. family life .
SCHOOL NOTES by Susan Braun Johnson
Northeast Stars NES students are learning and building their skills each day with initial sound object matching, a tactile learning activity that reinforces learning the sounds associated with each letter, the Moveable Alphabet, which is a Montessori tool used to teach reading, spelling, and writing. Students have also been using phonetic reading blocks to practice spelling and sounding out three letter words. This activity helps to develop pre-reading skills, gain experience with words that rhyme, and reinforces blending sounds into words. Northeast Stars Montessori Preschool, 1325 Maryland Ave NE; nestars.net
Payne Elementary This winter, Payne Wildcats have been busy with field trips, Food Prints, Math Night sports, clubs, and Saturday Academy activities. In addition to girls and boys basketball, Wildcats are preparing for a season of Girls on the Run, and enjoying newspaper, book club, robotics, taekwondo, and culinary arts. Students have enjoyed field trips to Udvar Hazy Air and Space Muse110 H HILLRAG.COM
Capitol Hill Day School While learning about industrialization in Humanities class, Capitol Hill Day School eighth-graders worked together in groups using K’Nex to build original machines with interchangeable parts. Students mapped out their designs, built machines, and participated in different simulations. Capitol Hill Day School’s middle school location in Farren’s Stable allows lots of space for flexible working and learning. Capitol Hill Day School, 210 South Carolina Ave, SE; chds.org
Van Ness
Waterfront Academy
Otters Visit the Recycling Center The Van Ness Elementary kindergarten class took a field trip to the Montgomery County Recycling Center, capping off their unit of study on conservation. The students peppered the tour guide with dozens of questions about recycling, then explored the sorting facility—fascinated by the many machines, conveyor belts, and bulldozers moving around recyclables. Van Ness Elementary, 1150 5th St SE; vannesselementary.org;
um, the American History Museum, and are looking forward to environmental education field trips for all grades and a BayScaping service project on 14th St. SE in the spring funded by the Chesapeake Bay Trust. Payne, 1445 C St SE; paynedc.org
Waterfront Academy has been keeping busy this spring. Students eagerly anticipated a visit from the National Cherry Blossom Festival Goodwill Ambassadors on March 21. They were especially excited about the Haikus they wrote in honor of the cherry blossoms. The school was recently awarded GoDCGo Platinum Level Ambassador status too—Kids Ride Free (with the DCDOT) appeared at the school March 24 to promote the program. Current students welcomed back alumna Kai, who came back to give a talk to middle school students about what high school is like. Waterfront academy, 222 M St. SW; waterfrontacademy.org
