Klahanie School May 2025 Newsletter

Posted byKlahanie SchoolPosted inUncategorized

Klahanie School

May 2025 Newsletter

I’m not saying we need to save the trees. I’m saying that we need to not overlook their capacity to save us. Put it in your yard and watch it for a while. And pick it carefully because it’s hard to get a tree going. You know if every seed turned into a plant, we’d be living in a very different world. So choose well and open your eyes to give it everything.

~Hope Jahren, NPR interview April 29th, 2016 “Lab Girl” 

NO SCHOOL: May Intersession Dates and Closures May 7-May 26th (Professional Development, Parent Conferences-Intersession & Labor Day)

Thriftway Receipts!  Please collect and drop in to the jar throughout the year with your name & phone number at the top of each receipt, this is a huge financial aid building help!  Thank you!

May 2025 Curriculum Topics

Any content we do not get to complete in May, we will roll into June studies. 

Opinion | The Phone Call Between Belafonte and King That Changed Both Men’s Lives 

From the Zinn Education Project: On April 26, 1968, as an architecture student at the University of Pennsylvania, Kiyoshi Kuromiya and some friends held a demonstration against the use of napalm in Vietnam by announcing that a dog would be burned alive with napalm in front of the university library. Thousands turned up to protest, only to be handed a leaflet reading:

“Congratulations on your anti-napalm protest. You saved the life of a dog. Now, how about saving the lives of tens of thousands of people in Vietnam.”

Born in the Heart Mountain, Wyoming incarceration camp in 1943, Kiyoshi Kuromiya (May 9, 1943 – May 10, 2000) was a lifelong activist participating in several movements including the Black Freedom Struggle, the movement against the Vietnam War, the gay rights and later queer liberation movements, and AIDS/HIV advocacy.

Kuromiya spent the spring and summer of 1965 in the South fighting for civil rights, and became friends with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When King was assassinated, Kuromiya helped take care of the King children.

Kuromiya participated with the Gay Pioneers in the first organized gay and lesbian civil rights demonstrations, “the Annual Reminders,” held at Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell each Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969. He was one of the founders of Gay Liberation Front-Philadelphia and served as an openly gay delegate to the Black Panther Convention that endorsed the gay liberation struggle. Diagnosed with AIDS in 1989, Kuromiya became a self-taught expert on the disease, operating under the mantra “information is power.” He founded the Critical Path Project, which provided resources to people living with HIV and AIDS, including a newsletter, a library, and a 24-hour phone line.

Learn more about Kuromiya from “You Should Know This Gay Asian-American Civil Rights, Anti-War, and HIV/AIDS Activist” by Juan Michael Porter II and from this remembrance video by friend Alfredo Sosa: KIYOSHI on Vimeo

  • Sock puppets, Stage Productions & large puppet projects: starting to form stage design/ props, write scripts and acting.  Please donate clean mismatched socks, dress up clothing we can turn into multi-textile puppets, sets and costumes.  Please look for production dates the children establish for June! 
  • Murals and Throw painting introduction.  We use murals to begin forming our class Story boards and explorations of the importance of murals in communities (10 US cities with the best street art collections plus: Melbourne, Australia, Belfast N Ireland, Cape Town South Africa just to name a few!) and as reference for our class as we form 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 dirty or stained in the months of May, June and July.
  • Fun Music Dance Parties–featuring a wide DJ variety of musicians/ songs!
  • Trades and Engineering continues with projects and dive in with varying trades professions essential for human dwellings, institutions and societal care and growths with inner looking at tools and some local fabulous Trades representatives who will visit in June–please look for details to come.
  • Bumblebees, Mason bees with an all bee study 
  • 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 from sea life and garden life surrounding us.
  • Phytoplankton3 Amazing Things About Phytoplanktonhttps://photos.app.goo.gl/Vj3JU9iM7VWRmbEH8 Please explore this album for Dr. Gornall and our incredible Specialist visits!
    • Dr. Tag Gornall, we will be focusing on our local legend, honored and to special guest, one of the world’s foremost Marine Mammal Veterinarians to explore his work and commitment to Phytoplankton education. 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.  
  • The Earth:
  • Continued fun with Teamwork & Field Trip! through jump roping, climbing, clapping-drumming, story spoken word and rhyming add-on games.
    • Field trip for Wednesday May 7th: meeting at Jensen Point to watch the Vashon Island Rowing Club youth team get boats in the water and prepare for regionals.  Please carpool,  meet us at Jensen point 2:15pm to make signs, get ready for the rowers to set up for practice, maybe get a peek into the boathouse as they prepare and meet the coaches.  We will celebrate our island youth rowers who depend on each other to make their goals transpire and show us through action what it means to be a team.
  • Serving Tea to Friends: harvesting herbs (lemon balm, chocolate mint, dandelion, fennel) from the garden to invite and serve tea to a friend and Salad making from the garden.
  • Continuing the gift of Listening awareness and practice in friendship making and conflict resolutions.  Leaning into the gifts of multi age we have asked Kindergarteners to start initiating practices of inviting younger friends to play with them and establish imaginative games, building and lessons.  Using grace and courtesy techniques we nurture moments for the Kinders to practice skills for larger school settings while also mixing up the group pods to open friendships up and be more inclusive.  The group is doing amazing with this and a testament to the practices of kindness in a classroom and how fast humans see results in collaborations, innovations and healthy relationship skills needed in the larger world. Using the listening and observation tools in our tool belts to make the play longer by being kind and listening, children learn and practice bravely listening and speaking about the uncomfortable moments to find amends to resolution and collaboration to consent and longer play.  We practice the period needed for a “plop down to listen” and be present, acknowledging what feelings and facts are being shared.  And finally, and finding a trusting solution for the present and next time.

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.

– Karl Menninger

  • Guinea Pig care: more intricate focus on care of animals in our domesticated opportunities and Pepper and Spud being our gentle and patient, kind classroom friends.  
  • Environment deep cleans–mopping, soaping scrubbing of classroom spaces and tools inside and outside. 

Reminders, Thank-Yous, Dates to Save

  • Thank you Shelly for Bake Sale Leadership and all the teams who help make this quarterly fundraiser so helpful to the school financial aid program! Kelly Simmons: DOVE Specialist / focus on social emotional and equity-race discussions each first Tuesday of the month, Teacher Toby Leibowitz and all the art wonders!
  • Tie Dying: Please volunteer to make this annual tradition happen in July! Thank you for emailing the school this month to volunteer to run this very fun project with the kids and connect with alumni parent who will walk you through steps and help!  
  • Continued fun with Friendships, Teamwork & Field Trip! through jump roping, climbing, clapping-drumming, story spoken word and rhyming add-on games.
    • Field trip for Wednesday May 7th: meeting at Jensen Point to watch the Vashon Island Rowing Club youth team get boats in the water and prepare for regionals.  More information to be sent soon for this Inservice, no school in session field trip day to join and celebrate our island rowers who depend on each other to make their goals transpire and show us through action what it means to be a team.
  • Conferences Please feel free to come early and walk the garden, peek in the upper toddler classroom.  Conferences will be held in the multiage lower classroom. Conferences are for guardians only please.  Thank you for getting child care coverage for the quick 20 mins unless scheduled during the day and your child can join the Intersession childcare group.
  • Community Messaging for our School: Thank you for sharing with the community that we enroll students from all geographic locations-on and off island, and admit families of (DEI) Diversity Equity and Inclusion foundation and welcome warmly all economic, cultural and ethnic backgrounds.  
  • Enrollment and just a couple Spots Open, thank you for referring neighbors and family.  Klahanie School – Welcome   We would like to hire our same staff back with increased hours and need to fill those spots to make this happen, thank you for the help!
  • Please consider starting carpooling!  Keep finding ways to support each other through spring and summer.  
  • Look to local specialist-expert on childhood brain developments and specialized learning with Amy Mercer, amyeliese@yahoo.com, 206-755-1654.
  • April 2025 Reflection: Our class has leaped into the spring with enthusiasm and creativity in imaginative play and classroom material exploration as well as amazing recycling and earth conscious exploration through our own choices. The garden has taken new shape and inspired creativity in exploring play in the space as well as respect for the garden; hosting habitat to many insects (we have created Insect Hotels), arachnids, earthworms, beetles, garden snakes and birds. We began planting seeds and discussion of plant life cycle and plant care. With the increase of imaginative role-playing during garden time we will be introducing more performance encouragement on the garden stage and movement to theater moments and ideas of puppet shows.  The swing area and obstacle course, and have offered many opportunities for hand and arm strengthening as well as balance and imaginative play.   Friendships are deepening and we are working in pods towards showing Inclusion, Kindness and Much Fun in play together.
  • 2024-2025 Klahanie School Year Round Calendar: please take note of summer ending dates.  Graduation is a graduation and closure of the school year at Klahanie School where we honor all the children graduating and a conscious, celebration ending to the amazing school year spent building trust and friendships, connections and community.  Details will be sent in your July newsletter.  Calendar – Klahanie School 

Niche In Nature I’ve got a Niche in nature, no matter what you say.

I’ve got a niche in nature and it’s going to stay that way.

We’ve each got a niche in nature, whether we’re big or small.

If niches are protected then there’s room enough for us all! 

Dirt Made My Lunch

Dirt made my lunch, boom boom boom. 

Dirt made my lunch.

Thank you dirt, thanks a bunch for my salad, my sandwich, my milk and my lunch.

Dirt you made my lunch.

Inch By Inch

Inch by inch, row by row

Going to make this garden grow.

All you need is a rake and a hoe, and a piece of fertile ground.

Inch by Inch, row by row

I thank these seeds I sow, going to warm them from below til the rain comes tumbling down.

Leave a comment