Chesapeake Academy's mission: to inspire each student to approach learning with curiosity and creativity, pursue excellence in all endeavors, and act with integrity--so each can make our community and world a better place. 
                                                                                                                                       May 18, 2018

Utterances from The Dictator
by
Larkin Denton, Head of School for the Day

Chesapeake Academy has always had a special place in my heart. Not only does it have an amazing curriculum, community, and campus, but an outstanding faculty. 

I believe Chesapeake Academy's faculty is outstanding, considering I've experienced teachers from other schools. The teachers are flexible with classwork, creative with their teaching style, and overall so fun to be around. For instance, I was given the chance to run a teacher's meeting due to my day as head of school. I was so nervous since I was basically running the entire thing. But when I entered that room and began to speak, it felt as if all my nervousness disappeared in the snap of a finger, and I believe that happened because of the fun and informal vibe all of the teachers gave right away. They know when and how to be serious and fun. I think that quality is what makes a good, respectable, and intuitive teacher.

The faculty has also helped me on a personal level. Sometimes, I find myself going through stress during events like Artstravaganza since I'm head of Audio Tech. When I was in sixth grade, a bunch of tasks and information piled up at one point and I couldn't handle it. I was so anxious that I could barely get any work done. That afternoon, a teacher came over and talked me through the situation, and it really helped me out in the long run. 

Teachers have also helped me become a better person. They've helped me dive into who I really am, and I've been given emotional and personal advice from all of them. So much in fact that I don't think I'd be the same person without them. The connections each student makes with these teachers feels so whole and pure, to the point where it can even be considered a friendship--even though it's someone who is simply doing their job.  

I am incredibly thankful for everything every single teacher has done for me.

                                                                                                      
The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create (people-sic) who are capable of doing new things. 
Jean Piaget

Ospreys!  Beat the Heat!  Have a Milkshake!  
Northern Neck Burger, purveyor of outstanding milkshakes, is supporting Chesapeake Academy throughout the month of May.  For every milkshake sold, Northern Neck Burger will donate $1 to our school's Bell Tower Annual Fund.  
Support the businesses that support CA!
Class Acts...
What's Happening on the Halls?
It is  Book Fair Time Again:  BOGO!

It is always time to "Paws to Read!" at Chesapeake Academy! The Scholastic Book  F air  will be open from the afternoon of May 21 to May 31 in the James Library! This is the perfect time to stock up on great summer reads to keep your child's literacy skills in peak form while inspiring a love of books! The book fair is also the perfect time to stockpile birthday presents, hostess gifts, and special surprises.  The deals are "for real!" Th is is the buy one get one free spring sale!! The fair will be open between 8:00 a.m and 9:00 a.m. and from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Word is the book fair will also be open during Artstravaganza from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. so families and extended families can enjoy! 

Parent Rosetta Struse will be taking the leash on this one, so if you can volunteer to help out, send her a message at lvnnoahandrya@yahoo.com. Volunteers to help students make individual wish lists are always welcome! Students bring their wishlists home so that parents can use them to make shopping choices for their students. 

Pre-K 3&4's Music Video Showcases Loads of Learning!

Play is the best vehicle for early learning, but it can be an incredibly powerful tool when the fates align to bring a child's interests and budding skills together with dynamic adult support on an exciting creative project.  What could be more fun than creating a music video with your class?

Wee learners began by playing xylophones and recording note progressions left to right for a friend to recreate.  After sharing these tuneful phrases widely, the class collaborated to decide on a theme that resonated with all (Rainbows) and then to develop lyrics using rhythm and rhyme, phonics, and invented spellings.  When you are creating, it all feels like play! 

Music teacher Barbara Hays artfully combined the class's musical phrases and their lyrics into their own "Rainbow" song. Wes and David Charlton joined Ms. Hays to accompany pre-K singers, and Wes Charlton mixed the composition into a masterpiece!  With creative direction from the class and Ms. Catherine Emery's wizardry, pre-K's music video was born! Catch the video here or see it at the upcoming Artstravaganza where it will be playing alongside the class's rainbow themed contribution!

Thank you, sixth grade families!  100 percent of sixth grade families have participated in the Bell Tower Annual Fund!
Extended Day Wall Art

Recent warm weather enticed the extended day crew outside to explore liquids and gravity while having fun in the sunshine. Children designed and installed a water wall, planning and predicting where the liquid would flow! Everyone took turns pouring water into the tubes and enjoying the payoff as it flowed through funnels, buckets and spouts and into pans at the bottom! Ms. May and Ms. Emery are full of fabulous ideas for the extended day program!




PALS Presents "The Ugly Duckling"

In what could well be the favorite performance of the series, Chesapeake Academy's Performing Arts and Lecture Series (PALS) presented the Virginia Repertory Theatre's "The Ugly Duckling." Fast-paced and full of slapstick, this engaging performance held its young audience of local school and daycare programs riveted to the unfolding story. Characters from this Hans Christian Andersen classic learned that self-confidence can blossom through friendship and accomplishment and even a villian can be full of surprises! Song, dance, and even audience participation kept this performance fresh and left the audience clapping. 

Chesapeake Academy's PALS is designed to make quality arts programs widely available to the young children of the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula. The series is primarily made possible through the generosity of the Nettie Lokey Wiley Foundation with support from the Virginia Commission for the Arts.

Thank you, eighth grade families! 100 percent of eighth grade families have participated in the Bell Tower Annual Fund!
PALS Presents Flumpa, A Space Oydessy!

Chesapeake Academy's PALS presented Wendy Whitten and her tree frog, Flumpa, in "A Space Odyssey--An Earth Science Adventure!"  This nationally acclaimed award winning, high energy, interactive musical science assembly taught about astronomy, the sun/stars, the visible light spectrum, galaxies, planets, planetary motion, space exploration, space history and more!


Thank you, fifth grade families! 100 percent of the fifth grade families have participated in the Bell Tower Annual Fund!
Heady Topics in Second Grade!

Second graders are curious about famous people from our past, and they seized the chance to learn more by selecting an interesting biography from The Who Was? book series. While reading, students took notes and summarized information into a short informational speech to share with classmates, and then they decorated a two-liter bottle to look like their famous person. The results are stunning and very informative. Each bottle has one special detail that is centered on the biographical studies. For example, Helen Keller is holding a book containing student-created Braille, and Jane Goodall is carrying a small chimp and a copy of National Geographic. Congratulations to the hard-working historians in grade two!

Kaitlyn Hargrove is Chesapeake Academy's Harris Scholar

Miss Kaitlyn Hargrove, daughter of  Ms. Kelley Hargrove, has been named Chesapeake Academy's H. Hiter Harris, Jr. Merit Scholar for 2018. Chesapeake Academy's Admission Director, Hilary Scott, comments, "We had some wonderful applicants for this award and were delighted with the strong interest in this opportunity at Chesapeake Academy. We are looking very forward to this talented young person joining the school." The H. Hiter Harris, Jr. Merit Scholarship was awarded to a student not currently enrolled at Chesapeake Academy in rising fourth, fifth, or sixth grades for the 2018-19 school year. 

Scholarship candidates were considered on previous academic achievement, performance on admission testing with a writing sample, a personal interview, and an indication through references of a strong, positive character. When asked how she felt about this opportunity, Miss Hargrove responded, "I am excited because when we walked around the school...every child was engaged in learning...happy and excited to be learning!" Kaitlyn's mother continues, "We are very excited about all of the creative learning techniques and opportunities and about the fact that it feels more like a family than school!"

This scholarship at Chesapeake Academy was created and funded by Mr. H. Hiter Harris, III to honor his father Mr. H. Hiter Harris, Jr. who devoted much time and energy to organizations that served children and their education. A lifetime resident of Richmond, Virginia, Harris's father attended Woodberry Forest and Princeton where he served as president of the Tower Club. Harris earned his degree in economics after serving as a B24 navigator with the 15th Air Force in Italy, flying several combat missions.

After graduation, H. Hiter Harris, Jr. earned a graduate degree in accounting and finance from New York University, which lead to a long and successful career in banking. Harris was a longtime chairman of the board and president of the Southern Bank & Trust Company in Richmond, later becoming chairman of its holding corporation, Jefferson Bank Shares, Inc. Among other community interests, Harris served on the Richmond City School Board, the Central Virginia Educational Television Corporation, the Virginia Industrial Development Corporation, the Crippled Children's Hospital, and the Children's Home Society of Virginia. "We are honored to host a scholarship that memorializes an individual whose life was spent in service to his community," comments Chesapeake Academy Head of School Julianne Duvall. "We are very much looking forward to Kaitlyn Hargrove attending Chesapeake Academy."

First Grade Hatched a Batch!

First grade's embryology unit came to an end with the hatching of seven chicks.  The children got to see them in the incubator when the chicks were exhausted and wet and observe them in the classroom as fluffy, peeping chicks. After the babies were a few days old the class took them outside for some fresh air, to stretch their legs, and to watch them scratch in the grass/dirt.



Math is All Around Us

Multi-age groups have continued to work together to write, illustrate, and publish a sequel to the pop ular children's book,  The Math Curse . All of the groups are working together on their illustrations, dedication pages, and covers to complete these mathematical literary pieces before the end of school.

Chesapeake Academy Rocks the First Place Middle School Team in Stock Market Game!

In case you missed it. . . .Chesapeake Academy had the first place middle school investment team in the VCU region of the Stock Market Game! That's right! First Place! This team outperformed some high schools in our region!  

The winning team of Joey Porter, Celden Hornsmith, and Leona Li travelled to VCU in RVA for the awards ceremony last week to celebrate their success!

Chesapeake Academy's Fifth Grade Teacher Mrs. Katie Parker attended the Stock Market Game (SMG) Workshop at Virginia Commonwealth University in January and learned all about this opportunity. The SMG is an engaging real-world opportunity for students to participate in a mock stock market exchange with elementary, middle, and high school students statewide and gain a fundamental understanding of investing and how to make money work for you.

Straw Rocket Project Hones Quadratics

Eighth grade algebra students used homemade straw rockets to explore the applications of quadratics. After some fun practice launching their rockets, students gathered data on the time, distance, and height of their flights. Using this data, students found quadratic equations to model their rocket's trajectory. From these equations, students were able to predict the location of their rockets at different times during flight. Will their predictions prove true? Students will find out when they try to launch their rockets through a hoop!  
 

Chesapeake Academy Sixth Graders Explore Overpopulation Solutions

Modern cultures discover again and again that economic stressors impact settlement patterns, at times causing overpopulation. As people surge to cities in search of job opportunities, stress accumulates on areas that accept them to provide adequate housing and supplies at affordable prices. "With our birth rate higher than our death rate, the problem of overpopulation and scarcity of resources is not going away," explains Chesapeake Academy sixth grader Leyton Dew.

Chesapeake Academy sixth grade Advanced Geography students examined various locations in Asia to learn why people choose to move to overpopulated areas and what measures governments and other organizations have taken to ensure everyone has a safe place to live. Students also explored closer to home to see how cities in the US are addressing the challenge of homelessness.

Beginning with Annie Leonard's documentary, The Story of Stuff , a short animated documentary about the lifecycle of material goods , sixth grade students examined what people need to live comfortably. They eva luated the city of Detroit's use of a tiny home community as a solution to help people with marginal incomes (people with minimum wage jobs, retired seniors, college students, or young people just out of foster care) become homeowners to build security and equity.

In order to focus carefully on the challenges involved in solving overpopulation, students each received a family profile and maximum square footage (250-400 square feet), and they were tasked with following those parameters to design a small house to fit their family's needs. "It was a social challenge to get students to think about what job seekers and their families really needed based on the profile and a mathematical challenge to figure out how items fit into a space," Advanced Geography teacher Kim Dynia explained.

After brainstorming, drawing up initial sketches, and receiving peer feedback, the students drew out their final floor plans to scale and turned them into 3D models." As we designed homes to solve overpopulation problems, we considered saving space and conserving resources, and we found that a small space can be efficient if it is designed with the user in mind."

Rebecca Meberg shows off the miniature model quinceañera cake that she plans for her quinceañera. 
Eighth Grade Spanish Students Showcase Final Projects

As the school year draws to a close, it is time for final projects in Spanish. The eighth grade girls chose as their final project to plan their individual quinceañeras, the lavish parties held in Latin America to celebrate a girl's coming of age at 15. They each presented a history of the quinceañera and the symbolism behind the various elements. The girls then planned all elements of their own imaginary quinceañeras, including the proceedings, their dress and shoes, the food and music, and the dresses and shoes of their attendants, and the budget for the event with line item costs for the individual elements. Each girl presented her plan in Spanish in a multimedia format to the class.

The eighth grade boys produced individual cooking shows in Spanish for their final projects, and their audience (their classmates) got to eat the finished product!
  • The Duke Wolfson Show was live and featured El Pico de Gallo, which he made in class. Here's the recipe:  Pico del Gallo.
  • The Jack Porter Show featured Venezuelan tequeños (cheese puffs). Jack made a video presentation of the cooking of the tequeños and served the finished product in class.  Here's the recipe:  Venezuelan Tequenos.
  • The Larkin Denton Show featured tortilla from Spain, a completely different dish from what Americans think of as tortillas.  The Spanish tortilla is a main dish with eggs, onions, and potatoes. Larkin included the history of the dish, which was developed during the first Spanish Civil War as quick and easy field food for soldiers. It is made often and is a staple in busy Spanish homes and tapas bars.  His recipe: Spanish Tortilla.
Percentage of Parent Participation by Grade
(Deadline is June 30, 2018)

CAPPA Sponsors Spirit Day!

To kick off the final phase of giving to the Bell Tower Annual Giving Fund, CAPPA is sponsoring a spirit day to raise awareness for the effort and to show our commitment to reaching 100 percent parent participation!  On May 23, all classes at Chesapeake Academy will rock their finery to launch the final campaign for 100 percent parent participation in the annual fund to support our school program!

Individual classes have chosen themes to celebrate!  
  • Pre-K 3&4 will rock superhero costumes.
  • Kindergarten will love a pajama day.
  • First grade will dress from countries around the world.
  • Second grade are coming dressed as animals.
  • Third grade is dressing in their favorite color top to bottom. 
  • Fourth graders will also dress as superheros.
  • Fifth graders will come in their PJs.
  • Sixth graders will have a sports day theme.
  • Seventh graders are having day at the beach theme.
  • Eighth graders are doing a PJ day.
As this campaign comes to a close and each class reaches 100 percent participation, that class will ring the bell to share the news!  Three classes (fifth, sixth, and eighth) have reached their goal! We have until June 1 to ring that bell 7 more times--once for each class!  Second and seventh grades are coming on strong! And never discount the dark horse! We all win when all classes ring that bell!

Total participation is critical--any amount can help us send a strong message about our belief and support for Chesapeake Academy! Pull together, Ospreys!  100 percent is within our reach!


Ian York, Athletic Director
Coach's Corner

The Spring athletic season ended May 16 after remarkable growth on all fronts and a good measure of fun. Congratulations to our golfers, our runners, our spinners, and our tennis players!  

On May 4, the tennis team traveled to the McCormick-Nagelsen Tennis Center at The College of William and Mary for an afternoon playing tennis with the pros at the tennis center, as well as local Williamsburg students. The students enjoyed practicing their skills.   

On Monday May 7, the tennis team traveled to New Kent County to play the middle school tennis team. After weeks of practice, the Osprey team was happy to see their hard work pay off with a victory over the host team. 

Thanks to all coaches, players, and competitors for a good spring season of athletics!

Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have. 
                                                                                                       Louis E. Boone

THE Attitude is Gratitude
  • Thanks to Isabelle Horsley Real Estate and to Specials Wine Sellers for sponsoring the Chesapeake Academy Auction by supplying all of the adult beverages!
  • Thanks to Northern Neck Burger Company for generously donating some of the profits from milkshake sales during the month of May.
  • Thanks to the substitute teachers who step up to fill the need at a moment's notice. These fine folks keep the program rolling smoothly, and we really appreciate them!
  • Our Student Council thanks Coach Ian York for being the grillmaster at their event! Chesapeake Academy teachers wear many hats! Thanks for always stepping up.
  • Thanks to CAPPA's leadership team and volunteers who have supported the school program constantly all year!
"A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock pile when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind."  
                                                                          Antoine Saint-Exupery


Don't Miss the Dates!

5/21 through 5/31 Scholastic Book Fair in the James Library
5/18 Student Council Cookout, 4:00 p.m.
5/20 Music Recital for Piano and Guitar, 4:00 p.m.
5/21 Athletics Awards Assembly, 10:05 a.m.
5/23 Bell Tower Annual Giving Fund Spirit Day
5/24 Artstravaganza, 5:30 p.m
5/25 Head of School Holiday, No School
5/25 Eighth Grade/Board Chair Dinner
5/28 Memorial Day, School Closed
5/29 through 6/1, Exams, seventh and eighth grades
5/30 Tag Day
6/1 Final Assembly 11:00 a.m./Academic Awards for MP4, Last Day of School, Dismissal after assembly
6/4 Faculty Workday
6/5 Graduation
 
"Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." 

                                                                                                                      Scott Adams


Chesapeake Academy | | chesapeakeacademy@chesapeakeacademy.org | 
 Post Office Box 8   107 Steamboat Road    Irvington, VA 22480