Klahanie School June 2023 Newsletter

Klahanie School

June 2023 Newsletter

We speak with more than our mouths.  We listen with more than our ears.

Whether we’re a preschooler or a young teen, a graduating college senior or a retired person, we human beings all want to know that we’re accepted, that our being alive somehow makes a difference in the lives of others.

Relationships are like dances in which people truly find whatever happens to be the mutual rhythm in their lives.  

There are three ways to ultimate success:

The first way is to be kind.

The second way is to be kind.

The third way is to be kind. 

― Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

Please note: Mask requirement lifted fully.  Your child is welcome to wear or not wear a mask.  If you seek to have your child wear a mask, please let us know to support.  Inclusively, we will discuss this change as a group so the students know the change, ask questions, and are aware that the requirement is lifted officially and they have 100% choice to wear or not wear.  We also will address when there are needs for respect, and respect to families who wear masks and require their children.  Culturally we will embrace the acceptance of choices, and practice language and showing inclusion.  

Please Support Klahanie School & Spread the Word!

1. We Need To Fill Spots for the 2023-2024 School Year, We Deeply Need Your Help to SPREAD THE WORD!  Please help us with word of mouth referrals, liking and reposting or sharing on social media of school posts.
   • 6 Spots open in 3-6yr class
   • 2 Spots open in Lunch Bunch
   • 2 Spots open in 2-3yr class
2. Please look for ways to help support the annual 2023 Fundraiser and volunteering/donating with the Klahanie School Fundraising committee to sell tickets to attend and bid.  We need this help!

June Curriculum Topics

• Sock puppets & large puppet projects: starting to form stage design/ props, write scripts and acting.  Please donate clean mismatched socks or socks with holes and other old clothing we can turn into multi-textile puppets using sewing, hot glue and fabric glues, paper mache to explore.  
• Murals and Throw painting introduction.  We use murals to begin forming our class Story boards that will have symbols of our time together in animals and images.  These will be in front of the garage door to appreciate.
  • Please dress kids in clothes you do not care about getting stained, dirty the months of May, June and July.
• Tie-Dying fun with Klahanie shirts –please contact India if you want to help!
• Fairies and Folklore Fun & Creativity in the Garden!
• PJs to school and favorite stuffy June  (please bring things you don’t mind getting dirty and all invitation, no pressure for child or family)

• Lushootseed Is Alive Calina Lawrence Lushootseed Is Alive 2019 -Calina Lawrence might be the first person to ever record vocals on a hip hop track in the Lushootseed language – a language that was almost lost. In the 1990’s, when only 60 fluent speakers of Lushootsed were alive. Lushootseed is a Coast Salish language. It’s the language of the Duwamish and Suquamish people, as well as other nations around the Pacific Northwest. In a 2019 Sound & Vision interview, Lawrence talks to Gabriel Teodros about the power of language: https://www.kexp.org/read/2019/10/16/sound-vision-calina-lawrence-power-language/
• Jeremy Dutcher “I hope people feel a sense of celebration – and resilience.” More information on Kehkimin Wolastoqey language immersion school – the first Wolastoqey immersion and land-based school – creating a new generations of fluent Wolastoqey speakers that will help to re-connect to the language and life ways of the Wolastoqiyik, and will empower us to carry the language and ways of life forward for future generations. Kehkimin
• Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu: Kanakka Maoli Teacher and Culture Keeper, Activist Luce Fellow Spotlight: Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu | First Nations Development Institute , Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu 
• Mabel Pike: Tlingit Beadworker and Moccasin Artist Handmade Portraits: Mabel Pike, Tlingit Master Artist Mabel Pike Passes Away – Alaska Public Media 

• Local Hummingbirds Hummingbirds – Seattle Audubon , Hummingbird Nests 101: Answers to All Your Questions – ABC 
• Crows honoring our Mama Crow that visits daily, we will explore the life of American Crows and their incredible facts.  10 Fun Facts About the American Crow | Audubon, American Crow Overview, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Facts about Crows, The Intelligent Crow: Exploring Human-Animal Relationships Cross-Culturally, Did Crows Actually Make These Gifts for the Human Who Feeds Them? | Audubon 
• Mason bees with an all bee Mason Bees: Raising Beneficial Pollinators — The Mountaineers, 3 things Mason bees need to flourish, and to give a boost to your garden | The Seattle Times, Blue Orchard Mason Bee (Osmia lignaria) 
• Garden and Marine Botany up close: Using our classroom microscope (and sanitized in between each child’s use), we will scientifically honor the life growing around us.  Both classes will get to use this tool in our downstairs class.
• Phytoplankton3 Amazing Things About Phytoplankton
  • Dr. Tag Gornall, we will be honored and to welcome as a special guest, one of the world’s foremost Marine Mammal Veterinarians. He worked with the heart and diving studies of Namu, the first orca in captivity. He worked with sea otters during the Exxon-Valdez oil spill and has helped design aquariums around the world.
  • He has been the consulting veterinarian for the Seattle Aquarium, Pt. Defiance Aquarium, Woodland Park Zoo, and other national and international aquariums. He has had an amazing life and career. I now have a new passion for phytoplankton:)
• Marine Life Exploration: Naming of shells and local seaweed and water plant and animal life.  We begin clear conversations about beach awareness and marine life etiquette.  Salish Sea Vashon/Maury beaches, grace and courtesy behavior with beaches and marine animals–being a dear friend/Klahanie School alumni parent as well as marine biologist educator at Vashon Nature Center, Maria Metler set us up early on educating early about Salish Sea etiquette for humans, and how important our role is with local marine life.  We bask in the learnings of our surrounding kelp beds, eelgrass habitats and precious estuaries we hold here on Maury and Vashon islands.  As families we encourage kind relationship building with your local beaches and will encourage the children to use their hands in beach and forest cleanups all seasons. 

• Serving Tea to Friends: harvesting herbs from the garden to invite and serve tea to a friend.  This goes on for a long while
• Garden Food/ Salad Preparations 

• Collin Veestran from Vashon DOVE Project, finishes out the incredible school year exploring the topic of Race and Equity, thank Collin for making such a special year of important life focuses for our 3-6yr class in Healthy Relationships/Family, Race and Equity, Gender and Identity.  Thank you Vashon DOVE Project for these opportunities to start young!
• Healthy Relationship exploration, all ages, all classes:  Using our DOVE model from Specialist Collin Veestran, we will explore in both classes the practice of Permission/Consent Play Practice and Coaching with friends in class to continue the sensory science learning (what happens in our bodies/brains to our fingertips) and emotions (more about what they are and what they can feel like and look, sound like).
  • We are going to break down moments that feel uncomfortable and find ways to empower ourselves and others around us.  Exploring that no matter what age, we deserve to be heard and seen and respected and we can call for that for ourselves, and for other people-living things (environment, animals).  
  • We will explore age supported, what it means to love and ways we can show that to ourselves and to our families, our friends, our communities.  We honor starting in our backyards for making and sustainably honoring Peace in our world and also supporting when we need specific space.   We will be asking students and teachers and the community to Show What We Know by acting and discussing in homes, classrooms, play moments, what Peace and Peaceful play means to us.  Exploring, what does it mean to you, to me?  And having fun with the richness of exploration in games, songs and puppet pauses diving a little deeper into self care moments as well.  
  • In circle, we have been discussing moments when we feel “topsy-turvy” and do not know what to do with our bodies-choices, when feeling overwhelmed methods we can use to find best matches for ourselves in environments and encourage students to practice Pause and observation, sense-into their environment and choices, before moving to an action or choice.  We are starting to become aware of empowerment in time we feel overwhelmed, actions we can take to ground ourselves to make insight with silence, and a chance to gather our awareness to one focus.  Pause has become a great language focus and role playing practice in the classes, with wonderful impacts we are observing in both the classes.  Square Breathing practice.

May 2023 Reflection, Thank You & Exciting News

June our VHS and McM students come to volunteer and intern! Thank you 2023 fundraising committee!  Thank you Gillian and Toby for helping create such meaningful and gorgeous Self Portraits!  Thank you India for spearheading the Tie-Dye project in June!

Klahanie School has officially begun American Montessori Society Accreditation and will complete this process in 18-24 months!  This is an exciting movement for the school, and is a long time coming, making the opportunities for the school become broader in community outreach and potential programming connections.  Here is a description of the benefits from the AMS website, AMS School Accreditation. 

Opportunities for Co-Accreditation

AMS is recognized by the National Council for Private School Accreditation, a national organization that serves as a review panel for the standards and review procedures of private-school accrediting agencies.  Every school that is accredited by AMS gains automatic recognition by NCPSA.

In addition, AMS partners with more than 20 other national and regional accrediting associations, enabling you to participate in cooperative accreditation. The cooperative accreditation process is seamless and results in 2 valuable accreditations. You complete 1 self-study and host 1 onsite visit with representatives from both associations. Cooperative accreditation demonstrates compliance with both Montessori-specific standards and with school standards that apply to non-Montessori schools. You can find a listing of the accrediting agencies with which AMS partners in the AMS Accreditation Handbook, included as part of the AMS Accreditation Information Packet.

Recognition by State Policymakers

At AMS, we proactively advocate with state-level policymakers on behalf of our accredited schools. The result? AMS accreditation is increasingly recognized nationwide, granting our accredited schools significant advantages that may include:

• Recognition at the highest level of their state’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS), a systemic approach to assessing, improving, and communicating the level of quality in early and school-age childcare and education programs. 
• Possible exemption from state child-care licensing requirements
• Access to exclusive state funding sources available only to accredited schools.

During our school months we are able to share collective resiliency, creativity, innovation, adaptation, and great love and care to the school community, and the greater world we live in by sharing trusting space while practicing this new world.  Thank you for the care you all offer teachers, school community celebrating our foundations of connection and witness to grow, to learn together as an amazing team.  Mahalo for riding the river securely together.  Such sweet inspirations of connection. And as we ease into the sweet late spring and summer weeks together, we will continue to build fun moments to continue practices together that will socially, emotionally assist as preparations transitioning into new environments in the autumn for some.  We all transition together, preparing to close a very special school year in August and moving to opportunities here and afar.  Wishing us all a joyful summer 2023 together!  

Dr. Maria Montessori quotes to enjoy:

“If we are among the men of good will who yearn for peace, we must lay the foundation for peace ourselves, by working for the social world of the child.” —International Montessori Congress, 1937

“Education is the best weapon for peace.” —Education and Peace

“The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.” —The Absorbent Mind

“An ordinary teacher cannot be transformed into a Montessori teacher, but must be created anew, having rid herself of pedagogical prejudices.” —Education for a New World