🎓As we approach the end of the school year, we would love to feature our Seniors, who make up the graduating class of 2024!
📣Introducing Alec:
“I plan to attend the University of St Thomas, with my primary major being Business and Entrepreneurship. UCA has prepared me for the next stage in life with the vast amount of leadership roles that are available and encouraged for all students. These roles have allowed me and others to develop skills that are useful in life outside of academics, like speaking in front of large crowds, planning events, and general responsibility. I think what is so unique about UCA is how much the teachers and staff care about each individual student. They really want what is best for you, and are willing to help you in any way they can. I will miss the friends and teachers, as well as having chapel every wednesday.”
💜We are so proud of you Alec!
#ucathunder #ucaclassof2024
In addition to Feed My Starving Children last Friday, our students were also hard at work on other service projects throughout the day.
🚮🛞The high school students walked to the Bloomington Ice Gardens to clean up the grounds. They filled trash bags with all sorts of treasures found around the building...even a tire!
🇺🇸 The middle school and elementary buddies worked on projects that will be shared with military families and nursing home residents.
#ucathunder #ucamissionsday
What an amazing United Week filled with House-themed student-led chapels! It was so encouraging to see the spiritual maturity and biblical wisdom on display throughout the week.
Students were joyfully serving others in a variety of ways blessing our community to the Glory of our King.
Hearing testimonies of faith and praises to our Lord gives us such hope for this generation knowing our students are preparing to be ambassadors for Christ.
#ucathunder #ucaunitedweek #ucahousesystem
🏆 Part House competition...part donation! 💰
Our students have been collecting coins and bills leading up to our service project tomorrow. All of the money will be donated to Feed My Starving Children, where our middle school and high school students will be serving.
The extra motivation came from the house competition strategy where coins count as positive and bills count as negative. Who will win? ❤️💚💙💛
#ucathunder #ucahousesystem
📝📚 Our 7th-grade Language Arts students were tasked with writing a nonfiction storybook geared toward a 1st-grade and 2nd-grade audience. They are budding writers who have tackled topics ranging from nature and animals to history and science, carefully tailoring their words to captivate and inspire our younger learners.
📖💫Once the writing was complete, they visited the classrooms of our elementary students, where they personally read their books and shared the power of literature with their younger peers.
#ucathunder
💡🔋 Batteries, bulbs, buzzers, and more!
🔌⚡️Dr. Morrison and his 6th-grade science students have been exploring the fascinating world of circuits and electricity! Sparks of curiosity ignited, learning everything from open and closed circuits to voltage differences and current flow.
⚡️They're mastering the fundamentals of electrical engineering with hands-on experiments and exploration, gaining invaluable insights into the wonders of the electrical world around us.
#ucathunder #ucastem
🌟🍨 Root Beer Floats - educational and delicious!! 🥤🔍
Mrs. Anderson’s 1st grade science class has been exploring the three main states of matter—solid, liquid, and gas.
🍦➕🥤 First, the kids had to identify the solid (ice cream) and the liquid (root beer) components of our float. They also had to identify the missing state of matter, gas! 🌬️They then predicted what would happen when the two ingredients were combined. How right they were! The fizzy reaction produced a frothy, bubbly foam that tickled their taste buds.
#ucathunder #ucastem
🏆 👏 Each quarter, we have the opportunity to select and honor "Students of the Quarter" for each school level. These students are chosen based on their consistent display of our House Essentials as part of our House System. We aim to foster these character traits in every UCA student: trustworthiness, humility, compassion, reverence, obedience, and more.
💚 For high school, we honor a 9th grader, Adelaide, representing the Scriptura House. Well done, Adelaide!
#ucathunder #ucahousesystem
🇨🇳🍱Our advanced Chinese students recently tackled the task of sushi making, but this was more than just a culinary adventure!
🥢🍣They are immersed in the challenges of Chinese grammar and complex sentence structures. This particular structure, commonly used in conversational Chinese, involves action verbs and offers a unique way to express actions and their outcomes. Making sushi involves many actions which the students then applied to their conversations.💬
#ucathunder
📣 Don't miss out - Limited seats available!
Tickets are on sale through April 11th for our annual community & fundraising event
🎟️ $50/person
🎟️$280/table of eight
Information about our live and silent auction items is coming soon. We have great speakers and student-led worship lined up for the program. You'll want to be a part of the amazing evening to support and promote UCA!💜
Purchase tickets here: https://onecau.se/denimanddiamonds2024
🔷🔴🟨Our talented first-grade artists have been hard at work, unleashing their creativity with a palette of primary colors, a dash of imagination, and a sprinkle of abstract shapes. The result is beautiful three-dimensional art.
🧠🌟 They're learning to see the world through a new lens, where every shape and color holds endless potential for expression and creativity.
#ucathunder #ucaelementary
🐠🌳 For the past month, our biology students have been observing ecological interactions and nutrient cycling. They crafted miniature worlds teeming with life inside of two, 2 Liter bottles. An aquatic and a terrestrial ecosystem were created and then connected, and then the magic began!
🌿💧Inside their ecosystems were minnows, aquatic plants, wood sorrel (terrestrial plants), grass seeds, a cricket, and worms. Students gained a deeper understanding of the delicate balance that exists within ecosystems, and the interconnectedness of all living organisms. 🌎
#ucathunder #ucastem
🧤🔍 Hands-on discovery and learning is the name of the game in 7th grade Life Science class.
🔬🐸Their latest adventure was uncovering the inner workings of frogs and what amazing little creatures God created. This unit brought mixed reactions and levels of enthusiasm, but they all came with their curiosity and good attitudes!
#ucathunder #ucastem
🪨 🌅 He is not here, for he is risen! May we be encouraged by the promise of hope, the power of forgiveness, and the victory of light over darkness.
🙏🕊️ We pray you and your loved ones have a blessed Easter filled with the assurance of God's unfailing love.
🏫 We can't wait to see you back at school on Tuesday, April 2nd!
#ucathunder
🇬🇹Guatemala Update:
Today kicked off a one-day VBS for Nueva Vision School, run by Nueva Vision Church. This is the school’s second academic year, and it came about as a dream to reach the community through Christian education to disciple children and turn their hearts toward Christ. Pastor Lester shared several testimonies of how their students have become excited to attend school–even coming early to talk to their teachers and help out–and have also turned entire families’ hearts to Jesus as the children learn truth, speak wisdom, and pray. With many of us students and teachers having been around since the start of UCA almost five years ago, we’ve experienced that investment and seen the impact for ourselves.
The VBS was amazing! Our teams worked to share the story of Moses learning courage at the burning bush (fully presented in Spanish!), create bracelets with the word “valor,” and play soccer in the courtyard. The highlights after dinner included love, gratitude, and perspective shifts about life and faith. We’re excited to spend time with the Provee scholarship students tomorrow as we treat them to a day off at the water park and beach!
As always, thank you for your prayers for our team!
–The UCA Travel Team
#ucathunder
🌿👋 Hosanna!
What a joy to see our adorable PreK students in their very own parade, waving palm branches with excitement! With smiles as bright as the sun, they marched the halls and toured the office, sharing the significance of this story. 🌞
#ucathunder #ucaelementary
🏆 👏 The third quarter has ended, so we have another opportunity to select and honor "Students of the Quarter." These students are chosen based on their display of our House Essentials as part of our House System. These are character traits we aim to foster in every UCA student: trustworthiness, humility, compassion, reverence, and more.
💚💛 For elementary, we have a kindergartener Linnea, representing the Fide House. For middle school, we have 7th grader Bella, representing the Scriptura House. Well done, girls!
Next week, we will announce the selection for high school.
#ucathunder #ucahousesystem
🙏 🇬🇹 Pray for our Missions Team!
16 students and 5 teachers are on their way to serve in Guatemala. This team is giving up their Spring Break to share the gospel and be the hands and feet of Jesus.
Join us in praying for our students: Alec, Winston, Tobias, Joyce, Ava, Josh, Julia N, Ana, Kaya, Julia D, Makaela, Nick, Lauren, Jeremiah, Matea, and Hayden. And our teachers are Mrs. Larson, Miss Hawthorne, Mr. Hendrickson, Ms. Luttio, and Mrs. Nerdahl.
Stay tuned for updates!
#ucathunder #ucaupperschool #ucamissionstrip
📸🚌Throughout this school year, our Photography and Photo Editing students have been honing their craft, and exploring various genres of photography. This week they put their skills to the test on a field trip to the Mall of America.
🏃♂️📷From stop-action shots freezing a moment in time to show motion images capturing the dynamic energy around us. They also delved into tilt zoom techniques, experimented with different perspectives, and explored the endless possibilities of visual storytelling through our lenses. 🌀🔍
Our students demonstrated a remarkable range of skills. 👏
#ucathunder #ucafinearts
📽️🎞️Our Film Studies students have spent the last two units studying film composition and mise-en-scene. Mise-en-scene encompasses every element and its placement inside a frame of film, and in a movie, we assume all of it has meaning.
🎥🎬Not only have students analyzed individual and overall film composition, but in small groups, also planned and photographed their own images. These images included some of the 15 elements of film composition, such as rule of thirds, lines & shapes, dominant & subsidiary contrasts, density, open/closed form, framing, character placement, balance, depth, etc. They finished off by analyzing each other's images in class.
#ucathunder #ucaupperschool
