• Columbus Day Monday, October 12, 2020
• Teacher Workday Friday, October 23, 2020
• Professional Development Day Monday, October 26, 2020

1:30 p.m. (K-8) & 1:45 p.m. (HS)

Parent Teacher Conferences are scheduled for Wednesday, November 4 – Friday, November 6. Parents will have the opportunity to meet with their child’s teacher(s) to discuss student progress. Students should not attend conferences.

The conference sign-ups will take place through ParentSquare. All families will receive an automatic reminder, but please honor the opportunity for multiple-child families to sign up first.

• Conference sign-ups will go live at 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 15.

• Families with multiple children at ICS will sign up Thursday- Monday, October 15 – 19.
• Families with 1 child at ICS will sign up Tuesday- Saturday, October 20 – 24.
• A ParentSquare post will be sent from each teacher to sign up.
• Middle School Parents are welcome to schedule conferences with teachers only as needed, since there is open access to student grades and progress via FACTS Family Portal.

Childcare will NOT be provided.

1^st Quarter Verse Recitations for 5^th – 8^th Grades: October 15

1^st Quarter Verse Recitations for 1^st-4^th Grades: October 20-21

Due to COVID restrictions, our classroom TAs will be listening to students say their 1^st Quarter Verses from memory. TAs will take two days to listen to our students, Tuesday, October 20 and Wednesday, October 21. All students should be prepared to recite by Tuesday, October 20. Please begin reviewing these verses with them at home. If you have misplaced your copy of the verses, the verses are available in the Files tab on your ParentSquare homepage. We look forward to the day when we are once again able to have parent verse listeners return to the building to listen to our students recite God’s Word.

On Monday, November 2^nd and Tuesday, November 3^rd the school nurses will provide hearing and vision screening for students in Kindergarten, 3^rd, 7^th, and 10^th grades. Parents with a student in the grades listed will soon receive a permission slip through Magnus Health to e-sign. Only students with parent signed permission slips will be screened.  If you have a student who you’d like to have screened who is not in a grade listed above, please contact the nurse (nurse@icsva.org) for further instructions.

There are a lot of changes this year due to COVID. Serve-A-Thon is one of them. Traditionally, the month of October is the kick-off for the class service projects and is our opportunity to raise essential funds to support the existing programs at ICS. We also include a special fundraising goal above and beyond our annual need. Last year, we raised enough money to purchase a new 15-passenger van to use for transportation to field trips and athletic games.

While our financial needs have not disappeared because of COVID, we are mindful of our ongoing efforts to care for the health and safety of our students, parents, and teachers. Gathering in large groups and traveling in vans is not prudent at this time. Therefore, our plan is to use the month of May to close out our year with a few weeks of focused attention as we serve together as a community. We will also use the month of May for our K-8^th grade students to help raise needed funds from friends and family as they sponsor our students while they serve together. Our high school students will begin their fundraising efforts in the fall as they have more flexibility for individual service opportunities. Additional information will be forthcoming in the months ahead.

Just because our corporate service projects are delayed a few months does not mean that we cannot encourage our students to find individual or family opportunities to show God’s love to God’s people. The inclusion of service projects (we call this our Character-in-Action (CIA) program) is an integral part of an Immanuel Christian School education. We encourage each family to pray and consider ways you can serve our community as a family. The ideas are endless, and we hope these suggestions will help jump start your engines of service:

• serve your neighbors
• clean up a Fairfax County park or area that needs some attention
• organize a food drive with your friends or neighbors for a local food bank
• write cards and letters of encouragement to our first responders or frontline medical workers and deliver them with prepackaged goodies or gift cards
• become pen pals with a senior in an assisted living facility

We encourage you to listen to Love God, Love People by Danny Gokey as a Serve-A-Thon theme song this year.

Luke 10:27

And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

We will be cleaning out the Lost & Found bins monthly.  Any unlabeled items will be passed to charity. As always, all labeled items will be returned to the owners.

The best way you can help in this process is to label ALL your child’s uniforms, coats, gloves, hats, water bottles, etc. We look for a name on every item before we pass it on to charity. We appreciate your support in helping all students be responsible for their belongings. Thank you in advance for your efforts to label everything!

Parents who are not satisfied with their child’s individual picture from Great American Photos, or who     missed picture day in September, should plan to have their child’s picture taken on Tuesday, October 20. Recommended attire is dress clothes for the picture. Pictures are taken first thing in the morning so those getting retakes are encouraged to bring their ICS uniform to change into for the remainder of the day. This is a regular uniform day for those students not having a picture retake. If you have any questions, please contact Colleen Brookstein.

Weekly Zoom prayer meetings Tuesday mornings from 8:00-9:00 am.

All parents are invited to gather virtually each Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. to pray for the students, teachers, and staff of ICS. This is a vital ministry that benefits all of us at ICS. Your child’s class and teacher will be prayed for specifically during the year. You are welcome to drop into the Zoom whenever you can, for as long as you are able and especially when your child’s class is being featured! Sign up to attend in ParentSquare.

Prayer Guide

Our ICS Prayer Guide is sent to every family via ParentSquare once a month during the school year. Please take advantage of this Guide and pray for the needs that are outlined there, even if you cannot join the Parents in Prayer Zoom meeting each week. Contact Meredith Winston, Receptionist (meredith.winston@icsva.org) or Maureen Orsini, PIP Coordinator (mmeorsini@gmail.com), for more information.