Tuesday, Oct 15 5:30-6:30pm

Fall Parent Workshop

sponsored by Friends of Live Oak Essentials of Homecare Course with Jeanne Schirm, RN – K/Sunflower

Classroom

Includes three sessions* – 5:30-7:30pm Part I - Tuesday, October 8th Part II - Tuesday, October 22nd Part III - Tuesday, October 29th

*Attendance is required for all three sessions Free to Attendees

Pledge or Donation is Encouraged See attached flyer for more information.

Dragon Pageant

by Matthew Morgan Friday, Oct 4 12-12:20pm

We have entered the autumn of the year, when the leaves turn crisp and the wind hints at the icy chill to come. We gather in merriment, sharing the good harvest, celebrating the dusk of the year in feast and festival. In many cultures, the best stories are saved for the fall and winter months. Rousing tales of courage over fear, and service through great trial, are told to adult and kinder alike. These adventures sow seeds of our own heroic poten-tial within the hummus of autumn’s blanket. Laid down to germinate as dreams of adventure and triumph through the winter months.

Our Annual Dragon Pageant returns as we tell the tale of mighty knights who confront the fierce dragon, bring peace to the people, and wisdom to the wild wyvern. The Dragon pageant will be held on Friday Oct 4th. Doors to Herzog Hall will open at 11:45am and the performance begins at 12:00pm. Please join us for a brief escape from normalcy and dive into a joyous story filled with song and dance (and your children!). Parents and younger siblings are invited to attend.

Following the performance, students will participate in service projects from 1:10 - 2:30 pm. If you would like to help with service projects please contact your child’s teacher.

Hands and Feet

K-8 Parent Workshop with Karen Perry, RSP Teacher Tuesday, Oct 15 5:30-6:30pm

Many children today are unaware of their hands and feet. Learn how this phenomenon has arisen, why it is so important to fully develop capacities in our hands and feet, and how to help your child, of any age, to fully develop these unique human attributes through simple games and activities.

“It can be said with truth, that speaking is...connected with walking,-above all, with the use of the hand...[and] out of speaking, thinking develops.” -R. Steiner

Spiral Space Needed

The time for our Winter Spiral ceremony is approaching. We are in need of a new location for this special event. If you know of a place such as a nice barn or covered outdoor space, please contact Julie Beckner ([email protected]) or Jasmine Gerber ([email protected]).

...Imagination In Education

LIVE OAK

October 3, 2013

Leaflet

In This Issue...

Page 1 Parent Workshop Dragon Pageant Hands and Feet Spiral Space

Page 2 Calendar Work Party Dictionaries Enrollment

Page 3 Bulletin Board FOLOCS News Board News Signs at School Tennis Anyone?

Page 4 Ancient Cultures

Page 5 Reminders

Community Events

Page 6 Parent Workshop Flyer

The Leaflet is available in three formats.

Blog - liveoakleaflet.blogspot.

com You may visit the blog via the web, or subscribe to receive the articles as they are published via email.

PDF - www.liveoakcharter.org/

leaflet-newsletter

Paper distributed to every family

via your youngest child’s folder.

If you wish to opt out of the pa-per version please inform the school secretary.

Volunteer Work Party and Fall Clean-up

We will be holding a volunteer work weekend on Oct 12 and 13, 9am - 2pm. Tasks for this work party include:

• Installation of K-2 Swing set (tractor work, concrete work)

• Clean-up of Middle School Courtyard (debris hauling, landscap-ing, cleaning)

• Rebuild Intervention Stair (carpentry)

• Fixing Door Stops at Elementary Campus (minor carpentry) • Installation of Math Curtain (mounting curtain rods and hanging

curtains)

• Installation of Base Boards (nailing boards on walls) • Installation of Ball Wall Foundations (leveling gravel)

Please let us know if you are planning to attend either day by visit-ing our VolunteerSpot page for the weekend work party. The link is at http://vols.pt/ATqDQ1

If you are willing to be a foreman for one of the weekend days, please contact the office at 762-9020. Thank you again for all of your dedi-cation and support.

The Friends of Live Oak pledge program directly supports our facili-ties improvement projects.

In Search of Dictionaries

by Gayla Overmeer

Have you ever suffered from logomachy? What would you do if your teacher wanted you to write a pangram, or an essay about va-lenki? You might start with a dictionary. Every year, the school is gifted with Children’s Dictionaries for each student in the 3rd grade, courtesy of the local Rotary club. With these, the children learn the dictionary skills they will need throughout their educational career. However, as they get older and their vocabulary grows, they tend to outgrow the Children’s Dictionary in a hurry. Our teachers have found that they would like to have a class set of pocket dictionaries (such as Merriam-Webster or Oxford American) for classroom use. While pocket dictionaries aren’t particularly expensive, we would like a lot of them to fill out grades 4th and above, and we are hoping to find another service organization who would be willing to donate those to our school. It is the kind of tangible, one-time donation that many service organizations are looking for, but we need your help. Do you have friends, family, co-workers who belong to such a group that you can put us in touch with? It would save many hours of leg-work if we can be provided with some leads. Thank you for your sustentation!

Enrollment Update

We have some spaces in a few of our classes. If you know of a fam-ily that would be a good match with this education please tell them about us, and encourage them to come on a tour. We hold tours every other Wednesday. The next tour is Oct 16, 8:30 - 9:30 am in the school library.

Currently we have room in Kindergarten and 2nd grade. Thu Oct 3, 2013

12:40-1:30pm 7th Grade Farmers’ Market 1-2:15pm Cross Country Practice 1:30-1:45pm Staff Photo

7-8:30pm FOLOCS Meeting Aftercare room 3:10-4:10pm Chess for Kids Class

Handwork Room

Fri Oct 4, 2013

12-12:20pm Dragon Pageant-Herzog Hall

Sat Oct 5, 2013

All day RIP CITY RIDERS No Traffic or Parking

Mon Oct 7, 2013

All day 6th Grade Volcano Day 3:45-5pm Volley Ball Match

at Windsor Christian

Tue Oct 8, 2013

8am-2:45pm 7th Grade Field Trip Sailing the SF Bay 3:45-5pm Cross Country Meet

at Sonoma Academy 3:45-5:15pm Volley Ball @ LOCS

5:30-7:30pm K-8 Parent Workshop Series Part I Sunflower Classroom

Wed Oct 9, 2013

8:30-10am Class Coordinator Meeting Aftercare Room

3:15-4:15pm String Ensemble- MPR

Thu Oct 10, 2013

12:40-1:30pm 6th Grade Farmers’ Market 1-2:15pm Cross Country Practice 7-10pm LOCS Board of Directors

Meeting- Math Room

Fri Oct 11, 2013

3:10-4:10pm Chess for Kids Class Handwork Room

Sat Oct 12 and Sun Oct 13, 2013

9am-2pm Campus Work Party

Mon Oct 14, 2013

NO SCHOOL (In-Service)

Tue Oct 15, 2013

Fire Drill

8:30am-12pm Kindergarten Field Trip Peterson Pumpkin Patch 3:45-5pm Cross Country Meet

Riverfront Regional Park 5:30-6:30pm K-8 Parent Workshop

Movement w/Karen Perry 6:30- 7:30pm 3rd Grade Parent Meeting

Wed Oct 16, 2013

8:30-9:30am Campus Tour- Library Room 3:15-4:15pm String Ensemble- MPR 3:45-5pm Volley Ball Match - LOCS

Thu Oct 17, 2013

Community

Bulletin Board

This is a space for parents in the Live Oak community to post notices about items or services wanted, for sale or trade, or to give away, or simply to share information with one another. Send your notices to [email protected].

---Rental Home Wanted- 2bd/1.5ba around $1300/month. Petaluma, Cotati, Rohnert Park, Penngrove area. 2 dogs 2 cats. Family of four. Contact Gerald at gleuschen@ gmail.com

---ONYE AND THE MESSENGERS, Afro-beat World Music Band fea-turing Live Oak Dads Mark Es-calera, Troy Silviera and Brian Lemesh. Oct 5 at the Sunflower Center, 1435 N. McDowell Blvd Ste 100, Petaluma. Drum Circle at 6pm, Show at 7:30. $5 kids, $10 adults

---Childcare Wanted. Looking for a stay-at-home mom to care for my 5-month-old, Bryce. Dec 16- May 20, with about 6 weeks of no care needed. 8am-4pm. If interested please contact Dori King @ 795-4672.

---FASHION DESIGN classes w/ Meret Piderman @ the Petaluma Arts Center. Mondays Oct

21-Dec16, 3:30-5:00pm. Ages 11 and

up. Questions? email Ms Meret @ [email protected].

---Babysitters Needed! If you know of teens who are looking for baby-sitting jobs please contact Kelly at [email protected] ---Live Oak Parent Community is invited to advertise their busi-ness on our Busibusi-ness Directory. See Muriel in the office for a sub-mission form. You can consult the Business Directory on our web-site at: www.liveoakcharter.org/ parent-informar/business-direc-tory

Friends of Live Oak (FOLOCS) News

by Debbie Elam, FOLOCS Chair

Friends of Live Oak Charter School (FOLOCS) will be holding its annual election at this Thursday’s board meeting to fill two open seats on the board. We will also be discussing our budget and fundraising campaigns and invite members of the community to attend and participate in our meetings.

FOLOCS would also like to welcome Gina Lucchesi Henderson as our bookkeeper. She manages all pledge accounts and can be reached via email [email protected].

LOCS Board News

by Rachel Kaplan

The Board of Directors met this month on a Tuesday evening, rather than on our usual second Thursday of the month. The majority of the meeting was taken up by our conversation about the rechartering process Live Oak is currently undergoing with Petaluma City Schools. We discussed our mission, our vision, our pedagogical imperatives, and every so often, periods, commas and other grammatical errors in the text. See what fun you are missing by staying home? Mr. Morgan will be revising this doc-ument and bringing it back to our next Board meeting on October 10 for final review. It will then be sent on to the district. Much of the document is similar to the previous version, though there have been additions, sub-tractions and revisions throughout. Anyone wishing to see a draft of this important document is welcome to request one at the office.

All Board Committees are up and running and meeting regularly. The Fi-nance Committee has been grappling with the First Interim budget; The Human Resources Committee is considering hiring policy in relation-ship to Board involvement; The Executive Committee holds an overview of the committee structures, the work of the Board and the Executive Director; The Facilities Committee is concerned with finishing up unfin-ished projects left over from the summer, and visioning into the future. We always invite talented and skilled members of our community to join these committees. This is an excellent way to gain an understanding of the inner workings of the school without making a multi-year commit-ment to sit on the Board. The Facilities Committee is currently seeking a contractor/builder type human to help us understand the cost and vi-ability of some of our dreams about enhancing our school site.

Signage at Live Oak

Live Oak is in need of signs to let people know we are here, and to help them find their way around when they visit our campus. We would like signs on East Washington, in front of the Fairgrounds gate, and in front of our office. We are looking for a volunteer who would like to spearhead this project. Mr. Morgan has ideas and we need someone to do research and pricing. If this project interests you please contact Muriel at

[email protected]

Tennis Anyone?

Ancient Cultures in Fifth Grade

by Leah Brosio, 5th Grade Teacher

Fifth graders are introduced to the roots of Western Culture through the study of the ancient histories of India, Persia, Egypt, and Greece, which continue to inform our ap-proach and understanding of the world. It was the Greek mathematician Euclid who provided us with our concept of planes and lines, which form our conceptualization of the space around us, from longitude and latitude to the way we measure. How many of us find solace in the notion of Ahimsa, a Sanskrit term meaning “do not harm”, or in the Buddhist and Hindu doctrine which expresses a belief in the sacredness of all living crea-tures? From Pythagoras to Isis, the Epic of Gilgamesh to the stories of Greek mythology, we can see the richness and creative power of this time.

While it seems obvious in hindsight, my enthusiasm to delve into such wealthy content prevented me from seeing how difficult it would be to pare such vast history into a suc-cession of three week main lesson blocks. Therefore, rather than giving the children a

comprehensive study of each of these ancient histories, we do what we are known for in the

Waldorf movement, we teach from each culture’s stories and my-thologies. What our children receive is a glimpse into a world both foreign and familiar; another reminder of the first grade lesson that “we are one”, yet also a push out of the comfortable nest of our local history and geography (taught in fourth grade) and into the world at large.

Our class is currently studying Ancient India. We have learned about the geography of India, and the myth of the formation of the Ganges River. We have heard stories of Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu, and had discussions about the notion of the balance be-tween creation, preservation, and destruction. We were thrilled to hear the story of “Manu and the Flood”, which reminded us of the story of Noah, and yet had its own distinct quality. Our final week will be devoted to the stories of the life of Buddha, and how this brought a new impulse to India. The children have written the Gayatri Mantra in Sanskrit, and

experienced the sound of the chant in the best Sanskrit I could muster. We were fascinated to discover that some of the most ancient chants passed from generation to generation of Brah-mins are not actually human language, but rather follow the patterns and tones of bird song. We mused about how Sanskrit lettering looks somewhat similar to our system of musical nota-tion, which also has its roots in India. Our study of all of this has been greatly enriched by ongoing yoga sessions with Yvette Racines where the children have learned about the roots of yoga as a meditative and not a strictly athletic practice. Of course, there is some self consciousness in practicing “ohm” with their peers, but this has largely been overshadowed by their curios-ity about this ancient practice. They are engaged and pleased by the drumming rhythm of the Hindu chant of praise to Lord Shiva, and I often hear someone singing it quietly throughout the day.

Community Events

October Workshops

Circle of Hands- a Waldorf Gift Shop, is offering several classes and workshops in October. Go to www. circleofhandswaldorfshop.com for details. 6780 McKinley St #120 , Sebastopol (707)634-6140

Archetypes and Higher Beings: Rudolf Steiner & Carl Jung

A public lecture by Robert McDermott, Saturday, Oct 5 7:30pm Sophia Hall, Summerfield Waldorf School and Farm. Suggested donation at door: $10 general admission, $8 students/seniors. Pay at the door: no re-served seating. No one turned away for lack of funds. Tickets also available at Summerfield School Office or Circle of Hands, Sebastopol, CA. Parking available on premises. For info call Ed Castellini (707) 874-3528.

Free Halloween Costume Shop

Come in and pick out a costume on Thurs Oct 17 4pm-7pm or Sat Oct 19 10am-2pm at the Petaluma People Services Center, 1500 Petaluma Blvd. South, Petaluma. [email protected]

Donations needed! Please drop off donations at PPSC at the above address Mon - Fri between 8 am-5pm (Sept 3 - Oct 18th). Costumes in CLEAN and WEARABLE condition and any Halloween costume accesso-ries are greatly appreciated. Sponsored by Ladybug Connections and PPSC.

Fall Festival and Mini Maker Faire

Parent Education at Summerfield Waldorf School and Farm

An Introduction To Waldorf Education - “The Lower School” Fridays, Oct 11, 18, 25 & Nov 8, 3:30-5:00pm Summerfield 1st Grade Classroom. Come and explore a unique approach to human development that con-siders the whole child. How can one allow the individuality of each child to emerge in a healthy way? Why is it important to teach reading and math through imagination and movement? Is it possible to help young people find connection and meaning in the age of technology? Discover the hidden meaning in fairy tales and mythology. Try your hand in the arts and experience your own creativity! Sliding scale: $50-$200 for the series of four classes. Register at: www.edrenew.org

Understanding the Child – The Four Temperaments - A Workshop For Parents & Teachers Tuesday, Nov 19, 2013 7:00 – 8:30PM, at Summerfield Sophia Hall. Discover the Four Temperaments in this lively, experien-tial workshop that will give you tools for understanding your child or class. Many discipline problems can be overcome by treating each child differently according to his/her temperament. Donations appreciated. The courses will be led by Don Basmajian who has been a Waldorf Class Teacher and Physical Education Teacher for over 35 years. He is also the Director of the Waldorf Teacher Training program at Center for Educational Renewal, www.edrenew.org.

Reminders...

• Sat. Oct 5th-Fairgrounds Event - RIP City Riders - Controlled Gate - Walk-in only - No traffic or parking Allowed - Hundreds of motorcycles will be parked up & down the concourse and on the up-per campus parking lot.

• Farmers’ Markets are happening! Thursdays at 12:40 at Behren’s Park. Bring Your Own Plates (BYOP)!

• Check the Calendar for Live Oak Volleyball Games and Cross Country Meets. Come and support the home team and cheer on these hard-working athletes!

• Hear Ye!! Hear Ye!! All items in the Lost and Found will be donated on Monday, Oct 7. Check out the blue bins at both North and South campus for your lost treasures.

Bring a yoga mat, pillow, blanket, 1 bath towel and 1 hand towel

Reserve your seat and request FREE childcare including dinner if needed

Space is limited R.S.V.P. to Muriel at [email protected]

or by phone at 762-9020

Essentials of Homecare Course

Learn how to make your own Homecare Kit for your household

with Jeanne Schirm, RN – K / Sunflower Classroom

Homecare Workshop includes three sessions* – 5:30-7:30pm

Part I - Tuesday, October 8th

Part II - Tuesday, October 22nd

Part III - Tuesday, October 29th

*Attendance is required for all three sessions

Each participant will receive a homecare

booklet as a part of the course

Free to Attendees

Pledge or Donation is Encouraged

Fall Parent Workshop

Event sponsored by Friends of Live Oak

LIVE OAK CHARTER SCHOOL

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