Month: December 2019

Head’s Corner

In my humble opinion, Giving Tuesday should be placed one week earlier, before Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. It would make more sense that an idea that is now a global movement of giving and generosity should precede anything else and propel us forward with gratitude for Thanksgiving and the holidays.

It’s too late to change this order this year, but it is my hope that as a community we can make a statement and give boldly on this Giving Tuesday – spreading hope and inspiration to each other. More importantly, we will be helping create a generation that will put empathy and compassion before shopping. IMG_6597

The core of what we do every day at Saklan is to help students develop the mindset and tools to be bold world changers. Our ability to do that relies on the fact that you trust us with your children and support us in this endeavor by sacrificing significant financial resources to make it all possible.

Much of the deeper, real-world work we do with students comes from your generosity during our Annual Giving Campaign. 100% of our Board of Trustees and Faculty and Staff have participated in our campaign. To date, 35% of our parent body has participated. Of the remaining 65%, if you are anything like me, the AGF Pledge Form is on the kitchen counter, just waiting to be sent in (go look, it is under the Target bill).

So take a moment to help us create the bold world changers of the future.

With Gratitude,
David

To give online – click here
To download a pledge form – click here

#GivingTuesday

Why We Give?

Darby family

In our family’s journey at Saklan, from Pre-K through 8th grade, Saklan’s nurturing community of teachers, staff, and families have instilled a love of learning in both of our kids and we truly feel that they receive something priceless each day.

Small class sizes, individualized attention, a culture of care, the celebration of creativity, and high academic expectations. Teachers and staff who know every child and are like family.  Science, art, and music in every grade. We brought our daughter, Isabel, to Saklan for Pre-K and all of these elements compelled us to keep her at Saklan throughout. She’s now a thriving freshman at Carondelet High School.

Seeing our daughter blossom, it was an easy decision for our son, Jordan, to also join Saklan in Pre-K. He’s now a maturing 7th grader looking forward to choosing a high school next year.

We support the Annual Giving Campaign because, in each of our family’s 11 years at Saklan, our kids could never wait for their first day of school, and we couldn’t imagine a school for them other than Saklan.

Stuart and Ana Darby

Jordan (7th)

#SaklanGiving

Can You Hula Hoop?

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The physical education students have been practicing with hula hoops since the beginning of the year. Did you know that you can build with the hula hoops? Six hoops can be stacked to create a stand alone structure.

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The Saklan students didn’t stop with six. During recess, a few ambitious builders have begun to stack the structures. The builders are looking for different locations which will allow them to reach greater heights. The tower is growing to four and five stories! Today, the students broke the record with four stories and this structure will go down in Saklan history!

Let’s go Saklan!

#SaklanWellRounded

Mixing Magic Color Wheels

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The Kindergarten is learning about the color wheel! Using Model Magic, the students mixed their own secondary colors (Orange, Green, Purple) using equal parts of the primary colors (Red, Yellow, Blue). They enjoyed mixing the colors with their hands and seeing the magic happen right before their eyes! In this exercise, students can create a wide range of colors fairly quickly and understand the amount of each color it takes to create others. While the model magic is still soft, they can break off a little of one and another color to make more colors like yellow-orange, blue-purple, green-blue, etc. (More yellow than orange will make yellow-orange, more blue than green will make blue-green, etc.)

Students were sent home with their model magic color wheels to play with color mixing! This is the most non-messy and tactile way of learning how to mix colors, not to mention the cool sculptures they can make with this material. If the model magic is left out and not placed back in the bag, IT WILL DRY OUT! So make a fun sculpture before it hardens! Here is just one idea: if the kids mix many colors they can attach all spheres to make a caterpillar!

In the following weeks, students will read from The Day the Crayons Quit by Oliver Jeffers to create their own story and artwork behind their favorite color of the color wheel.

#SaklanCreative

¿Que Tiempo Hace Hoy?

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Second graders meet for Spanish class 3 times a week for 30 minutes each time. The Spanish courses are taught with an emphasis on interactive activities, stories, poems, songs, and games that are used to introduce vocabulary and commonly used phrases in Spanish. Students also engage in art projects to help them draw associations to the Spanish material as they speak and create. Reinforcement and repetition are used to help retain material.

This past week, students were introduced to vocabulary associated with different seasons and weather. They learned the name of the four seasons in Spanish: el invierno, la primavera, el verano and el otono. The four seasons is a fun topic because there is so much to talk about. First, the students discussed the characteristics of each season. Then, they shared their favorite season and why they liked it. They also created a “dado” (dice) with the different weather types and they asked each other questions such as “¿Que tiempo hace hoy?” (How’s the weather?). These activities gave the second graders lots of opportunities to practice their Spanish.

#SaklanWellRounded