My son is attending a new magnet school in our area which is a green school.  They are not starting back until the day after Labor Day.  This will be his first year in a public school.  He will be in 9th grade.

This school is really different from all the other public schools in our area.  First of all it is a green school.  It is sponsored by TVA.  The kids only go to school Monday – Thursday.  The hours are 9am – 5pm.  It is designed to get them ready for the work world.  They do not have home work.  The teachers feel it is their responsibility to teach, not the parents.  All work is done at school and 95% of it is on a laptop.  Each student has their on laptop.

The first half of the day is academics.  The 2nd half of the day is spent outdoors in the outdoor classrooms or hiking.  The school has several thousand acres for their outdoor learning.  Ivy’s outdoor campus is located in Soddy Daisy on land adjacent to 7,000 acres of protected wilderness land.

Settings for learning include:

There is no dress code.  The kids can have their cell phones and ipods to use when not in class.  They get an entire hour for lunch to do whatever they want:  go outside, play, eat, talk on their phones, or listen to their ipods.  The students are treated like adults. 

Last year was the first year for this school and it did great.  The students LOVED it.  The great thing is that they keep the class sizes small with only 15 to a class.  They want to have about 60-80 in the 9th grade and the same in the 10th grade.  They are adding a grade each year.

I think schools need to change with the times in order to keep it fresh and keep kids in school.

IVY ACADEMY

Ivy Academy is a tuition-free public charter high school serving grades 9-12. It is one of the first two charter schools to open in Hamilton County, Tennessee, and opened in Fall of 2009 with 60 students. Each year, 60-80 students will be added until all four high school grade levels are filled. The total number of students attending the school at any given time will not exceed 320 thus allowing for intense personalized education and minimized impact on the natural surroundings.

http://ivyacademychattanooga.com

The school is a charter school and the first of its kind in our area.  It is a public school but much like a private school in that it is small with small class sizes.

They have no dress code.  They go to school Monday – Thursday from 9am – 5pm like a work day.  Fridays are off days.  They do not start until after Labor Day to conserve energy.

They spend the first half of the day indoors and the 2nd half outdoors.  They even have outdoor classrooms.  All of the subjects correlate with each other which is great.  The teachers LOVE their jobs.

The students are treated like adults.  They are allowed to have cell phones (cannot use during class of course), Ipods, etc.  They get an hour for lunch and can even go outdoors to eat or whatever for their hour.

My son is actually excited about his upcoming freshman year.

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http://happytobeathome.net/category/homeschooling-wednesday/

Keep the kids learning all summer long.  There are tons of resources to help you home school also. 

Come Grow With Us!

Look no further than Hickory Valley Christian School! HVCS is a private Christian school that strives for the development of each child’s maximum potential: intellectually, spiritually, socially, physically, and emotionally, within a warm and caring environment through an individualized program.

HVCS exists to enable students to become productive, contributing citizens with Christ-like faith and Christian commitment.  It is the purpose of the program to encourage an active partnership of learning among students, faculty and parents. The faculty and staff strive to be Christian role models and are dedicated to encouraging, supporting and nurturing students in the pursuit of excellence.

Academic quality is maintained at Hickory Valley Christian School through its accreditation by the Southern Associates of Colleges and Schools as well as by the Southern Associate of Independent Schools. Our student: teacher ratio is approximately 9:1 in K4/K5 and 12:1 in grades 1-8.

If you would like to learn more about our program, visit our website at www.hvcs.org or call the school for a tour at (423) 894-3200.  The first step is to make application.  Applications are dated and filed in the order in which they are received.  Students visit as openings arise and contracts are mailed following a school visit.  We look forward to talking with you.

In God’s love,

Ginny Young, Principal

“Train a child in the way he should go and when he grows old he will not depart from it.”

As a parent, I assure you that HVCS lives up to this standard.   We love this school and the Christian academic environment it provides for our children.   This school does not disappoint!

Phone: (423) 894-3200 Fax: (423) 894-8665

www.hvcs.org info@hvcs.org

2009 RESULTS

Round	Correct Spelling	Contestant’s Spelling
1	Round One Test
2	heroine	heroine
3	Rabelaisian	rabelaisin

CONGRATULATIONS     TANAY!!!

“Bronchospasm” and “quadrivial” are just two examples of the challenging words spellers faced in the 2009 Regional Spelling Bee, which was held at the UTC Fine Arts Building on Saturday afternoon.

Over 80 kids, ranging from 4th grade to 8th, took part in the competition, but, as always, only one winner was left standing.

“My parents have really helped me prepare, and I’m kind of like astonished,” said Tanay Patri, a fifth-grader at Hickory Valley Christian School and the winner of Saturday’s Regional Spelling Bee. “I’m really happy, but I can’t believe it happened to me.”

In round 15, only spellers Mr. Patri and Kendra Benn were left standing. After Miss Benn misspelled her word, Mr. Patri correctly spelled, “Impetigo,” thus winning the title of the 2009 Regional Spelling Bee Champion.

Trophies also went to the competition’s four runners-up.

“For them to have gotten here, this was huge,” said Garry Grimes, head of Newspapers in Education with the Times Free Press. “These kids, they’ll come off stage and say, ‘I knew (the word) had two ‘m’s’ to it,’ or, ‘I knew it has two ‘i’s.’ And you feel sorry for them because they’ve worked so hard. They’ve studied hundreds and thousands of words to have this opportunity.”

According to Mr. Grimes, the competition has drawn winning spellers from 14 counties in North Georgia and Southeast Tennessee.

“Some of the kids are repeats, and they’re the kids that aren’t flustered,” he said. “They get up and they know what to ask. They’re confident because they’ve been here before.”

When faced with a new word, spellers had the option of asking the pronouncer to explain the word’s origin, definition, what part of speech it is and how it’s used in a sentence.

“The kids will have to know fundamental rules (like) phonics and origins,” Mr. Grimes said. “They need to know the language of origin, and that helps them out quite a bit when they know these things.”

Ada Robinson, a retired educator and judge for the competition, said she was very surprised by each participant’s knowledge.

“Some of the words, I probably couldn’t pronounce them myself,” she said.

In a matter of weeks, Mr. Patri’s will be on stage at our nation’s capitol.

“The winner of this gets the word almost,” Mr. Grimes said. “We send them and a parent to Washington, D.C., for the National Spelling Bee, which will be at the end of May. And there they will compete against kids from across the nation and (territories) of the U.S., like Guam and Puerto Rico.”

Staff Photo by D. Patrick Harding
Tanay Patri gets a phone call backstage from Ginny Young, principal of Hickory Valley Christian School, after he wins the 2009 Regional Spelling Bee.

Mr. Patri will also receive $500 spending money, $100 saving bond and a Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary to help him study.

She got a Spanish award, an AR Reading Goal award, and The Most Improved Student award! This was a much needed confidence boost for her.  I am so very proud of all her hard work.

My daughter has made great strides despite some of the issues she battles daily.  She has SI (sensory integration dysfunction), ADHD, OCD, auditory and vestibular processing disorder, and language development delays.  I recently spoke with an audiologist about some of her issues.  I was floored to hear from someone who is very familiar with what my daughter has tell me how difficult it is for her to just stand up without falling.  It really gave me and my husband something to think about.

My daughter is very whiny in the morning.  I thought it was more of not being a morning person.  But, as the audiologist pointed out for me, it is such a shock to her body to go from a calm sleep to rousing herself up, actually getting up and moving that it takes more energy than I ever thought. 

We will be doing listening therapy soon which should help her be able to adjust from one situation to another easier.  That coupled with the Neuronet should really help her more than anything else.

We have to crack down on making sure to get all of this done each and every day for my daughter’s sake.

This has been such a huge academic advancement for my daughter.  She was basically a nonreader at the beginning of the year and is now reading on a 4th grade level thanks to a wonderful school, teacher, and the LIPs program.  Hickory Valley Christian School has certainly made a huge positive impact on my children’s lives and especially my daughter.

Her reading continues to climb as does her comprehension.  Now we have a window of opportunity to really work with my daughter to improve her neurological functioning and capabilities with Neuronet.  We will begin doing this wonderful program this week on a daily basis.  This will help lay down new neuro-pathways to replace what she does not have.  It will help the speed of her processing information a great deal.  It is a lot of stress on us as parents to make sure to get it done each and every day. 

We will also be starting Listening Therapy.  This will help her auditory processing disorder.  At least this is something that can be done in the car to and from school.  She can do any activity while doing listening therapy except working on the computer. 

So, we have a lot getting ready to start happening in our household to help Kennady.  She will also be increasing her Speech Language Therapy.