Klahanie School April 2024 Newsletter

There are opportunities even in the most difficult moments.

I’m very conscious of the fact that you can’t do it alone. It’s teamwork. When you do it alone you run the risk that when you are no longer there nobody else will do it.

~Dr. Wangari Maathai

Giving kids clothes and food is one thing, but it’s much more important to teach them that other people besides themselves are important and that the best thing that they can do with their lives is to use them in the service of other people.

When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it’s an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.

~Delores Huerta

http://www.mommymaestra.com/2017/09/dolores-huerta-lesson-plans-activities.html

April 2024 Topics

NO School Spring Break April 8-12

March 2024 Photo Album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/2Pj7dD5Y795kuTtG6

Troll field trip postponed. Look for KVI walk-pickup correspondences later in the month.

Welcome Spring 2024! Daily we collectively are filled with humbled, reflective and joyful appreciation to share with your children as we soak up spring together. Our upcoming months will be focused on more projects and longer extensions to lessons as well as preparing children for next school environments if moving onwards. We are elated to have time through summer supporting your child(ren) preparing confidences to their move into future environments, teaching styles and peer groups. Our summers together increase a bit in diversity and size with enrollment of a couple of Chautauqua preschool students, current Klahanie siblings/alums as well as some wonderful teen and MCM intern helpers. Our monthly Specialists will continue as well and some planned KVI beach walks are coming up so thank you for keeping up on school email correspondences.

Spring Conferences

Amy Mercer Guest Klahanie Educator-Specialist: Evening Tuesday May 28th 5:30-7pm–please click the flyers below for details of this incredible free parent education evening Tuesday May 28th, childcare included here at Klahanie School. Klahanie Parents Please RSVP.

5:24 Amy Parent Talk flyer..pdf

AmyM State Management for Parents flyer and CV Amy.pdf

Healing and Preventing Anxiety in Children: Parent Learning Series Presented by Betty Peralta and Rev. Amelia Bolyard, please do not miss this incredible learning opportunity!

April Specialist Guests: Veterinarian and mama Kyla Ma will share what being a Veterinarian is like on April 17th, as well as Pam Gates Johnson April 16 will come to class to share about her love of baking and help the class with a baking project to share before heading home! Kelly Simmons from Dove Project will attend class the first Wednesday of each month. Mr. Mike Kirk will return in June to share about firework and fire safety while also spending time in class with us. Thank you specialists!

2024-25 Enrollment Open, please forward our information to prospective families. Below is our BeachComber advertisement, we have a couple of spots to fill and if you have not registered yet, please do so to maintain your spot. Please contact the school if moving onwards and you have not shared that information. Thank you for helping us keep up-to-date records.

Name of Program: Klahanie School

Type of Program: Year Round AMS Montessori Antibias

Contact: http://www.klahanieschool.org, klahanieschool@gmail.com, Emmy Graham

Ages Served: 2.5yrs-Kindergarten, Teen Mentor-Internship (VHS credit), CES preschool (collaborations open)

Openings: Filling up fast for the 2024-2025 school year.

Description of Program: AMS Accreditation candidate, utilizing two-site classrooms and the garden as our prepared environments to care for, and explore our ever changing world. The Montessori and ABAR pedagogies are actively engaged in daily practices of Inclusion and Equity with exposure to Peacemaker monthly units, Mindfulness Social Emotional supports and healthy communication practices. Klahanie preserves the love of learning developed by students, offering trusting space for aspects of freedom and fun to develop at each learning level in prepared environments. Side-by-side learning engagement with each student is provided. Additional education is offered through movement, music, language introductions (ALS, French and Spanish), sciences and many connected community moments with monthly Specialists. Families are supported with consistent communications, x2 conferences, and family education-community opportunities.

Special Needs: Yes (CES preschool and island specialist collaborations available) Student-to-Teacher Ratio: 3:16

Meals: Provided by families

Holidays: Runs with VISD calendar and Year Round (in school September through August, with intersession breaks, please view the Klahanie School website for handbook and calendar details)

Buses: Yes, CES/ district students can be arranged

Thriftway Receipts Reminder to please supply Thriftway Receipts for 1% donations and consistent help with Bake Sales. TW receipts: please write your name and phone number on the top of each receipt and place them bundled in the school dropbox. All Grant funds from Believe In Me Kids are specified for materials in class, all scholarship funding is supplied by school fundraising. Thank you for the continued help!

Volunteer Opportunities:

Tie-Dye Parent Help: Please contact Gillian and India if you can donate your help organizing the fun for this annual tie dye day shared in June! Anything you want tie dyed, let’s get clean items by June 1 please. We will tie dye Klahanie School tee-shirts at the end of June!
Help organize a bouquet making day(s) in May to deliver to the Senior Center.
Help support the 2024 Pie Auction plannings !

Celebrate Earth Month!

Peace Maker, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Klahanie beloved Dr.Wangari Maathai. April 1 is Dr. Wangari’s birthday! We continue to honor this wonderful woman’s work for African women, children and the environment as well as the globe. We tell Dr.Maathai’s life story in an age appropriate storytelling and now a new children’s book about her life–in the book we read, there is a section regarding her imprisonment. We had a deep conversation regarding the tools used in that illustration (handgun and baton) to frighten her, to stop her earth work. We made emphasis on her bravery and her circle of support from others who supported her work and person, to get her out of jail. We ended our two day discussion with questions of what makes us feel safe during big imaginative play with friends and how do you offer peace to the earth. The insight was listed and will be photographed for our April google photos folder. We decided as a group to use safe words at school because school is meant to be a safe space. Additional words you possibly will hear at home: trees, women, babies, money, planting, poor/no food for the babies or families, soil, water, helping one another. A wonderful educational reference giving tribute to Dr.Maathai’s work is from Project Learning Tree is at http://www.plt.org/words-to-live-by—a-tribute-to-wangari-maathai Wangari Maathai | The story | About Wangari Maathai, I will be a hummingbird – Wangari Maathai (English) Wangari Maathai & The Green Belt Movement

It’s the little things citizens do. That’s what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.

Education, if it means anything, should not take people away from the land, but instill in them even more respect for it, because educated people are in a position to understand what is being lost. The future of the planet concerns all of us, and all of us should do what we can to protect it. As I told the foresters, and the women, you don’t need a diploma to plant a tree.

~Dr. Wangari Maathai

Monarch butterflies–migrations, habitats and inner workings to travel such distance!

Delores Huerta we will continue our focus on the incredible person and work of Delores Huerta. https://doloreshuerta.org/dolores-huerta/
Worms, Worm Bins and Compost utilizing the amazing gardening wisdoms of Monty Don’s compost guide we will work as a team to explore ways to create mini healthy habitats in our own backyards.
Water Conservation, Water Inventions: Learning through introduction and practice of water fetching, uses and conserving water and the importance of fresh, clean water and how we can help. We hope to have a Specialist come to share knowledge of local water care.

Circle Showcase & Puppets and Stage Productions: more stage time! Opportunity for children, one at a time in groups, to bravely enter the circle or hop on the stage to tell a joke, dance, act, sing, silly movements or animal impersonation and puppet making. Following each showcase we clap and celebrate the person’s bravery. Like all spring life surrounding us, our class is popping with activity, interest and movement. At the end of the day we might do group stretching and we also might create group story telling. Theater will be the focus and trying out different methods such as Improv (“yes and..” approaches) to nurture confidence and deeper creativity to showcase.
Please, Thank you, Pardon Me & More Grace and Courtesy Daily: Learning various methods to connect and show our grace and courtesy to the classes, to the world. A fun and practical request for Grace and Courtesy as well as practice of connecting. With our deeper work with communication, our circles will focus on listening games to practice exploring what listening is, how to listen to self and groups. Songs, role-play of manners and facial expression/body language practice.

Parts of a Flower, Fruiting Trees, Planting Seeds: roots, stem, leaf, corolla (pedal), stamen, pistol using our class microscope at the science table. Our class will begin exploring more of the plants and amphibian life in and outside of the garden, the classes are helping dig out a pond for our south garden, digging area. We are increasing our use of much more scientific vocabulary as well as labeling the plants with the names and if edible or non-edible. In April we will gather dandelion, chard, and kale greens from the winter garden, for class and guinea pig salads the children will make.
Science Tools: We will continue using our class microscope as well as increased usage of our magnifying glasses to use our science eyes to respect the habitats surrounding us.
Relationship of pollinators and flowers & Beautiful Insects: the importance of Insects and birds. Butterfly life cycle, bees, Robins, hummingbirds and beginning observation of Painted Lady larva to butterfly process. Thank you for your help at home welcoming conversations about insects and their importance in our ecosystem.

Earth Month: varying earth month projects and music honoring discussion of how we all are Earth Peacekeepers and focus on renewable and reusable resources and water conservation activities and art.
U.S. SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR, Secretary Deb Haaland Secretary Deb Haaland | U.S. Department of the Interior, “We Are Meant To Lead” – A Reflection on Deb Haaland Becoming Secretary of the Interior
Woodworking & Recycle Art/Building: We will enjoy class woodworking fun practice and introduction as well as opening opportunities to create from the Recycle bin. Get ready for some true re-usable, renewable fun coming home soon (garden art:)!
Peace Pole: Please donate colorful, long ribbon for the garden peace pole.

March 2024 Reflection

Happy Spring! This month has brought us many wonderful opportunities in and outside the classroom. We have had practical exploration of the importance of planting on hillsides and awareness of erosion and how to help prevent it. We also began exploring transplanting times and how to support plants during that process. The children’s self-initiated outside imagination is rich and many are using all areas of the garden and class spaces. We call our garden the outside classroom. This has allowed wonderful practice of listening opportunities as well as initiative for talking-listening rock to figure out taking turns with spaces, working through hurt feelings or misunderstandings. The group is offering fantastic kindnesses as well as improv opportunities.

Montessori Education Process:

Montessori teachers encourage children to learn by placing the pupils, rather than the teacher, at the center of the experience. Children in Montessori classrooms learn by imitation models, through peer tutoring, and in collaboration. Montessori is a method of education that is based on self-directed activity, hands-on learning and collaborative play. Montessori philosophy emphasizes healthily the importance of a three-year cycle during the Absorbent Mind of birth-6yr learners, believing that the full potential of the child is reached after three years in the same environment with the same teacher for confidence building–each age contributing to the classroom from the multi-age groupings. Incredible mentorship and deeper understanding of the lessons is established with the practice and third year teaching out to complete the process. For more information on this please click the AMS newsletter below.

AMS Family Connections Newsletter – April 2023.pdf

Action Research: A Tool for Equity (Montessori Life Spring 2024) Educator, Montessorian-Math Specialist John Chattin-McNichols mentioned in this article was one of Emmy’s AMS Early Childhood certification teachers, and a gift to learn from.

Supporting our well-being, we have been focusing on Square Breathing as a helpful technique to use in daily lives as families and learning communities as a tool we use in class.