Please click on the link below to read some poems written by our eighth graders in Language Arts.
Author: The Saklan School Friday Blog
The Saklan School is a private Pre-K through 8 school located in Moraga, CA. Our mission is to think creatively, act compassionately, and live courageously.
The Forty Book Club
Each year, the students of the Fourth Grade join The Forty Book Club and get the opportunity to read 40 or more books for the year. The books have to be chapter books and 150 pages or more. Although the ultimate goal is forty books, each student sets their own personal goal as well. It is fun to see how close they get to their goal. It is wonderful to see how many books each student reads and how reading becomes an even more important part of their lives. One student this year read 129 books, which is truly awe-inspiring! Several students read 40 books or more, and although some did not read 40 books they reached their personal goal.
This year the Fourth Graders read a grand total of 328 books, which is 48 books over the class goal. This is the first time in the history of The Forty Book Club that a class had met the goal, let alone exceeded it.
Congrats to the Fourth Grade for a job well done!!!
5th Grade Makes Piñatas
This week, the 5th graders worked on their final project of the year in Maestra Padilla’s Spanish class.
The students made piñatas using balloons and paper mache. The process involved blowing up a balloon to the desired size, cutting up paper, and then using a mixture of flour and water to dip the pieces of paper in the concoction and wrap them around the balloon. They learnt that it’s important to put several layers of paper strips so that when the piñata dries it will be sturdy and not fall apart.
The students enjoyed this fun cultural project. They will take their piñatas home on the last day of class.
Our Diverse Universe
The Spring Issue of The Saklan School Literary Magazine, Our Diverse Universe, was published last week. In this issue, students shared their ideas about the environment and how to make the world a more eco-friendly place. Thank you to everyone who submitted! A special thanks to the Editorial Crew: Brigitte Demers, Juliet Pecher, Kyle Yasumura, Skylar Ellis and Olivia Schindewolf. Here’s the electronic version of the magazine that you can share with your families and friends:
Join Us!
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.
Save the Date!
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.
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”
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!
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
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!
FRIDAY BLOG 
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