K8 March E-Newlsetter 2024

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• A Note from our K8 Program Director
• Family Forum Follow-Up & Schoolwide Surveys
• PG&E Tree Work
• Lost & Found
• SambaDa in the Schools
• Open Enrollment
• Mark Your Calendar

K8 April Breakfast & Lunch Menu The 4th-5th grade class has been meeting regularly with Keira Poehlmann, Naturalist Educator with Mendocino County Office of Education. She recently shared a lesson about fire ecology. These outdoor-based science lessons are part of a pilot project that our school is participating in with MCOE this year - it's been a great success so far and we look forward to continuing with this program next school year! Read the Full E-Newsletter

K8 January E-Newsletter 2024

School News & Updates

K8 Program Director Note Playground Agreements: RULER in Action Time for History Mark Your Calendar

K8 January Breakfast & Lunch Menus

K8 February Breakfast & Lunch Menus Intersecting art and science with the 2nd-3rd grade class. The 2nd and 3rd graders got creative, using their art boxes to paint watercolors of various plants observed through magnifying glasses. Excitement is brewing in class for the upcoming science fair, with students already brainstorming fantastic project ideas. Thanks to Redwood Coast Education Foundation (RCEF) for the funding to purchase the individual student art boxes! Read the Full E-Newsletter

K8 November E-Newsletter 2023

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• A Note from our K8 Director
• RCEF Teacher Grants
• Medi-Cal Renewal
• Mark Your Calendar

K8 November Breakfast & Lunch Menus Last month our 4th-7th grade students enjoyed a beautiful afternoon out on the Point Arena-Stornetta Lands. They met with rangers from the Bureau of Land Management to lend a hand with a habitat restoration project. Pine saplings are being removed in order to maintain the coastal prairie ecosystem that is home to the endangered Behren’s silverspot butterfly. Some were pretty easy to pull and others took a bit of teamwork and persistence. Read the Full E-Newsletter

K8 October E-Newsletter 2023

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• A Note from our K8 Director
• Food Trucks Live
• Moonlight Day of the Dead
• Science in the Field & the Classroom
• Mendocino College Coast Day
• Mark Your Calendar

K8 October Breakfast & Lunch Menu Mr. Nathan's 2nd & 3rd-grade students recently collected more than a dozen owl pellets during one of their Windy Hollow Farm days. The next day, the 1st-3rd graders took the pellets to our Pine Grove and dissected them to identify what the local barn owl had eaten. Using a dichotomous key, the students identified the bones of prey species found in an owl pellet, such as mice, gophers, and voles. It was a real hoot! Ms. Isabel's science classes have been incubating quail in the classroom and the quail have hatched! Students have been monitoring the coturnix quail eggs in the incubator for 19 days, and they have eight chicks now. Come check them out in Ms. Isabel's classroom. Read the Full E-Newsletter

K8 September E-Newsletter 2023

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES Family Forum Coastal Cleanup Day Clothes Drive for Cuban Families: Last Call! COVID Protocols Mark Your Calendar

Our K-3 students started their weekly outdoor learning days earlier this month. They have been spending time at Windy Hollow Farm learning about compost and soil health, harvesting huckleberries, planting fall vegetables in the garden, and spotting creatures small and large, including a barn owl! Outdoor learning days provide our students with a chance to learn more about the surrounding world through physical activity, art, science lessons, and storytelling.

K8 Breakfast & Lunch Menu: September Read the Full E-Newsletter

K8 May E-Newsletter 2023

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES K8 Director's Note Summer ELO Programs Yearbooks Open Enrollment 2023-24 School Year Mark Your Calendar: Lots Happening!!

K8 May Breakfast & Lunch Menu Read the Full E-Newsletter

K8 April E-Newsletter 2023

 SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• A Note from our K8 Program Director
• Spring Fundraisers
• Trout in the Classroom
• Reflecting on Equity & Diversity
• Open Enrollment 2023-24 School Year
• Mark Your Calendar

K8 April Breakfast & Lunch Menu The 4-5 class is studying steelhead, salmon, watersheds and healthy/ unhealthy stream ecosystems. Ms. Isabel recently participated in a "Trout in the Classroom Teacher Training." This training was required in order to be approved for a Fish and Wildlife permit to get steelhead eggs to hatch in her classroom. The steelhead eggs are hatching and are in the alevin stage. Students will release the fish on May 18 at the Warm Springs fish hatchery into the Russian River watershed. Read the Full E-Newsletter

K8 March E-Newsletter 23

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• A Note from our K8 Director
• Middle School Science
• Staff Professional Development: Environmental Literacy & Social-Emotional Learning
• Volunteer Opportunities
• Mark Your Calendar

K8 March Breakfast & Lunch Menu

Thanks to everyone who was able to join us at our K8 Science Night! Students put great work into their projects and it’s always nice to be able to share that with our school community. This year’s projects included collaborative classroom projects for our younger students and individual or small group projects with our older students. Themes ran the gamut from birds to rocks to plants to mushrooms. Well done everyone! Read the Full E-Newsletter

K8 February E-Newsletter 2023

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• A Note from our K8 Director
• Monterey Field Study
• Waves & Whales Trail Run
• Volunteer Opportunities
• Mark Your Calendar

K8 March Breakfast & Lunch Menu

This is the first year we are offering a fresh breakfast and lunch every school day. It has taken a lot to ramp up our program from serving breakfast 4 times a week and hot lunch on Wednesdays to 5 breakfasts and 5 lunches every week. We are so happy to have a skiiled cook as our Meals Program Manager - thank you Miles! Keep an eye out later in the spring for a survey about future menu planning. We look forward to how this program will continue to grow. Read the Full E-Newsletter

K8 November E-Newsletter 2022

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• Middle School San Francisco Field Study
• School Hoodies & Tees
• Mark Your Calendar

Middle School San Francisco Field Study

The middle school students recently went on a multi-day field study to San Francisco. Following is an overview of their experience as shared by Jesse, 6th grade, with editing support by Mr. Foreman.

"Our class went to San Francisco on Wednesday, Nov 2, 2022. We stayed at a hostel called Fort Mason. The room where Mr. Foreman, Griffin, Lewis and I stayed in was small, but still our room was the best because all the other rooms were really hot. There was a candy bowl in the entrance of the hostel where everyone kept taking candy and a pool table in the eating area.

The first thing we went to was the Exploratorium. There were these different sections that each had different themes. My favorite part was this computer called Daisy and we asked Daisy questions and the computer replied. It did this by taking what other people had written into the computer and using those recycled words to reply. Daisy sometimes didn’t make sense but when she did it was kinda eerie. Some of the other things were a shadow picture room and many optical illusions which made me think about the human brain and how perception and vision work.

The second museum we went to was the MOMA. We saw the Diego Rivera exhibit. It was my second time going to this exhibit so I felt like I got to experience his artwork even more deeply and review the paintings I loved the most. As an artist it was extremely inspiring for me to go to the MOMA. I hope my work will be featured there one day.

The Maritime Museum was informative and helped me realize how San Francisco became the exquisite city that it is; It was built on the Bay! We were on ships that helped bring supplies from all over the world. If it was not for this bay there would be no SF and who knows what California would be like today."

Read the Full E-Newsletter

K8 October E-Newsletter 2022

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• K8 Director's Note
• San Francisco Art & Science Field Study
• SEL Book Club
• Family Volunteer Note
• Mark Your Calendar

Ms. Isabel's friend, Dr. Natasha Hjerrld, came to teach the 4th-8th graders about solar energy on Monday. Natasha works in solar energy and has been working on designing an educational activity involving legos for upper elementary and middle school students to learn about how solar panels work. Students got to build mini-lego houses and position a small solar panel on the roof of the house. The panel was attached to a small light, which was illuminated when positioned correctly in order to capture the most amount of light. Students learned about how seasonal patterns and daily cycles affect how much energy solar panels are able to capture. Students explored by using a light to represent the sun and then moved their solar panel to face different directions ( N, S, E, and W).

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K8 September E-Newsletter 2022

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• K8 Director's Note
• Family Volunteer Opportunities
• Social Emotional Learning (SEL)
• Mark Your Calendar

Outdoor Learning Days have begun for all our classes. The TK-1 and 2-3 classes have been going out to Windy Hollow Farm weekly while the 4-5 and 6-8 students kicked off their year with a joint trip to Bower Park for collaborative field games.

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K8 August E-Newsletter 2022

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• Daily Class Schedules
• School Supplies
• After School Program
• Mark Your Calendar

It's so nice to have students back on campus!

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K8 May E-Newsletter

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• Family Surveys
• Open Enrollment
• Family Volunteer Hours
• Order a Yearbook
• End of Year Calendar

The 4th-5th grade class had an incredible time at Fort Ross last week participating in the Environmental Living Program.! Thank you to all of our family volunteers who helped make this a successful experience, and to Ms. Tresla for organizing and supporting our students.

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K8 April E-Newsletter

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• Teacher Feature: Spring with Ms. Isabel
• Family Surveys
• High School Listening Forums for Middle School Famlies
• Open Enrollment
• Waves & Whales Fundraiser
• Mark Your Calendar

Spring plant sales! This week kicked off the spring plant sales hosted by the TK-1 class. Starts will be available by donation in front of the school on Wednesdays after school. Now through May 18.

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Teacher Feature: Spring with Ms. Isabel

March and April have been busy months for the 4th thru 8th graders. In March, all students worked on a science fair project and I was very proud of all of their finished projects. For me the highlight was watching the students learn from each other and help each other complete their experiments and tests. In addition, students traded board design ideas and were inspired by each other. Other highlights from the month of March included outdoor learning trips to Irish beach for tidepooling, fort building and viewing a large flock of snowy plovers.

Then, before I knew it, April arrived and I was headed to Catalina Island with the 6th thru 8th graders. I was proud of all of the students for stepping outside of their comfort zones and trying several new and challenging activities. Although there are too many memories to recount in this short article, I will tell you some of the highlights from our epic journey.

K8 March E-Newsletter

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• A Note from our K8 Director
• Science Night
• New K8 Land
• Mark Your Calendar: Lots of Upcoming Events!

Science Night

Science Night 2022 was a success! All of our students and classes participated with individual and collaborative projects.

• The K-1 class demonstrated their collaborative “Tornado in a Bottle” project.
• The 2-3 class shared their “Cardboard Challenge” creations which included a mini bowling alley, leprechaun lighthouse, tree and more.
• The 4-5 and middle school students presented individual projects on a range of topics based on their research and experimentations.
• The afterschool STEAM program created a diagram of a steam engine that was presented alongside the 4-5s study of the transcontinental railroad.Job well done! Thank you to all the families who were able to join in the evening to ask questions, vote and recognize the students' work.

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K8 February E-Newsletter

 SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• A Note from our K8 Director
• CELP Spring Field Study
• Mark Your Calendar: Lots of Upcoming Events!

This month we hosted a celebration recognizing and learning about the Chinese New Year. One of our parents, Ling Su, guided the students in a Mandarin lesson that included learning a few phrases: Happy New Year (Xin Nian Kuai Le) and Wishing Prosperity (Gong Xi Fa Cai). Action Network staff, along with our retired K-8 Director, Sigrid Hillscan, joined us in the kitchen to prepare a special Chinese lunch for the students to enjoy outside. Students also made paper lanterns, honed their chopstick skills, and practiced writing calligraphy. Read the Full E-Newsletter

K8 January E-Newsletter

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• Director's Note
• COVID Update
• Teacher Feature
• Open Governance Council Seat
• Mark Your Calendar

Book buddy time. This is a great chance for students to develop their literacy skills together.

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K8 December E-Newsletter

SCHOOL NEWS & UPDATES

• Director's Note
• Oddfellows Toy Drive
• End of Year Donations
• Mark Your Calendar

Great to see all of those who were able to make it to our Winter Family Forum!

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