Month: May 2018

Head’s Corner

Dear Saklan Community,

Unfortunately, Flag was cancelled today due to rain. The last Flag of the year will be next Friday and thus not to be missed.

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I hope you had a chance to see the middle school musical last weekend. Mrs. Chaffey’s production of The Addams Family was another stellar production with outstanding performances by our middle school students. This smash hit was a great way to end the year’s performing arts program, which included a memorable lower school production of The Lion King and an outstanding Annual Concert at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek. The 2017-18 school year will certainly go down in Saklan history as a year of stellar events. Many thanks to all of you who have supported the Saklan performing and visual arts programs through your generous donations at the auction and your volunteering efforts. Look for a link to the video of The Addams Family in the Blog on June 7th.  

Our Book Fair, organized in collaboration with Orinda Books, has been running these past few days. This Wednesday was author visit day and we had two dynamic Bay Area authors come on campus. Mr. Steve Goetz, author of Old MacDonald Had a Boat, met with our PreK – 2nd graders and Mr. Armand Balthazar met with our 3 – 6th graders. Armand’s new book is called Timeless and is the first book in a six part series. The rights to this series have already been bought up and will soon be made into a movie. Our students were fascinated by Armand’s description of how the ideas for his book originated and by his drawing, which are included in the book. Available copies of Timeless sold out immediately and had to be urgently restocked.

All parents are invited to our Graduation Ceremony on Thursday, June 7th at 10:00AM at the Holy Trinity Cultural Center. Come and hear what our graduates say about their experience at Saklan and share their goals for the future. This is a great opportunity for our community to see what is in store for their children and celebrate the students that have graduated with a Saklan diploma.

Have a good long weekend!
Peter

Sharing Stories

The second graders have been reading books from the Little Miss and Mr. series. After reading several books they had to come up with an original character and create their own book and illustrations. Lilah’s mom, Lori Anders, took the drawings of their original characters and had them printed on t-shirts.

The second graders loved wearing their special shirts and reading their stories to the Owlets, Hoot Owls, and Kindergarten students.

“Villains in the Gold Field”

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The fourth graders put on a tremendous performance of the melodrama, Villains in the Gold Field. They each had a key role, which required learning lots of lines and actions. Some of them also had additional lines and parts. This kind of play allows for over-acting, which these students took to heart. They really hammed it up, and the show was fantastic!

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It was the final Parent Presentation of the year, and we made a party of it. There was singing, acting, chanting, laughing, cheering, and of course eating. We had a great time! Well done, Fourth Grade!

8th Grade Roller Coaster Project

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The 8th graders culminating physics project was to design and create a roller coaster for a marble. This roller coaster utilized the 4 forces we learned about in class, had enough momentum to fulfill a loop, and had a slow down stop. Each group used their creativity, math skills and the scientific method to design, redesign, start over, and eventually create their coasters.

I am extremely impressed with their designs and their efforts in this project. They are a great class and glad to see they are ready for high school!

Join Us!

Party invite

All Saklan Parents are welcome to come and celebrate our Graduates of the Class of 2018. Students from all grades will be performing and making special presentations to our Graduates. Coffee and refreshments will be served prior to the ceremony.

Please plan to join us for this joyous occasion!

Head’s Corner

Dear Saklan Community,img_8636.jpg

In this past week, there has been a full calendar of activities and events at Saklan. It started last Friday with the very excellent Spring Arts Festival. Hundreds of works of art were put on display throughout the Saklan campus and included work from every student in the school. The diversity, creativity and quality of the art produced this year has been highly impressive and a testament to the work of our art teacher, Natalie Palms. Many thanks to Miss Palms for organizing the Art Festival, and more importantly for inspiring the students to produce such great works of art. Also, thanks to Mrs. C and Miss Amanda for contributing art from the PreK. Please look for an ongoing display of the art on our video monitor in the entrance way. Part of the events surrounding the Art Festival was a scavenger hunt, which resulted in a whirlwind of student movement and engagement in finding the various details contained in the art pieces. This morning we had a drawing for students that completed the scavenger hunt with winners receiving prizes of art supplies.

The Art Festival was immediately followed by the Family Fun Night. This event, which has now become a Saklan tradition, lived up to its name as there were lots of families and it was FUN. With our new sound system, a great movie, warm summer weather and a wonderful BBQ, this was a great way for Saklan families to spend a Friday evening on campus. Many thanks to the Student Council for organizing some fun games and to the Parents Association for organizing the movies and the BBQ. A special shout once again to Jenny and Mike Choi for providing the delicious barbecued pork.

This morning, our Parents Association organized a talk by Vickie Obenchain and Kim Parks. Vickie shared her field experience in working at a school in Senegal. This was the culminating activity in her program with Teachers for Global Classrooms. Vickie’s presentation was followed by Kim Parks, who summarized the work done this year by our curriculum review committee in reviewing and revising our reading program.

All week long, our middle school students have been feverishly rehearsing for their production of The Addams Family at the Town Hall Theatre in Lafayette. This morning at Flag, 8th grade student, Skylar Wolff, gave us a little taste of the show by singing one of the songs called “Death is Just Around the Corner.” This was indeed a tasty morsel and everyone is now eagerly looking forward to seeing the show which goes on stage both tonight and tomorrow night.

This coming week, we look forward to our Book Fair which runs from May 23rd to 25th. In collaboration with Orinda Books, we will have two author visits to Saklan. Grades 3 to 6 will get to meet Mr. Armand Baltazar. Mr. Baltazar is the author of a new epic fantasy adventure book called Timeless: Diego & The Rangers of the Vastlantic. He has been an art director with both Pixar and Disney. Director Ridley Scott recently purchased the movie rights for this book series. Mr. Steve Goetz will speak to our students in Pre-K to grade 2. Steve will read aloud his newest book, Old MacDonald Had a Boat, as well as his original book Old MacDonald Had a Truck that garnered a starred review which stated, “The MacDonalds and their farm-animal crew return in a rollicking new adventure to transform an old fishing boat into a slick speedboat. Large, colorful spreads provide lots to look at, inviting readers to slow the song down, building suspense. A delightful way to reinforce cooperation in getting a job done while having fun.”

 Next Friday we will be holding a morning coffee for parents in Pre-K to 1st grade to discuss the staffing transitions planned for the upcoming school year. This coffee is open for anyone interested in participating.

Have a great weekend.

Peter

Spirit of the Old West

 Our third grade class went on a field trip to the Blackhawk Museum on Thursday, May 10 to see the Spirit of the Old West exhibit. This exhibit is dedicated to presenting a balanced narrative of both Native Americans and American Settler – depicting their challenges, their successes and failures, their ways of life. Since our two main social studies units in third grade are about Native Americans and Pioneers, this was the perfect field trip to complement our studies. We saw many of the animals that roam the plains and mountains, many artifacts from Native Americans and Pioneers, a life size replica of a covered wagon, and a very large miniature diorama that tells the story of the settlement of the western plains. The students’ favorite activity was spinning the “wheel of death” to learn about the many ways the Native Americans and Pioneers might have died since life back then was much harder than it is today. We also got to tour the auto museum and get a VIP “sneak peak” at an upcoming exhibit still being built.
Many thanks to Keely Dreisbach for organizing and coordinating this amazing field trip for our class!

Spring Arts Festival

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The Art Festival was an absolute blast! The students were so proud to showcase the artwork they worked so hard on. Each student displayed 4-5 projects made throughout the year. During school hours, K-8th participated in a scavenger hunt to find the answers within the artwork. The winners were announced at Friday Flag this morning!

2018 Volleyball Season

Come check out the Suns in their final two volleyball games of the year!

Saklan Suns Volleyball Team Fifth Grade thru Eighth Grades

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Tuesday, May 22nd at 4:30PM  –  Saklan vs. Ecole Bilingue  away (901 Grayson, Berkeley)

Wednesday, May 23rd at 4:15PM  –  Saklan vs.  EBW away (3800 Clark Rd., El Sobrante)

Let’s go Saklan!

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