. Destroy them by clicking them! 5. Type “Solitaire.” Well, solitaire. 6. Click “I’m feeling lucky” without typing anything, and you will get anything random--sometimes, you might get the full list of google doodles. 7. Search “text adventure” , right click, click “inspect”, then click “console”. There is a hidden game in Google! 8. If you’re bored, type in “World’s dumbest game” and press “I’m feeling lucky”. Press and hold the button: the longest time you can is one tenth of a second less than an hour. 9. Find Chuck Norris + I’m feeling lucky = OH NOOOO! 10. Type recursion. Then click “redirect to recursion”. Then click “redirect to recursion”. Then click “redirect to recursion”. Then click “redirect to recursion”. And on and on and on and on… 11. Type in “atari breakout.” Now, go to the images section. There is a cool “Break the boxes” game!
Number Facts 1 is the number of times a sloth poops in a week (roughly). 2 is both the month and the day that Harrison Smith was born. 3 is a number of people that you don’t want in a photo in Vietnam, as the middle one will die. 4 is the number of miles PER SECOND that space junk zooms around Earth. 5 is the length in meters of a great white shark as well as the average number of people who die from shark attacks each year. 6 is the first “perfect” number, which means that the sum of its factors is equal to itself. 7 is the number of teaspoons of botulinum you would need to kill every human being alive BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA >ahem< onto the next one. 8 is often associated with wealth and prosperity. 9: if you multiply it by any whole number, and then add the digits until the number is one digit, you’ll get nine. 2 X 9 = 18 (1 + 8 = 9) 234 x 9 = 2106 (2 + 1 + 0 + 6 = 9) 92364592 x 9 = 831281328 (8 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 8 + 1 + 3 + 2 + 8 = 36, 3 + 6 = 9) 10 is about the number of times bigger fleas were during the dinosaur age. (EEK!)
Art
By: Carson Bosita
By Lucas Vennerberg