Category: General

Save the Date!

Our 4th and 5th grade students will be performing Seussical KIDS on Friday, May 28th at 10:30 AM at the outdoor performance space at Joy In Motion. This is right down the street from Saklan, and they will be outdoors at all times.

Each 4th and 5th grade student can bring 2 adult family members. Family groups will be physically distanced six feet apart and must always maintain six feet of physical distance from others. Please bring a lawn chair to sit in and wear well-fitting mask.

Seussical KIDS is great fun for the whole family. We look forward to seeing you all there.

The show will be live streamed for those who can’t attend in person.

#SaklanPerformingArts

Teacher and Staff Appreciation Week

From May 10-May 14, Saklan will be celebrating Teacher and Staff Appreciation Week. This year has been like none other–both in the challenges faced and the successes achieved–so it feels especially important to celebrate our Saklan teachers, and let them know how much we appreciate the work that they do.

In addition to surprises and celebrations put on by the Saklan Parents Association, we will also mark the occasion with a half-day on Friday, May 14. Please note that this will be a noon dismissal day for students.

Huge thank you to the Parents Association and in particular Sandy Lo for organizing the week’s events. We are all looking forward to a week of appreciation, and showing Saklan teachers just how thankful we are for the work they do!

#SaklanCommunity

Pioneer Day

On Tuesday, April 27, the third grade class traveled back in time to 1888 to experience life as a pioneer student. Each student took on a new identity by choosing an old fashioned name and came to school dressed in their finest pioneer attire.

Mrs. Rokas, with the help of Ms. Meredith and Ms. Joy, brought traditional pioneer activities into her own classroom. The day started in the classroom with the three R’s: reading, writing and arithmetic. Students read from McGuffey Readers (published in 1879), practiced their cursive writing using quill feather pens and ink, and practiced their math on slate boards with chalk. They also had a spelling bee!

During morning recess, students played like pioneers. They walked on can stilts, used jump ropes, and played hopscotch and jacks. Afterwards, they listened to pioneer stories from Ms. Meredith under a shady tree and made some pioneer crafts with Ms. Meredith and Ms. Joy: tin punch art and yarn dolls. 


For lunch, each pioneer student brought authentic pioneer food in baskets, pails or tied to a stick. After lunch, students sang pioneer songs and learned square dancing with Mrs. Chaffey. Next, they made butter in mason jars and tasted the delicious homemade butter on biscuits brought by Kaylah.

The day ended the day with group games: tug-o-war, sack races and three-legged races.  

The third graders really embraced the pioneer spirit and enjoyed their time travel back to 1888! Huge thank you to Mrs. Rokas, Ms. Meredith, and Ms. Joy for bringing this day to life for the third graders!

#SaklanHandsOn

Be Resourceful

During April, Saklan students have been learning how to be resourceful as part of our ongoing social-emotional education. This lesson was especially relevant for the month that includes Earth Day, as there are always opportunities to be more resourceful when it comes to helping our planet.

Some key ways that students can be resourceful are:

  • Think outside the box
  • Take initiative – if you see something you can do, go do it
  • Be creative with materials, problems, and tasks

After learning more about what it means to be resourceful, students had the opportunity to come up with ways they could be resourceful in their own lives, and display it on a “helping hand.”

#SaklanSocialEmotionalLearning

Saklan Community Rallies for the Monarch Butterfly

A few weeks ago, Saklan’s sixth graders set up an election with the goal of helping an endangered species in need. Plastic buckets were set up outside the main office–one bucket for each of the five animals chosen–and the Saklan community had a week to vote with their wallets for which animal they wanted the class to symbolically “adopt.”

When the votes came in, the monarch butterfly was the winner.

Saklan’s choice of the monarch butterfly is serendipitous, as the school has partnered with the Moraga Garden Center to plant milkweed and nectar flowering plants, which support monarch larvae and adult monarchs.

The school’s efforts were recently highlighted in Larmorinda Weekly, with the two sixth graders who chose the monarch butterfly for the “Vote with your Change” election featured in the post. Recognition well deserved!

#SaklanHandsOn

Third Grade Spanish

In third grade Spanish class, the students are learning about the 21 countries in the world where Spanish is spoken. They also learned that there are more than 500 million people in the world who speak Spanish, a number that continues to grow.

To fully appreciate the diversity of Spanish-speaking countries, each third grader picked a specific country to learn more about. They explored their chosen country’s typical food, music, dance, and sports. They also researched two famous people from their chosen country.

Third graders put together poster boards display all they had learned, so they could share it with their fellow students.

#SaklanAcademic

Earth Day at Saklan

On Thursday, Saklan students celebrated Earth Day with the help of some animal friends! A petting zoo was set up right on campus, and each class took a turn getting to know the animals.

While the bunnies might have been the biggest hit amongst the students, there were also ducks, pigs, and goats for the students to pet and feed. We were so impressed with how gentle all of the students were with the animals, and how patient all of animals were with the students!

A huge thank you to Ms. O for organizing this special Earth Day treat!

Outside of the petting zoo, some classes incorporated Earth Day into their daily learning. In Kindergarten, students learned about different behaviors that can make our Earth “happy” or “sad.”

In Ms. Ashley’s fourth grade class, students celebrated Earth Day by reading poems they had written for the occasion.

We love to see all our students learning how to care for and protect our Earth and all the organisms who live here!

#SaklanCompassionate

Eighth Grade Field Experience

Following the successful sixth and seventh grade trips, the eighth graders will take their turn at Challenge Sonoma on Tuesday, April 27. Ms. Cashen, Ms. Kim, and Mr. O’Connell will be joining the students for the day.

Finding opportunities to take students off campus this year has been difficult, and it has been so fun to finally be able to give the middle school students a field experience to enjoy. The day will be filled with opportunities for collaboration, team-building, and all-grade bonding.

Thank you to the eighth grade parents for your support, and to the middle school faculty for their commitment to making this happen for the students!

#SaklanFieldExperience

Science Discovery in the Owl Classroom

Some of Saklan’s youngest students are learning all about science! The Owls in Ms. Jessica’s class are spending the month learning what science is, what an experiment is, and the definitions of the words “hypothesis” and “observation.”

To bring their learning to life, the students are conducting an experiment of their own, using celery sticks and white flowers! The class put one of each into cups of water, then added different food coloring to each cup. They also left one cup of water uncolored.

Each student formed a hypothesis about what would happen, including:

“They will grow!”
“They will explode!”
“The water will get hard like Jello!”
“They will suck up the water!”
“They will get hot!”
“A raccoon will take the celery!”

The class will make observations every day to see which of their hypotheses are correct!

#SaklanHandsOn