The Saklan School Friday Blog

Class Pets

As budding scientists, Saklan students learn to pose questions, make observations, plan and conduct experiments, and draw reasonable conclusions. Before Spring Break, each 5th grade student got their own “class pet” to observe and plan an experiment for.

No, they did not get to adopt pets from the Humane Society, but they did get something a bit smaller… wriggly red worms! Students began by observing their behavior on a damp paper towel with a small black construction-paper square “tent” available. Most worms wiggled their way under the paper towel or under the square, away from the light. The students concluded that worms prefer dark places to bright places, and linked to what they already know – “Worms do live underground, after all!” said Jack Z.

Next, the class set up another experiment to see if the worms prefer damp places to dry places, hypothesizing that they do prefer damp places, because they live in damp soil. Most worms headed to damper areas as the clock ran out on the experiment, and then the students put them to “bed” in a worm habitat. This week, the fifth graders began to plan and conduct individual experiments to test worm likes and dislikes.

#SaklanHandsOn #SaklanScience

Summer @ Saklan 2022

A summer of creative exploration awaits your child this summer during Summer@Saklan! Saklan’s summer camp offers children the chance to have fun learning new languages and cultures, creating art projects, playing games, meeting special guests, and more!

This year, Saklan is offering two, four-week sessions for both Mini Campers (ages 3-5) and Explorers (ages 6-11), with both Spanish and Mandarin options. Camp days run from 9 a.m.- 2 p.m, and feature activities including on-campus field trips, fun workshops taught by members of the community, and projects designed around art, music, language, science, engineering, tech, and more!

A smaller camp size this year means more opportunity for your child to engage in deep learning and creative, outdoor play on the Saklan campus.

More information, including session dates and rates, can be found here.

For fun, engaging learning and play, there’s no better time or place than Summer@Saklan. Join us!

#Summer@Saklan

Puerto Rico Field Experience

On Thursday, Saklan’s eighth grade students returned to campus from Puerto Rico, where they took part in a service-learning field experience. While in Puerto Rico, the students took turns writing daily blog posts. We will share more about their meaningful experience by featuring the posts the students wrote over the coming weeks. Check out the blog post from the first day of the trip below.

March 24, 2022

Through the fields of La Fortaleza, to the hundreds of cats along the way, Puerto Rico has been a blast that we will never forget. We started off the day early, with a breakfast buffet of sausages, eggs, and toast, leading into a tour with our buddy, Alvin, who brought us on an adventure through the cobbled streets of Old San Juan. We visited churches, museums, and of course, La Fortaleza, and loved every minute of it! The museum of an old over-achiever showed us how dedicated and driven people can be. Both the churches and La Fortaleza proved the almighty architecture of old. After a trek through the beautiful streets of this beautiful city, we went and had lunch at a Puerto Rican restaurant, where we devoured plantains, tres leches, and assorted meats. An energy boost of cultural goodness allowed us to push forward and enjoy another fort, where we ran through dungeons and climbed up old stairs.

After some rest and a long bus ride home, we got to quite literally jump in to some lukewarm water, where we continued to laugh, play, and pick up random pieces of trash, such as a chair, at the nearby beach. Other incredible moments included a double rainbow during Puerto Rico’s many weather mood swings, playing Cards Against Humanities after dinner, and spending time with, OJ, the pregnant cat who drops by us every now and then. The first full day of Puerto Rico has been amazing and we hope that each one is like this.

– By Ryan and Anessa

Thank you to Ryan and Anessa for sharing their experience with us. Sounds like an amazing start to the field experience!

#SaklanFieldExperience

Plants and Pollinators

The Owlets have been busy bees this month continuing their study of spring, plants, and pollinators!

The Owlets noticed that the seeds they planted earlier in the month have been growing! They discovered that of all the seeds they planted, the radish seeds sprouted the quickest. While the students have taken their sprouts home, they still have radish, carrot, onion, sunflower, marigold, snap peas, and green beans planted in planters in their classroom and around the yard, and they continue to observe how they grow!

The Owlets read Bee by Britta Teckentrup, and learned that bees and other pollinators have a very important job to help plants grow. They watched this video about how bees make honey, and then used paint and bubble wrap to make honeycomb patterns on hexagons.

The class then watched this video to learn more about pollen, and why some people get allergies during spring. They looked at different flowers and saw the pollen on each one. The Owlets then got the chance to use a microscope to look at pollen from different plants!

#SaklanHandsOn

Service to the Community

Cesar Chavez Day is a commemorative holiday celebrated yearly on March 31st in the U.S. The aim of this holiday is to celebrate the birth and the enduring legacy of the labor and civil rights’ movement that activist Cesar Chavez started while fighting for farm workers’ rights in the 1950s. Chavez gave people a sense of their own power by helping them discover that they could demand dignity and better wages. On March 31st each year, this day is commemorated to promote service to the community in honor of Cesar Chavez’s life, work, and legacy.

At The Saklan School, the kindergarten through seventh grade students supported and provided a service for The Contra Costa Humane Society by making much needed items for dogs and cats in their care, as well as learning about Cesar Chavez’s life and important legacy. Students in kindergarten, first, and second grade were tasked with making catnip sachets. The third and fourth graders made kitty pom poms for cats to play with while in their cages. The fifth grade class made several dog beds and pull toys. And finally, the sixth and seventh grade group made braided pull toys for dogs. The goal of the community service project was to show compassion and make the animals’ lives more comfortable and happy while they wait for their forever homes.

#SaklanCompassion #SaklanServiceLearning

Dinosaur Dig Site

As part of their study of food chains and food webs, the 5th graders discussed how scientists have built knowledge of dinosaur food chains. The students concluded that ancient teeth fossils are the clue to this knowledge; from herbivores’ flat grinders, to carnivores’ sharp incisors, and omnivores’ combinations teeth, fossils can reveal a lot about the dinosaurs. The class also discussed how scientists can date the existence, and the extinction, of dinosaurs through carbon-dating fossil-rich, deep geological rock layers. Then, the students modeled dinosaur food chains using cards, and then modeled possible food chain interruptions and determined which creatures would have died first, next, and so on, if sunlight was blocked for a long period, and plants died. They found that even carnivores would be impacted, as their herbivore food sources would die off.

Finally, the class created a dinosaur fossil dig site! Each student participated in digging, brushing, and washing bones.

Next they will face the paleontologist’s greatest challenge: classifying and reconstructing the bones into whole or partial dinosaurs. Tricky work ahead; good luck 5th graders!

#SaklanAcademic #SaklanHandsOn

Collecting Used Crayons

Three Saklan students in 4th grade are working on their Girl Scout Bronze Award, which is awarded after the completion of a project that helps make a difference in the community. Their troop decided to collect used and broken crayons to donate to The Crayon Initiative. The Crayon Initiative melts down the used crayons they receive and reshapes them into brand new crayons. They then send the new crayons to children’s hospitals all over the United States.

You can help the 4th graders (and patients in the children’s hospitals) by donating your old or broken crayons. Three collection boxes have been placed around campus: one in the office, one between the Owlet and Hoot Owl doors, and one by the pavilion.

Thank you for your support!

Design the Cover for the Concert Program!

Do you like to draw?

If so, we have a great Spring Break activity for you! You can design the cover for the Concert program!

Past designs have looked like:

RULES

All designs should have the following words:

“Let Me Fly”

Music That Gives Hope

April 20th, 2022 at 4:30 PM

2. Designs should be in full color, and done on an 8 ½ x 11 piece of white paper (long ways).

3. Designs are due on April 13th at 3:00 PM (You can turn them in early!)

4. 2 winners will be chosen; one from Lower School and one from Middle School. Turn entries into Mrs. Chaffey, Ms. Lauren, or in the office. (Make sure you write your name on the back!)

5. Winners will receive 2 free dress passes and every person who submits an entry will receive 1 free dress pass

6. HAVE FUN AND BE CREATIVE!

#SaklanCreative

Shindig Success

Dear Saklan Community,

Thank you to everyone who came to celebrate at the Auction Shindig last Saturday. It was clear how much this community needed to be together and how much it meant to be in person. As a community we raised over $135,000 (a record for Saklan), including $93,600 for the Pavilion Fund-a-Need and $6,025 for the Teacher Summer Reflection Fund! Thank you all for your generosity.

I’d like to share a special thank you to Emily Williamson, who was tasked with an almost impossible responsibility: plan an in-person auction that uses donated items from two years ago which may or may not still be valid, that is COVID safe and inclusive, that has indoor and outdoor capabilities, that may or may not actually happen, and that raises money for the school. Finding venues that would satisfy all of our criteria took some time, and then her vision came to life in two short months!

Although Emily has been living and breathing auction planning and execution (and now the wrapping up part), she has had some behind the scenes help. A special thank you to the auction committee: Darla Lovrin, Brian Lovrin, and Amy Perkins for following up on donations, helping to procure decorations, being involved in the planning, and being part of a historic night.

Thank you, Sandy Lo, for taking on the organization, donations, descriptions, and display of the wine raffle! We had some very generous contributions from many families to complete this array, so thank you to all who donated too.

Thank you to Makeda Assefa, Huiying Li and Natasha Reckless for your helping in setting up the event and making the hall look so festive.

A huge thank you to Lauren Haberly for her work on the collaborative art pieces, and for her guidance of the middle schoolers that created the desert scenery featured at the event.

Thank you to Javier Yacarini and Shay Sager for spending Saturday helping to set up the auction, moving items from Saklan to the venue and helping to make the ambiance perfect – and then for bartending all night and helping to clean up afterwards. It was a long day made more fun with your presence!

At the event – thank you to Yette Prizeman and Peta Siacor for helping to sell raffle tickets, to Kim Parks and Toshie Baba for helping check in guests, to Gina Gabriel for helping record bids, and to Karen Catanzarite and Linda Lathrop for being excellent spotters during the live auction.

Auctions are a lot of hard work, and we often wonder beforehand if they are worth the effort. Then we all go and revel in the beautiful connections that we make or are reminded of and that subsides. It was a magical evening; a much-needed reconnection for many, and I am so grateful to have been a part of it. Emily, I wish you many good nights of sleep ahead! Thank you, again.

David

#HeadsCorner

Engineering Design Process

Saklan’s 3rd graders recently learned about the Engineering Design Process: a step-by-step guide that engineers use to solve problems. The engineering design process has six stages:

1. Ask — Identify a problem, then ask questions to understand it better.

2. Imagine — Brainstorm ideas on how to solve the problem.

3. Plan — Choose one idea and plan how to create the solution.

4. Create — Acquire any necessary materials and create the solution.

5. Test — See if the solution works by collecting and analyzing data, and evaluating strengthens and weaknesses.

6. Improve — Make adjustments to improve the solution, then test it again.

The class applied these ideas while completing a STEM challenge of trying to build a bridge made out of only pennies that was at least 3 centimeters tall and wide, and was strong enough to hold a LEGO mini figurine. Check out their creations below!