Elementary Students win Grand Prize!

December 2017

H A R M O N Y S C H O O L

Need childcare over winter

break? School is out from Dec. 18th through Jan. 1st. If you are in need of childcare there are some Harmony staff ready and able to work! Con-tact the office if you have questions.

Scholastic Books

To have orders back before winter break, please submit your orders no later than Monday 12/4. (Can submit online or to the office)

Handprints Newsletter

Elders from Harmony School's elementary class picked up the Grand Prize at EdVenture when they presented their projects and research for the annual America Recycles Day Event, the theme of which was the Benefit of Bats in the Mid-lands. They have also been asked to present their work at Soda City with Congaree NP rang-ers on Earth Day. The students are: Nigel, Evan, Susie (4th grade), Macy (5th grade) and Jackson. Bat teacher: Jennifer Mancke

Winter Garden

Thanks to Dawn Wills our students had the opportunity to plant a winter garden this year. They helped plant lettuce, kale, collards, and broccoli. They’ll continue to observe the plants growing over the win-ter season and pick when it’s ready to eat! Thank you Dawn!

Harmony’s annual Winter Concert is around the corner! This is an opportunity for ALL students to showcase their hard work from this fall! Preschool stu-dents will sing songs they’ve been learning in their units of study, kindergarteners will perform a short one-act play and elementary students, who have been learning hand bells with Ima all semester, will perform three pieces! ALL STUDENTS ARE EXPECTED TO PARTICIPATE—PreK, Kindergartn & Elementary! This year’s Winter Concert is Thursday, December 14th at the Tree of Life Congregation at 6719 N Trenholm Rd 29206 from 7:00 - 8:00 pm. All family and friends are welcome to attend!

Harmony is Adopting a Family for the Holidays!

Winter Concert

Our EarlyAct Club is participating in the Midlands Gives Families Helping Families Christmas Program. They have been given the list of needs for a family of 6 and want to ask the ENTIRE Har-mony family to participate! You’ll soon be receiving an email with more information and a sign-up sheet for items to purchase for the family. Please consider this wonderful opportunity to help a family in need from our community!

On pages 6-7 you can read more about this year’s elder projects for our Elementary students. Click on the picture above to see an AMAZING project by Haydn. His project was about his grand-mother, a member of the Coman-che tribe. There was even a horse and a smudging ceremony! Click the pic to see more!

Stay-Awake Group During December students in stay-awake class will learn about different holidays and cultures from around the world, including Mexico, Israel, China, Puerto Rico, and Germany! They’ll make crafts, listen to stories, and try different foods. William and Heather love to get the children outside and connect-ing with nature. One of the activities from November included collecting acorns and turning them into acorn pancakes!

Curious if they enjoyed eating this interesting dish? Click on the pictures below to find out!

Preschool & Kindergarten

Below: Heather’s class takes a moment to smile for the camera during their field trip.

Kindergartners visit Palmetto of Parklane

Each Friday the kin-dergarten class takes a field trip. One of these included visi-itng seniors at Pal-metto of Parklane where they worked on crafts together and sang songs. Click on the picture for a short slideshow!!

Above and Below: PreK/K students hike through the woods at Sesqui Park with Ranger Stacey!

Below: Livvy uses her sense of smell to explore the environment during the Sesqui field trip.

Below: Oliver and London learn some games from Native American cultures—ring toss and dart toss.

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Extra-Curricular Classes

Martials Arts class with Chelsa is underway and the students are doing great! They’re learning stances, self-defense, disci-pline, and much more! You are welcome to observe the class to see it in action!

Music with William is also going strong! Students are learning rhythm, new songs (and a few classics as well), and there are even some moments of improvisation.

Harmony Elementary

Classroom learning...

Students used their Halloween candy to practice statistics. They made a variety of graphs depicting the amount of different kinds of candy received. Below: Dawsyn, Sam, and Oscar show their creations.

Below and Right: Nigel and Lily show their practice of cursive writing.

Below: We LOVE getting visits from our former students! Aaron is an alumni of Harmony School and con-tinues to help the school with various fixer-up projects.

Right: The EarlyAct Club meets to discuss their pro-gress on current projects. They just started a holiday project to help support a local family. Check your emails soon for more in-formation!

Above: The class collaborates on a lesson about the cycles of life.

Elementary Highlights

Learning through the experience of field trips!

Left & Right: Students attend the Veterans parade. Below: Bryce hands a veteran one of his hand made cards. Prior to attending the parade students made cards and then gave them to veterans.

Above: The first graders visit the Salt Therapy room at Forest Acres Well Care. Right: Parker plays in the salt Below: Zoe relaxes in the salt

Elder students attend Ham-mond School’s Early Tech Week. The students chose dif-ferent sessions to attend.

Right: India learns cord-age and string bags

Above: Evan and Nigel work with gourds

Left & Right: Susie burns and scrapes wood

Left & Right: Macy and Jackson make a deer foot tool kit.

Elementary Highlights

Elder Projects!

In our culture we have lost some of the ties to Elders and extended families that our ancestors had, and that is a huge loss. For the past 5 years, our class has been working through a number of projects that have to do with Elders and ex-tended family. For six weeks students worked on their projects by choosing an elder from their family and learning more about them , such as when and where they live(d), their ancestry, stories passed down, etc. Students then presented their projects to the class. There are still more to come for next month’s newsletter!

Above: Jackson tells about his great-grandmother’s cranberry life. She owned cranberry business in Massachusetts and she later sold goods to Ocean Spray!

Above: Maya shares the life travels of her Greek and Easter European grandparents.

Left: Evan discusses his family tree. Right: Oscar tells the class about his great grandfather’s experiences sneak-ing into the military for WWII when he was just 14 years old! Below: Zoe shares some stories about her family tree.

Above: Parker’s family tree is the shape of a tree. So creative! Left: Macy share about her grandparents’ European travels

Above: Max shares his family tree with the class.

Elementary Highlights

Playground Fun!

Left: Nigel and Ariel share about their YiaYia’s life. Right: Sam tells the class about an ancestor who was a famous colonel in the Revolutionary War.

Above: Ayden talks about his great grandfather who was a famous jazz musician and played with Sam Cook.

Below: Susie shares about her grandparents’ world travels.

Above: Dawsyn’s tells about her great grandmother’s life.

Pam has worked with our aftercare elementary children for over six years. Prior to work-ing at Harmony she worked as a Special Education teachers for 36 years. To say that Pam loves working with students is an understatement. “These kids are my children.” When she retired with her school district she said it was only 3 months before she just missed kids too much and so she joined the Harmony family. Pam is also a Disney enthusiast—she’s a member of the Disney Vacation Club and has been on 8 Disney cruises and been to Disney World 8 times. This winter break she’s heading to Hilton Head Disney! Next time you see Pam on the playground, stop and say hello!

12/4 Dawsyn 12/14 Teagan 12/16 Haydn 12/22 India 12/27 Jennifer(staff) 12/28 Alexander

D E C E M B E R B I R T H D A Y S Thank you to everyone that joined us for the Thanksgiving Feast! The food was delicious and as usual, we had an amazing turn-out. We are so thankful for our Harmony families, friends, and staff.

C A L E N D A R - D E C E M B E R E V E N T S

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

1

SC Arbor Day Plant a Tree! Elite Marital Arts Kindergarten Field Trip—Library

4 Scholastic Order Due!

5 Music with William

6

7 Music with William

8 Kindergarten Field Trip—Edventure Elementary FT to “Twas the Night…” Elite Marital Arts

11 Elementary FT to Atria Senior Center

12 Music with William

13

14 Music with William Winter Concert 7 - 8pm Tree of Life Temple ALL STUDENTS

15

Kindergarten Field Trip—Parklane Flash Mob Caroling—Elementary F.T. Elite Marital Arts

19 20 21 22 23

26 27 28 29 30

Winter Break starts 12/18/17 School resumes on Tuesday 1/2/18