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“My favorite thing about Schoolhouse is its philosophy,” says Aaron. “The ability of every member of the Schoolhouse community to open their arms, and make anyone objectively welcome, is a mentality that I do not think is shared by a large portion of our country.”

Here are some fun facts about himself that Aaron told us about:

1. My Aunt Eileen and Uncle Chris Cichoskikelly told me about the Schoolhouse. I was looking for a summer job, and Eileen put me in touch with Tana Randall, who hired me as a part-time summer camp counselor.

2. I am from Greenwich, a little town in Upstate New York about an hour North of Albany.

3. I arrived in Vermont after getting accepted into the University of Vermont in 2009. I had visited Burlington many times during my senior year of High School, and fell in love with the awesome juxtaposition of Lake Champlain and Vermont’s largest city.

4. I have only sustained one injury in my seventeen years of skiing. Unfortunately, this injury took the form of a nice inch-deep gash on my butt. After skiing for two hours, I still had no knowledge of this new alteration to my body. When it came time to change back into my normal clothing, I noticed the wound and had to endure an extremely embarrassing stitching procedure by these two grizzled doctors, complete with full-blown Vermont moustaches and their tittering, college-aged female attendees. It was the only time I have ever had stitches, and hopefully the only time I will ever have the fortune of visiting a ski resort’s emergency room.

Welcome Aaron!

Gabriela grew up in Mexico City in the same area as Frida Kahlo, but has also lived in Bolivia, Austria, and Germany. For the past 20 years she has lived in the US with her husband, Morris, who is Chilean-American and her two children: Daniel 15, and Nicole 17. They came to Vermont after living in Bolivia because of her husband’s job (he works in international development) and now live in Shelburne.

“In this global world knowing a language not only gives us a sense of empowerment but it opens the doors to many resources,” she says, adding that studies show that learning other languages is an amazing tool for brain development.

She believes it is very important to talk to children about other languages. “Both of my children speak English and Spanish as their native languages and also speak French as second languages,” she says. “Now they are starting to learn German!”

Gabriela’s background is in environmental engineering where she specialized in water resources and climate change. She is on the Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee in Shelburne and the Traveling Baskets, an initiative that educates and promotes the use of bicycles. She is a substitute teacher at CVU and sometimes lectures at UVM.

“I am so happy to work with such a caring and professional community at The Schoolhouse, and the kids are just wonderful.”

Welcome Gabriela!

We spent lots of time in our Valentine assembly line, but we also had time to visit the bouncy tree, where we climbed and listened to a story about raccoon and the crayfish king. After the story, a teacher asked if any of the kids had stories to tell, and our youngest 2-year old piped right up and began the storytelling. Soon other kids joined in with their own stories.

It was interesting (not to mention adorable) to hear the language they considered storytelling language. It was fun to see them changing the cadence of their voices and using repetition in their stories as well. We could tell that you parents are reading lots of books to them at home!

We often work on our grammar and punctuation skills during morning meeting. The latest item up for scrutiny: The apostrophe!

An exciting new feature of our work in the Omega classroom is using dictionaries. Knownas “Strange Alphabet” each child picks a letter and looks up a “strange” word unknown to them; horsefrog, for example.

Another new wrinkle in the classroom:  parliamentary procedure.  That’s right, Omegas are now able to raise motions, call for votes and make changes to classroom life.  This has, I am proud to say, grown out of the children’s astounding ability to invest and take responsibility for their learning and active advancement of Five Core Concepts.

The Alpha 2 – Taus have been busy working on writing projects that last several days!

We have completed writing True Things about ourselves and Tall Tales about ourselves, including art work using water colors, crayons and permanent black marker. We have also listened to many snow poems and completed our own Snow Writings and are also enjoying making our own mazes.

As a class we have been working on Money Math, finding many different ways to total amounts and finding the minimum collection.  We have recently begun working on Geometry, learning about both two and three dimensional shapes. enjoying making our own mazes!

We have been learning to recognize the different attributes of rectangles, squares, circlesand triangles and integrating the use of three-dimensional classroom materials like hardwood blocks, polydrons, pattern blocks, and geoboards in our exploration.

We have been reading and enjoying books written by Alphas from other years. This was a great lead in for the annual Joni Birthday Book that we created ourselves.

We’ve read about MLK Jr. and watched part of his speech “I have a Dream”. We had Pajama Day, Grandparents Day and a field trip to the Flynn to see Skippyjon Jones. Many of the Alphas commented that they knew some of the Spanish words that they heard in the play!

Today one of the Alphas looked out the window and announced that there were  “cumulo-stratus” clouds outside and then explained why they had that name. Besides watching the clouds today we have been keeping track of the temperature and noticing it drop quickly. I just love these observant Alphas!