A summer of creative exploration awaits your child during Summer@Saklan! This summer, camp will run in one-week sessions from June 16th – August 1st, and is open to all children ages 3 – entering 3rd grade. Each session of camp consists of fun art and science-related activities including art, crafts, science experiments, games, and more. Additionally, Friday afternoons will feature fun activities including water play, a bounce house, and special guests such as a magician or puppeteer. Summer@Saklan is sure to be tons of fun!
To learn more about Summer@Saklan 2025, check out the summer camp webpage today!
We look forward to another amazing summer of hands-on learning, growing friendships and lots of fun!
On Thursday morning, all Saklan students participated in Moving Up Day. Preschool – 5th graders had the opportunity to move up to the classroom of their rising grade and spend time with the teacher, learning about what the next year holds and getting to know the teacher better. The 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade students helped host 5th graders on the middle school side of campus and show them what a day in the life of a middle schooler is like. The students and teachers alike were buzzing with excitement!
This annual tradition allows the students to get a snapshot of what next year will hold. The teachers planned special activities that highlighted their grade level and enjoyed getting to know their rising students a little better. Morning meeting activities, awkward games, questions, book readings, optical illusions, classroom scavenger hunts, and enthusiasm for next year filled the classrooms! If you know a child who “moved up” on Thursday, please ask them all about it. They will likely have something enthusiastic to share!
Saklan students celebrated Lunar New Year with some special activities on Wednesday. Lunar New Year, which celebrates the start of the lunisolar Chinese calendar, is celebrated in China, Vietnam, Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore, among other countries.
Preschool students welcomed two guest experts to share about Lunar New Year. Samantha, an Owlet parent, read a book to the class and shared red envelopes with them. Sharon, an Owlet grandparent, shared Lunar New Year traditions that take place in China, told the story of The Great Race, and shared tangerines with the students. The Owlets also enjoyed making snake paper lanterns, Lunar New Year yoga, and listening to traditional Chinese music.
Pre-K students celebrated by welcoming Heidi, a Hoot Owl mom, into their class. Heidi shared that Lunar New Year is based on the Moon instead of the sun and talked about the Chinese word for fortune, 福, and its importance. Heidi shared pictures of her children wearing special Lunar New Year outfits and then treated the class to some bao filled with custard.
Maggie also taught the Hoot Owls about her family’s Lunar New Year traditions, including cleaning their homes and putting up Chinese sayings with good wishes for the new year. The Pre-K students enjoyed watching a video of a lion dance, as well as talking about and receiving red envelopes.
To help with the campus celebrations, the 5th graders put together a dragon which Peta hung on the pergola to welcome students to campus on Wednesday. The fifth graders also made lanterns and dragon drawings.
In humanities class, Christina shared some of her family traditions with the 6th graders, including the tradition of eating tangerines, which are believed to bring good fortune, and of giving red envelopes with money in them as a symbol of good luck. She also shared the proper etiquette for giving and receiving the red envelopes to show respect. The 6th graders also talked about the importance of the Chinese word for fortune and then learned how to write it.
The 6th graders then took their newly acquired skills over to the Hoot Owl classroom, where they taught the Hoot Owls how to write the word for fortune with brushes and ink.
On Monday, Saklan’s 1st – 8th graders gathered in Family Groups to discuss January’s SEL focus: growth mindset. The students shared what growth mindset means to them and then shared ways they have applied a growth mindset in their own lives. Then the groups enjoyed a digital escape room, where they had to work together and use a growth mindset until the end to be successful.
The groups then brainstormed a list of reasons it is good to have a growth mindset, and then wrote reasons on brain-shaped puzzle pieces. Check them out below!
The groups also participated in some challenges with a hula hoop. These challenges helped the family groups further bond as they collaborated to prevail.
Our lower school students were recently thrilled to welcome author Traci Huahn to Saklan for an inspiring visit centered around her book, Mamie Tape Fights to Go to School. During the 45-minute session, students enjoyed a captivating read-aloud of the book, learned about the historical significance of Mamie Tape’s fight for school desegregation during the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and explored how this moment in history connects to the broader civil rights movement.
Ms. Huahn also shared her journey as an author, offering an inside look at the research, writing, revising, and publishing process. Students were delighted by a special video message from the book’s illustrator, Michelle Jing Chan, who revealed her creative process and behind-the-scenes details.
The visit sparked engaging discussions about bravery, standing up for your rights, and the power of storytelling. Students asked thoughtful questions during the Q&A, deepening their understanding of the themes and lessons in the book.
A summer of creative exploration awaits your child this summer during Summer@Saklan! This year, Saklan’s summer camp will focus on art and science, offering children the chance to have fun and learn while creating art masterpieces, engaging in exciting science experiments, playing fun games, meeting special guests, and more!
Session Dates & Hours
This summer, camp will run in one-week sessions from June 16th – August 1st.
June 16th to 20th – Session 1
June 23rd to 27th – Session 2 (No Camp on June 23rd for Mini Campers)
June 30th to July 3rd – Session 3 (No Camp on July 4th)
July 7th to 11th – Session 4
July 14th to 18th -Session 5
July 21st to 25th – Session 6
July 28th to Aug. 1st – Session 7
The camp day will begin with drop off from 8:15 – 8:30 a.m. and run until 2:30 p.m. Extended Day will be available until 4:30 p.m.
Ages of Campers
Students entering Preschool through 3rd Grade in the Fall are invited to join us for Summer@Saklan. Students will be divided into two age groups again this summer:
Mini Campers: Age 3 – Entering Kindergarten
Explorers: Entering 1st – 3rd Grade
Additional Information
Additional information on Summer@Saklan can be found on the summer webpage.
Please note, registration will open in early February. If you are interested in being notified when registration is open, please complete this form!
Collaborating to solve problems is a key element of PBL work at Saklan and a skill that many of us need to employ in our workplaces too. Intentionally building this skill is one of many ways that project work benefits Saklan students long after they leave our campus. Here are some ways we develop our skill of collaboration!
To effectively collaborate, we must develop relationships that are grounded in trust, interdependence, and shared accountability. Rich learning experiences that develop the skill of effective collaboration do not happen by chance, but are instead, intentionally woven throughout our project design. Teachers use success skills rubrics alongside content-specific learning goals, directly teach and model collaboration, and create driving questions and topics that encourage students to share and showcase their stories, skills, and talents.
A recent student example can be found in Kindergarten’s PBL unit on names. During this unit students explored the driving question, “How can sharing about our names help us become better friends?” Throughout the unit milestones, students worked on their capacity to tell their own name stories, ask questions about each other’s names, and really listen to their peers. Name stories open endless opportunities to share about culture, language, and family histories. Throughout each stage of this unit, learning experiences were designed to not only meet academic learning goals but also foster students’ trusting relationships and their sense of interdependence. Whether it was helping design a name story costume for self-portraits in art class, sharing their favorite part of their name stories with each other, or telling our families about each other’s names, the fruits of intentionally collaborative project design were on full display in this unit. Our Kindergarteners undoubtedly grew their capacity for collaboration.
At Saklan it isn’t just the students working to deepen their collaboration and sense of interdependence. The teachers at Saklan are also actively improving our practice.
One way we are doing this as faculty is through our Professional Learning Community. A Professional Learning Community (PLC) is a way for our staff to share and grow in our capacity for project based learning with a pervasive, ongoing impact on the structure, style, and culture of PBL at Saklan. Instead of a series of stand-alone meetings, a PLC is intended to be an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for Saklan students.
At our most recent session on the January 6th PD day, there were two elements to our PLC work. Each teacher met as part of their year-long small group focused on one particular area of interest: using rubrics, managing team tasks, sustaining inquiry, and differentiation. Before these breakout sessions, the whole group worked on deepening our understanding of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and discussed how we can increase our alignment of collaborative work expectations across grade levels and divisions. It was a lively discussion and we are excited to implement our learning from the research we’ve discussed AND from each other.
The winter 2025 session of enrichment classes will begin the week of January 27th. Many exciting classes are being offered this session, including Dance and Creative Movement, Reading Readiness, and Yoga!
Class descriptions and registration for the winter enrichment classes are now available on the Saklan Enrichment Webpage. Space is limited in most classes so don’t delay, register today!
Join us for our Empowering Parents: Managing Child Anxiety in Today’s World virtual parent education workshop on Thursday, February 27 at 6:00 p.m. During the presentation, Dr. Megan Johnson will provide an in-depth review of the book “Breaking Free of Child Anxiety and OCD- A Scientifically Proven Program for Parents,” by Eli R. Lebowitz, PhD, as well as share evidence-based strategies for reducing unhelpful parental behaviors, fostering independence, and building resilience in children.
This event is open to the greater Lamorinda Community, so feel free to invite friends and family to join. Click here to RSVP and receive the event link.
Saklan’s social-emotional learning emphasis for January is to have a growth mindset. Throughout the month, all Saklan students will be practicing how to embrace challenges and view them as learning opportunities.
At the end of January, the first – eighth graders will meet with their family groups and participate in cross-grade level discussions and activities to gain an even greater understanding of growth mindset. We value these opportunities to help our students understand and integrate new SEL concepts each month. Thank you to our 8th graders for leading these opportunities for the 1st – 7th graders, and to our SEL coordinators Vickie Obenchain and Lisa Rokas for organizing such a unique program for our students.
FRIDAY BLOG 
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