Dear Ventana Parents,

I am truly honored to be serving as your VePA president this year! I look forward to working with all of you to make this a year of wonder and excitement. As you are settling into your new routines this fall, I am encouraged to see so many of you stepping up to contribute your skills, time and energy in support of our school. Ventana School thrives because of you!

All Ventana parents are members of the Ventana Parent Association (VePA). We support our school in numerous ways, through community building, fundraising, parent education and operational support. The VePA board meets regularly with school officials to plan various initiatives and provide feedback. We meet every other Friday after drop-off and welcome interested participants to attend. Room parents coordinate classroom assistance and serve as your link to the VePA board. I am very encouraged to have a strong group of both room parents and VePA board representatives to work with this year! Thank you all for your support!

As a result of our continued effort to provide opportunities for parents to engage and participate, we are introducing Fridays as our main days for our community events this year. Look for changes to the event schedule as Coffee and Conversations, Brown Bag Lunches and First Fridays in the Classrooms will be redistributed throughout the year. 

Our parent community is filled with engagement, talents and resources. Please don't hesitate to contact us with your ideas, suggestions or concerns. Together we support Ventana in providing the most exciting school experience for our children!

For the VePA board,

Annette Munkeby

( [email protected])

As you may know, Ventana's curriculum is shaped by the "Big Questions" we use to guide inquiry. They provide a framework for classroom discussions and project work, and become a common point of reflection throughout the school.

This year's Big Questions relate to the concept of identity. Our students will explore this idea in a variety of ways, depending on their ages and interests. For example the fifth graders are beginning with the question "How do we identify?" and using it in art projects.

The preschoolers in the Moon room are looking at more concrete aspects of identity. Teachers Carlie and Lynn tied the concept to math and helped the children measure themselves to find out how tall they were. (Doing so required a lot of discussion and collaboration!) In literacy, they created family trees to explore their identities as members of a family.

Each month, the Wednesday chapel lessons led by Rev. Claire explore a different Ventana Value. September's lessons are focusing on "Relationships." Here's that value in full:

We value relationships. We consider each moment as an opportunity to connect with one another. Through individual interactions, partnerships, group collaborations as colleagues, and with regular community events we build a sense of belonging and acceptance where every person experiences the feeling of being highly regarded by others. Our school climate of mutual respect and kindness is governed by investment in relationships between and among children, parents, teachers, administrators, the church, and the surrounding community. Further, in our teaching and learning, we invest in constructing relationships between ideas, concepts, skills, and discoveries. 

This year, each elementary class has been asked to lead a session of chapel. The Sapphire room (5th grade) is reflecting on relationships with a presentation they developed through a collaborative process. They decided their goal was to help younger kids build stronger relationships, and to teach them strategies for making new friends and creating an inter-school bond. They prepared four skits: "Smiling", "High-five", "Conflict Resolution", and "How to Ask Someone to Play". They're excited to perform these for the elementary classes on Sept. 27!

Prior to arriving at Ventana, she taught art at The Marvegos Fine Art School, and kindergarten at Hillbrook School. Her attraction to Reggio Emilia education began when she was an art student at UC Berkeley and influenced her choice to become an educator.  

She completed her Masters of Education in the same class as fellow Ventana teacher Julie Oh. Last year, she was able to attend a workshop at Opal School in Portland and complete her Early Childhood certificate with a Reggio-based focus.

In college, she mainly worked in intaglio, painting, and installation, but these days she finds herself working more with clay and text. Regardless of material, she's inspired on a daily basis by the freedom that children demonstrate through artistic processes.

It's easy, when children are working quietly and carefully at their tables or desks, to think that stillness is a key to learning. But mounting evidence shows that brief "movement breaks" throughout the day help children concentrate and learn more. 

A growing number of schools are including short breaks for movement throughout the day, in addition to regular PE classes. According to a recent article in The New York Times:

If kindergarten is the new first grade, then preschool is the new kindergarten, argues Erika Christakis, a lecturer at the Yale Child Study Center. And that is "a real threat to our society's future," she says.

In an interview with NPR, she bemoans the recent focus on "academic" skills in preschool which, in her view, are a complete mismatch with early childhood:

Children need to feel secure in their relationships because, again, we're social animals. And children learn through others. So I think the No. 1 thing is for kids to have a chance to play, to make friends, to learn limits, to learn to take their turn.

She also finds that doing worksheets and other seemingly academic tasks requires only  unidimensional, simplistic thinking, unlike the complex skills children use when, say, building a fort.

Christakis makes a strong case for giving young children long stretches of unscheduled time so they can engage in activities at their own pace and stretch their imaginations with fantasy play. Let them lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling if they want to, she says. However kids who've been shuttled from lesson to lesson for the most part might need a little support to reengage these parts of their minds.

For more, read or listen to the full interview on NPRed.

(And thank you to our Ventana teachers, who help our kids with playful learning every day.)