IAA Newsletter

Thank you to all the IAA families for supporting our community during this time. The IAA staff has appreciated Muffin Mondays and all the other little treats parents/guardians have given us this past month. Little gestures of kindness like this make a big difference to our staff!

I have had the opportunity to visit classrooms on a regular basis. Each time I enter a classroom, I am greeted with smiles and students who are excited to tell me what they are learning. I have been doing some learning myself. I have never played the violin and had two 4th grade students show me how to correctly hold the instrument and bow. It was an amazing experience to have these students teach me something new.

We currently are having new water fountains and filling stations installed on the second and third floor. Thank you to the maintenance staff who are working after hours to make this happen.

If your child has lost an item of clothing, lunch box, hat or mittens, please have them check the lost and found near the community room. There are a lot of unclaimed items and we would like to get them back to their owners.

Fill the Bowl!

In December IAA 3rd graders paid two visits to the Burlington City Arts studios to make bowls! They handbuild one bowl using a coil technique and threw a second on the wheel. Ms. Alissa, Ms. Sue, and Ms. Emily supported the bowl making alongside Mr. Scott, Mr. Whitman, and Ms. TT. BCA will be firing and glazing the bowls. The Fill the Bowl event will take place in the spring in the form of an open air market at our Spring Arts Night. Fill the Bowl is a fundraising event for our community hosted by the 3rd grade. A huge thank you to BCA, our community partner! We are also grateful to Mr. Toof for the use of a bus!

Movement and Drama Residency with teaching artist Kelly Becker

UVM Professor Kelly Becker has been at IAA this January! She began in Music with Mr. M, integrating movement with math. Students created dances using concepts such as counting by two, symmetry, and perpendicular lines. Then she moved to Ms. Holly, Ms. Haleigh, Ms. Heather, and Ms. Dy’mon’s classes to use theater strategies to bring literacy to life. She is working on a book that will feature us as a partner.

Bomani Armah aka Baba Bomani will be returning to work with IAA students and staff virtually in February. There will be a live kick off with each grade level, then work in classrooms with his support to write, rhyme, rap, and build community. To wrap up the experience students will perform during Town Meeting with special MC Bomani!

Our December Town Meeting was a special one. IAA community members, teaching artists, and students! It also included a celebration of the December students of the week, Literacy Breakfast, and ROAR Dance Party.

The upcoming Town Meeting with “air” on January 28th. It will include the raising of our new Black Lives Matter Flag and the first challenge from the Magic Council!

Kindergarten just wrapped up an integrated arts unit focusing on shapes! This unit continued work from our investigation of line at the beginning of the year. Students cut lots of geometric shapes and explored their attributes. They looked closely and talked about the artwork of Kandinsky using a game called “Pass the Painting.” Then, we created a GIANT collaborative mural inspired by Kandinsky. We’ve been working hard to use work like “next to,” “on top of,” and “overlapping” while describing our artwork.

1st grade is also wrapping up an integrated arts unit all about the moon. Students observed the moon, looking for patterns. Students made all sorts of connections like butterflies and the moon both have cycles! Their new found understanding of the phases of the moon was exhibited via media media models and printmaking techniques.

2nd grade is learning all about matter as they integrate science with music. They are investigating the question, “What is matter?” and making connections to musical instruments. They are working toward using ‘junk’ as instruments, finding different sounds in their space, designing their own instrument, and creating a composition with a classmate.

3rd grade is using the engineering process to study bridges, their environment, and design their own using a variety of materials for sculpture. Ask your 3rd grader what makes a suspension bridge so strong!

4th grade is integrating drama with social studies to learn about the Abenaki. They are asking questions like, “What was the Abenaki way of life like?” and “How did the arrival of European colonists affect Native people?” and working to answer these questions using tableau and creating scenes to tell a story.

BCA Winter/Spring Youth and Family Programs

At the BCA Studios, 405 Pine Str

Ages 6 & Up

Scholarships Available!

To Register Visit: https://www.burlingtoncityarts.org/adult-youth-and-family-classes or contact Lauren Genta, lgenta@burlingtoncityarts.org

• Friday Family Clay

• Sunday Family Cardmaking

• Sunday Family Jewelry

• Family Art Saturdays at BCA Center (125 Church St)

• WINTER & SPRING SCHOOL BREAK CAMPS | Monday-Friday, February 21-25 and April 18-22 | at the BCA

Here in the library K-4th are slowly plugging away at this year's Red Clover Award books, we just finished reading our 3rd out of 10. K and 1st graders have been using Bee Bots to work on coding (see if they can tell you what an algorithm is!) In 5th grade we’ve started refreshing ourselves with how a library is organized, and looking at collections and spine labels and how we use those to locate books we want.

The Fletcher Free Library just opened up a New North End pilot branch site near the Hannaford Supermarket. We've seen an amazing response in the few weeks that we've been open.Families can find a great collection of books at the site (including the VT Golden Dome and Red Clover titles), get library cards, pick up Holds at the NNE site, and return any library books at the NNE site. Hours for the branch site: Wednesday & Thursdays - 1-6pm AND Friday & Saturdays - 10am-2pm.

Ms. Jen

Instagram: @iaa_library

A BIG, HUGE thank you to all those who spread the word and donated to our No Frills Fundraiser! We raised nearly $4,000 to support arts integration programming. Yay! (If you still want to donate, you can do so here or through Venmo @IAA-PTO.) And our small but mighty fundraising committee could use more help. Please reach out to Fauna if interested.

It’s been wonderful to have parents and caregivers volunteering in classrooms again! If you are interested in volunteering at IAA, you’ll need to be fingerprinted and background checked, even if you’ve volunteered previously. PTO is happy to answer questions or help with the process; please reach out to Molly.

Thanks to some awesome parent volunteers and support from Mascoma Savings Bank, we’ll be able to build an outdoor classroom in the corner of IAA’s school yard! Stay tuned or reach out to Niles for more info.