Month: November 2011

Christmas on Main

jhackman Arts

This year, seven of our students volunteered their time to paint the former Re-Uzit shop window in downtown New Holland, in order to advertise the upcoming Christmas on Main celebration.  The celebration is scheduled this year for Saturday, December 3, 2011 and is sponsored by the New Holland Business Association.  This is the third year that the art department of Garden Spot High School has participated by sending students to decorate empty store windows and advertise the event.

Our students decided this year to paint an outdoor snow scene, complete with church, lamp posts, fir trees and snowmen.   The students met  with Mrs. Myers, Art teacher, and New Holland mayor, Mr. Wilbur Horning on Saturday, November 12 for his approval of the scene and then began the task of painting on the window.

A special thank you to Micoleen Schonour, Allison Kurtz, Kaitlyn Frank, Shannon O’Malley, Miki Do, Lauren Martin and Cody Fields for giving of their time and talents to help make a difference in our community!

Grassland FFA Greenhands Off to a Great Start

jhackman FFA

First year members of the Grassland FFA chapter, aka Greenhands, have participated in many events during the first semester.

New members has a chance to meet one another and the officer team at a Freshman Kick-Off event. Food, games, team building and fun highlighted the event which was held at Bethany Grace Church due to inclement weather.
New members had the chance to dive right into their FFA careers as they participate in a whipped cream pie eating contest.

Greenhand Retreat

As an incentive to learn the material necessary to earn their Greenhand Degree new members were able to earn an expense free retreat at Refreshing Mountain Camp. Members who qualified planned their own meals, cooked over camp stoves and a campfire and enjoyed a great weekend of fun and learning to be a cohesive team. A highlight was going through a low ropes team building activity with the RMC staff. Six officers joined the freshman for the weekend to assist Mr. Lauffer and Mrs. Marchini the FFA advisor

Some of this year’s Greehands at the Retreat.

Paul McFarland, President and Michael Seifrit, Vice-President, were among the officers who gave up their weekend to help the Greenhands get off to a good start. Also assisting were Josh Weaver, Percella Hankins, and Heather Musser

 

Manheim Fair Livestock and Dairy Judging Competition

Freshman also spent a day at the Manheim Fair where they had the chance to judge livestock ad dairy .

Two of the Greenhands had qualified for the Safe Tractor Operations competition with Hira Allen placing 2nd and Wes Weaver 6th in the county. Everyone else had the opportunity to judge two classes of dairy cattle, 2 classes of market hogs, 2 classes of market lambs, a class of market steers and a class of market goats. For those not familiar with judging, a class is a group of four animals which are visually inspected by each contestant and placed into an order based upon their judgment of how well each animal meets the evaluative criteria for that species. An official judge then places the animals in first, second third, and fourth place. In more advanced competitions, the contestants must also present one or more sets of oral reasons to a judge explaining and justifying their choices. Scores are determined by how closely a contestants placing matches that of the official judge.

The results of the judging competition are:

  1. Chad Zimmerman
  2. Austin Nolt
  3. Miguel Bowman
  4. Nathan McConnell
  5. Blake Martin
  6. Mitchell Bair
  7. Morgan Mueller
  8. Chase Bowman
  9. Brody Shrock
  10. Ben Lehma

               

Chad                                            Austin                                   Miguel

     

Nathan                          Blake

 

It should be noted the top 3 individuals in the competition all beat their advisor, Mr. Lauffer, who competed along with the students. Which prompted his comment , “ You must always remember the official judge isn’t always correct but they are always official”

Greenhands also had the opportunity to serve as tour guides for the Ag Awareness Day program conducted for 3rd graders in the district. As tour guides they helped the elementary students find their way around a 12 station educational course that included: forestry, IPM, livestock, stream habitat improvement, animal by-products, the connection between wildlife and farm habitat, a career skit, Food for America ( a station where they learned the systems that produce and process their food), experimentation in agriculture, soils and tractor safety. Over 200 3rd graders participated in the day.

9th graders also participated in the Lancaster County Leadership Conference( LCLC). It was held at Lampeter-Strasburg High School. It was conducted by the County FFA representatives from each school including senior Janelle Weaver who represents Garden Spot at the county level. According to Advisor, Bob Lauffer, one of the best elements of the conference was that they split the students up as soon as they hit the door and forced them into interacting with students from other schools. By the end of the evening students had made friends and connected with FFA members from around the county. “

Monday night at a special monthly FFA meeting to which parents were invited, all those who had met all of the requirements for the Greenhand Degree were awarded a pin in recognition of their status. Awards were also presented to deserving members from competitions throughout the fall.

The evening started out with pizza shared around tables with only one or two students from a particular school. While eating their pizza they were given a couple of tasks to solve. They stayed with that group throughout the evening, engaging a series of interactive workshops and skits.

Grassland FFA Advisor, Mrs. Marchini, commented , “When my gang got in the van their first words were when do we get a chance to do something like this again? I guess you could say the conference was a big success. “

Monday night at a special monthly FFA meeting to which parents were invited, all those who had met all of the requirements for the Greenhand Degree were awarded a pin in recognition of their status. Awards were also presented to deserving members from competitions throughout the fall. It has been a busy but rewarding fall for the Grassland FFA’s new members. There is a much more planned as the year progresses.

Students Make Cards for Soldiers Serving Overseas

jhackman Arts ,

Garden Spot students made beautiful Christmas cards that were mailed to soldiers who will be serving our country overseas this holiday season.

Teachers and Students from the high school Art classes and Creative Writing classes worked together to create colorful cards with beautiful verses and poems of thanks for our servicemen and women.

In addition, Blue Ball Elementary school students in grades 4 through 6 also participated this year by creating Veteran’s Day thank you cards.

There were approximately 400 cards mailed to our soldiers.  The cards were mailed through a program led by the American Red Cross.  Teachers participating were, Toni Myers,  Amy Rupp, Michele Custer, Heath Hardin and Alice Snader.

Student Council Hosts Food Drive

jhackman Clubs

Garden Spot Student Council hosted a food drive that will benefit Garden Spot families!  The classroom competition ran from October 17- November 18th 2011.  This year Student Council is distributing Thanksgiving dinner to 12 families with children who attend Garden Spot High School!  Additional food will be donated to local food banks to benefit the community!  Help us support our local families by donating a canned good today!

Volleyball Seniors Voted for LL League Section 2 All Stars

jhackman Athletics ,

Seniors Steph High, Lauren Horst and Brittany Lantz were all voted first team LL League Sect 2 all stars.  Read the full article and see pictures on the Lancaster-Lebanon League e-News.

 

Seniors Lauren Horst and Steph High were also voted to the District 3 all star team.  You can checkout action pictures and see their stats on the Lancaster-Lebanon League e-News.

Spartan Football Finish 7-4

jhackman Athletics ,

Spartans finish 7-4.

The 2011 Spartans battled on the gridiron with class and tenacity throughout the 2011 season.  The offense finished as the 5th ranked offense in the entire Lancaster/Lebanon League and the defense finished ranked 6th.  The Spartans were within two scores of a section 2 title and qualified for District 3 AAA playoffs for the 3rd time in the last 6 years.  Offensive stat leaders include Jon Armbrust who threw for over 1700 yards and 29 touchdown passes and Connor Schlegal who had 60 receptions and 19 TD catches.  Defensive stat leaders included section 2 leading tackler Rob King (132 tackles) and Jason Nolt with 7 sacks.

Log on to www.gsfootball.com for season photos, highlights, and stats.  The 2012 campaign will officially begin in the weight room on January 2nd.

 

 

Grassland FFA Continues Foods Resource Bank Efforts

jhackman FFA

Jeff Stoltzfus left and Gene Martin  have instrumental in the success of the FRB Project (Food Resource Bank Project).

Thanks to the continued support of members of the local agricultural community, the Grassland FFA completed another year of service to the Foods Resource Bank.  Members of Bob Lauffer’s FFA Leadership 9 class witnessed the harvesting of the final two acres of this year’s project. Several members had the opportunity to get a birds-eye view of the harvest as they rode in the combine with Mr. Gene Martin. Mr. Martin has graciously volunteered to provide all of the field work for the project since its inception. While in the combine, students were able to see a read out on the GPS that showed yield differences in different parts of the field, moisture levels, soil fertility. This can all be printed with overlay maps to show how any number of parameters overlap. The soybeans will then be sold to Mr. Earl Weaver, owner of Weaver’s Toasted Grains, Mr. Weaver is also a perennial supporter of the FRB project. Last year the FFA 10 class under the leadership of Connor Bender, James Martin, Jordon Horst, Kyle Hurst, and Seth Yoder laid the groundwork for the project. They solicited donations of land from ELANCO school district (next to the bus garage) and GS alumnus Burton Shaffer.

 

Members check the readiness of the soybeans.

FFA Leadership 9 with combine after harvest.

The seed was donated by Pioneer Hi-bred and the fertilizer by TIMAC. Because of the tremendous outpouring of support by the agricultural community we have been able to have all of the inputs to raise a crop donated . This means the project is able to send all the funds generated through the sale of the crop to a designated growing project. In the past the project has supported a variety of projects around the world. The Grassland FA was the first FFA chapter to undertake a FRB growing project due to the encouragement of adult agriculture instructor Jeff Stoltzfus who made them aware of the opportunity. To date more than $40,000 has been raised by the Grassland FFA’s FRB projects. The FFA 10 class researches the available options and makes a decision about which growing project to sponsor. They usually to pick a project that will lead to sustainability such as a water system project or an erosion control project. This year the funds will go to Uganda-Teso where the project is aimed at increased sustainability through diversifying crops and training of better post-harvest techniques.  A goal is to have the 1200 residents able to take 3 meals a day. The current baseline is an average of only 1 meal a day. The Grassland FFA would like to thank all of the community members for their generous support in helping FRB reach out around the world.  To learn more visit the Foods Resource bank website.  http://www.foodsresourcebank.org/welcome-foods-resource-bank

Anatomy Students Learn from Student with Cerebral Palsy

jhackman Classroom ,

Anatomy students recently learned the parts of the vertebral column.  The students read an article about paraplegic lifestyles and then they had to brainstorm with a class mate on how their lives would change if became a paraplegic.  The students then wrote down questions they had for one of our own GS students that is in a wheelchair most of the time.  Zach Waddington is one of our life skill students who has Cerebral Palsy.  He agreed to come to Julie Groft’s Anatomy Class, answer student questions and talk to them about his lifestyle.  Zach did a wonderful job.  Mrs. Horst, his aide, read the questions provided by the students, and he answered them the best he could.  His presentation was very enlightening.   One thing that Zach told the students made a major impact, “I am a regular teenager just like you, the only difference is I can’t use my arms or legs.”  He has an inspiring attitude the students will absolutely remember for a lifetime.  The students  wanted to thank him as a class, so they made cards for him, gave him some cookies and a GS baseball jersey.  Thanks Zach!