At the end of January grades K to 4 went on a field experience to the Children’s Theater at St. Mary’s College in Moraga.
The St. Mary’s students there gave a fantastic production of a classic of children’s literature, beloved by youngsters and adults alike. Charlotte’s Web is a book that all Saklan students read in 3rd grade. The acting was amazing and the sets impressive. Tears and laughter (you know how it ends…) were had by all.
#SaklanExperiential
The Kindergarten has been going to the Science Lab in January to learn about living and nonliving things. Once they narrowed down what was living and what was not, they discussed many of the varieties of life on our planet. From worms, to dancing spiders, to turtles, and even themselves!
They spent one day learning about the importance of a backbone, and how cartilage helps us move and not splinter our bones when we bend. The students enjoyed protecting their spinal cord with noodle bones and gummy cartilage, and enjoyed munching on them afterwards!
#SaklanHandsOn
Chinese New Year is the Chinese festival that celebrates the beginning of the new year on the traditional Chinese calendar. It is the most important holiday for Chinese people all over the world and it lasts for two weeks.
Cameron’s mom, Mrs. Lo, visited the Kindergarten class today and shared traditional ways to celebrate the Chinese New Year. The day before Chinese New Year is dedicated to cleaning to sweep the bad luck away and make room for the good. Everyone wears red on New Year’s Day to scare off bad spirits. They also have a big family meal with as many as twenty different dishes to show abundance. Mrs. Lo gave a lantern and a red envelope with coins to each Kindergartner. The children are supposed to put the red envelope under their pillow tonight and make a wish.
We wish you all great success, happiness and prosperity in the Year of the Rat!
#SaklanWellRounded
Every year, preschool through 5th grade students get to “move up” to next year’s grade for part of the day. The teachers plan special activities that highlight their grade and the students get to experience what next year will look like. Here are a couple of activities from Wednesday’s Moving Up Day:
3rd graders had the opportunity to ask questions and hear about all of the exciting adventures they will have in 4th grade. They were encouraged to be Bookworms and read nightly, as well as become fluent in their multiplication tables to prepare! They thought like engineers and designed their very own paper airplanes. Congrats to Jack Z. and Henry for constructing airplanes that flew the farthest!
One of the fun activities the current 4th graders had in 5th grade was a STEM Ski Challenge. Students designed and tested their skiers, and then they raced their teammates!
#SaklanConnected
Kindergarten is just completing Unit 4 of the Math program. They are busy with numbers 0-10. A child is said to have concrete knowledge of numbers up to their age. Observe your child counting a large number of objects. It is common to see a child recognize the correct number of objects, 0-5, without needing to count, but when there are more objects, 6-10+, children will skip objects and/or count objects more than once. A child may recognize the number 8, but not really know how many 8 is the way we as adults can quickly recognize 8 of something by breaking 8 down to 4 and 4, etc.
Therefore, in Kindergarten many activities are used to break down the numbers so the children can have more concrete knowledge. This concrete knowledge is actually the beginning of addition and subtraction. They have been completing 10 frames every tenth day since the start of school. During morning bin time, the children have been building 10 frames. One Math time activity involved counting the dots on dominoes and sorting them. The next Unit covers numbers up to 31 and the fun will continue!
#SaklanHandsOn
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
Arriving this week, you will notice a Teddy Bear on campus! This Teddy Bear is named Matteo and is an international traveler. Matteo is part of the Traveling Teddy Bear Project that connects students around the globe! He will be stopping in some of our classrooms and doing activities with our students.
The Traveling Teddy Bears Project was started in 2014 with the goal of connecting young children in classrooms across the globe. This year each of our bears is supporting one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals to help spread awareness in schools around the globe! You can learn more about these goals here: https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/envision2030.html
Matteo is the oldest teddy bear to be a part of the Traveling Teddy group. He was born in New Jersey in 2005. He loves traveling, learning about cultures, making friends, learning languages, dancing, and reading. He is ready to travel, learn, make friends, and read to many children around the world. Matteo is also very sporty and enjoys yoga, swimming, baseball, running, and working out.
Matteo supports Global Goal #4: Quality Education. He believes that everyone deserves to go to school and have opportunities to read, write, and learn!
Matteo is currently in China from there he will be coming to Saklan, then to Ireland, and Canada.
#SaklanConnected
Students have been working with chalk, oil pastels, and watercolor resist techniques in the Art Room. The students had a one day project for them to take home and the inspiration came from Gustav Klimt’s painting, The Tree of Life. The Kinders titled their artwork after explaining what their own tree represented.
The Tree of Life reaches up into the sky and down into the earth. It represents strength, protection, mother nature, wisdom, and beauty. The swirly branches keep your eye wandering and exploring the details in the painting. Using lines to make up the tree, students used oil pastels first and then water colored the whole paper to reveal the resist technique. This creates beautiful results that the students are proud of creating!
#SaklanCreative
Kindergartners have been having fun with Science by studying owls. The students can tell how many bones an owl has in its neck compared to a human and the difference between our eyes and an owl’s eyes. They learned an owl’s most powerful sense (note how all we do is related) is the sense of hearing. And, did you know owls do not build nests?
Finally, the class discovered what owls eat by dissecting an owl pellet. Using tools borrowed from Ms. O’s Science lab and a chart, the students noted skulls of birds and rodents, jaw bones and leg bones. The class heard some wonderful stories about owls including, Owl Moon, White Owl, Barn Owl, and our favorite, Owl Babies. Next time you are in the Kidnergarten room, notice the children’s paintings depicting a scene from Owl Babies.
The class ended their study of owls with the field experience of a visit from Lindsay Wildlife Museum where the children compared owl wings to hawk wings, touched talons from an owl, and saw a live barn owl similar to the one in the book we read. Kindergartners love owls!
#SaklanHandsOn
Kindergartners learned about Johnny Appleseed. Legend is told that a man named John Chapman walked the countryside of 6 states planting apple seeds starting bountiful and still producing apple orchards. John Chapman, who became known as Johnny Appleseed, would have been 245 years old on September 26.
The children had fun with apples. After learning about Johnny Appleseed, the Kindergarten tasted apples and graphed which apple they liked best. We read the book 10 Apples Up On Top! by Theo. LeSieg, which the Kindergartners learned is also Dr. Seuss, and worked on a follow up project gluing apples in numerical order.
They had fun painting with apples, making apple prints, and they enjoyed a “Let’s Find Out”, about apples. The best part was using real knives to cut up apples and make applesauce.
After all these experiences the children brainstormed descriptive words about apples. Who knew apples could incorporate so many areas of learning? From literature to history and Math, cooking and art, apples allowed Kindergartners to “grow”!
#SaklanHandsOn
FRIDAY BLOG 
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