Truckee, CA 96161 530- 717- 3019 www.tahoeschool.goldenvalleycharter.org

Golden Valley Tahoe School Newsletter No. 2 November 2018

"Wherever love and compass ion are active in l i fe, we can perce ive the magic breath of the spir it b lowing through the sense world."

~ Rudolf Ste iner

Part II: The Three Pillars of Golden Valley Tahoe School

Every campus establishes a program that seeks to address the normal

aspects of child behavior that can step over a line toward unkindness or

bullying. Our sister campuses in Orangevale have adopted a social

inclusion and virtues project-based intervention program. Ms. River has

installed a program called ‘Compassionate Campus Project’ at the

various schools she has worked with. This program teaches student

responsibility in slow and incremental steps as the children grow in self-

awareness and become more responsible for their behavior. When a

school is young, the children learn through the modeling of the adults. At

this moment in time, our school is small in number and thus bringing

about the various working-groups of this program will necessarily go

slower. The first group of parents and teachers have formed. This group

serves to address parent contentment and concern. This group is the

CARES group (Calm and Return Educational Servers). Soon, we will be

large enough to need the PIPs (Parents in Partnership) and the POPs

(Parents on the Playground). These groups go through specific trainings

and serve the school community in designated and needed areas of

operation. At this time, the oldest class, the Mountain Lions, are learning

to use the talking stick to work out differing points of view when they

encounter social struggles. This process has served us very well and is

building trust among the children. As they grow, they will learn to be

stewards of this process for their younger colleagues.

Next Newsletter: Digital-Ethical Literacy

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I N T H I S I S S U E

WELCOME

A PEEK INSIDE THE CLASSROOMS

FOTTW

PARENT’S CORNER

Newsletter 11.15.18

QUICK LINKS

G O L D E N VA L L E Y R I VE R S C H O O L N E W S L E T T E R

A Peek Inside the Classroom…

Kindergarten

As we move through autumn toward winter, the kindergarten has been spending more and

more time exploring the beautiful land around our school! From picnics in Martis Valley to

creek exploring and tree climbing, we are falling in love with the natural playground all

around us. We’ll continue to bring nature into our classroom as well, as we paint with autumn

colors, chop delicious seasonal vegetables for our soup, and make crafts such as leaf-

decorated lanterns and bird feeders filled with bird seed made from seeds we’ve gathered

ourselves. It is such a joy to see the children revel in nature and each other.

Children play with how red and yellow watercolors

mix and move on their papers.

Exploring fields of

seeds!

Child carefully chops vegetables for

their Thursday soup.

G O L D E N VA L L E Y TA H O E S C H O O L N E W S L E T T E R

N E W S L E T T E R

First, Second & Third Grades

In this month of exploration, the Grey Wolves class

(1st Grade) has been introduced to the quality of

numbers through stories. We identified how counting

and record keeping first came to be, practiced

tallying various sounds and objects, and experienced

the forms of Roman Numerals. We discovered

mathematical patterns and sequences through

rhythmic movements and counting. The solving of

riddles has deepened our understanding of how

numbers exists in nature and within our own bodies.

These math lessons are laying the foundations for an

elaborate math story to evolve in which a familiar

family will discover a magical world of numbers.

The Mountain Lion Class (2nd/3rd Grade) has just

finished an exploration of the history and stories

based on the theme of measurement. Our

vocabulary expanded to include linear, circular,

mass, and volume. Now, we are cooking and

building with a new and greater awareness. They

are also looking at building a deeper

understanding of “point of view”. We’ve explored

compare and contrast as a writing exercise. We’ve

been learning about the Six Wise Men of Indostan

who, because they are blind, ‘see’ an elephant in

six different ways as they all touch different parts of

the animal and draw contrasting conclusions

about the nature of the elephant.

(Look this poem up, you’ll love it!)

Zander, 2rd Grade

Emmy Gross, 1st Grade

Felix Basile, 1st Grade

Ms. River’s chalk board drawing of

The Six Wise Men of Indostan

G O L D E N VA L L E Y TA H O E S C H O O L N E W S L E T T E R

Friends of Tahoe Truckee Waldorf

Elves’ Workshop

Hello Lovely Parents,

We need a few more helpers for our annual fundraiser, Elves’

Workshop. Please find below our needs and who you can

contact:

To help with Craft Prep, please email Anne-Marie Giese!

amc@mountainaccountant.com

We need your FOOD Contacts. Do you know someone who

owns a restaurant, bakery or food store? Please email Liz!

liz@friendsoftahoetruckeewaldorf.org

We need someone to head up the little kids craft area. Email

Heather River heather@bespoketruckee.com

WE NEED SILENT AUCTION DONATIONS! Please email Alanna

with any questions and please follow-up on any business you

signed up to ask. alannahughespottery@gmail.com

Thank you!

S A V E T H E D A T E !

Wed, Nov 28

All are welcome.

2

1

Field Trip Fridays!

Thank you to all our volunteer

drivers for helping get children

to our numerous field trips.

Without you, we wouldn’t be

able to explore our local

surroundings. We are all

looking forward to the

upcoming trips!

Photo of Kindergarten breaking

for a picnic snack in Martis Valley.

3 St. Nicholas Day & Santa Luc ia

Fri, Dec 07

Parent Meeting

Wed, Dec 05

G O L D E N VA L L E Y TA H O E S C H O O L N E W S L E T T E R

N E W S L E T T E R

Parents & family, please submit any

thoughts, questions, etc. that

would you like included in the

monthly newsletter to:

averham@goldenvalleycharter.org

I look forward to hearing about

what YOU want to read about!

THE PARENT’S CORNER

Part II: Why is rhythm important to learning?

“Rhythm replaces Strength” was an adage given to me during my first years in Waldorf Teacher

Training. I struggled with it, as I just didn’t like the idea of losing my freedom to such a thing as

living a rhythmical life. It just seemed too confining, too much like the 50’s that I grew up in. But

within the first three years of my teaching career, I learned that rhythm is not only a powerful

tool for learning and memory, but that it helped me maintain strength and stamina for such a

demanding career. It is healing, nurturing, and life-giving. But all that aside, let’s look at rhythm

in learning in a Waldorf Classroom. When you child hears the morning bell, s/he lines up with

his/her class and starts the day with a handshake with the teacher. The teacher greets your

child by name and sometimes asks him or her questions about his life… (e.g. Did you do

anything special this weekend?”, or, “What did you have for breakfast?”). After putting things

away, the class begins by reciting a verse which, affirms the importance of not only being alive,

but being full of the strength needed for learning. (see verse in box). The class might then sing a

song related to core content being learning or to the season. In the early grades, jumping rope

to times tables, reciting long steady-metered poetry and etc. might follow. After such ‘warm-

ups’, the teacher launches in to mental arithmetic problems, wherein multiple operations are in

interplay and children are working hard to remember the sequence and order of a word

problem or a straight calculation. Sometimes rules for spelling, conventions for writing, etc. will

also be the substance of the ‘mental gymnastics’. After these lively activities, the children may

recall the content of the story and lesson for the previous day. Then, they enter these memories

(learning content) into their morning lesson books. New content then follows, along with a new

or continuing story content.

Throughout this 2 hour period every morning, the teacher weaves activities to support the

healthy in-breathing and out-breathing aspects of learning. Consider the rhythm outlined in

the previous paragraph. Once the child has learned a song, a verse, a movement… it moves

to the joyful out-breathing process. New content, focus on mental arithmetic, focus on

language structure, writing and illustrating the morning lesson book… this all is in-breathing. The

teacher must ‘feel for the need’ of the children in her class. Too much in-breath, not enough

out-breath? Then, the teacher is able to be like the conductor of the orchestra and ensure how

the children’s very health is supported by this notion of breathing during a long lesson.

Coming up next month… Festival of Light

Families Welcome! December 14th