If you’re looking for an easy and quick way to transform a bad day or a bad mood, proceed to the closest source of music.

Whether its spotify, apple music, an old cassette tape or CD, a street musician or listening to your child sing, studies have shown that music can improve your mood. It can also improve blood flow in ways similar to medications, lower your levels of stress-related hormones and ease pain. Music is pretty amazing and we definitely have a neurochemical response to it. Isn't art grand!!? That is one of the reasons we so openly espouse the arts and artistic experiences here at IAA. It's just plain good for you. That's scientifically proven.

So why not plan on improving your mood this weekend and come out the annual Kids Are Alright Concert at Higher Ground. Doors open at 12 noon. Hope to see you there. See below for more details.

Artfully,
Mr. Bobby

Having amazing community arts partners is a definite bonus for the Integrated Arts Academy, and this year is no exception. Beginning this week, artists from Very Merry Theatre and The Flynn Center for Performing Arts are teaming up with small groups of 5th graders to guide them as they interpret Native American Folktales through an art form - dance, drama, music, or production design. This more collaborative and intensive workshop model is in place of a formal musical, and provides great depth to the experience. This year's Native American folktales are Pushing up the Sky and How the Birds Got Their Feathers. Students will collaboratively create and present their interpretations of these folktales to an audience on Friday, March 22 at 2:00 and on Friday, April 12 at 2:00. Join us at these Friday Town Meetings to see the amazing work of our talented fifth graders.

Congratulations to students whose art was selected for the Annual City Hall Art Show!

The art will be on display until March 26th. Check it out if you’re on Church Street.

Awards info: Tuesday, March 12 5-6:30 PM at City Hall.

5: Matias Citarella, Jeju Besaw, Rosa Kori, Idris Ali, Innis Sullivan, Maya Riley

4: Lexie Bell, Freya Heinzer, Neima Nour, Alhasan Al Dulaimi

3: Harper Bunce , Aaron Mongar, Axel Albee, Selma Citarella

2: Agnes Nguyen, Zoryan Ivakhiv, Nina Heinzer, Yasimin Sharif

1: Noorto Abdullahi, Dean Dowdall-Fowler, Kaylee Landry, Khalil Graceson

K: Hamdi Abdi, Willa Ruggiero, Mar Swar Ha, Lily Pollack-Bruce

STEP: Yermos Damas, Dunia Shabani

aleaphar@bsdvt.org

Welcome back to school! First, second and third grade visited the Flynn Theater this week to see Rosie Revere, Engineer. What an appropriate way to spend International Women’s Day! Fifth and fourth grade have finished up their residency with Mark Stein. It was so much fun telling stories about our lives! Fifth grade are about to delve into the language of Shakespeare as they begin studying Macbeth.

Newsflash on Physical Activity Opportunities!

CaTs on the Move will not be held Wednesday, March 13-15 because our UVM friends are on spring break!

IAA Fun Run needs your help this year! The Fun Run will be held on April 19th at 1:15 p.m. Please consider volunteering before the event with organizational needs or on the day of in a variety of roles. Let me know if you would consider joining our Fun Run team.

Newsflash on Physical Education Classes!

3rd, 4th and 5th graders are wrapping up their Spikeball unit this coming week. We will begin a short unit on Invasion Games. We will begin Fitness Testing in April and the 4th grade will be participating in the VTPEA test. This test like the SBAC gives the state fitness data to report as a part of our ESSA State plan. If you would like more information about the FitnessGram which is the test we administer, please see this link.

Kindergarten thru 2nd grade have been working on balance and tumbling skills. Students will next be trying their hand at jump roping.

Jake Agna, our Kids on the Ball instructor, will be coming back to IAA on Monday and Wednesday mornings after April break. He also offers a wonderful opportunity for free tennis lessons at Roosevelt Park all summer long. Look for information soon on this program or feel free to contact me.

Danielle Vierling

dvierlin@bsdvt.org

@dlvierling

Grades K-4 continue to explore poetry as we make our way to creating our own Odes (an ode is a poem about something that we really love). We have generated lists of feelings words, exciting words, and strategies that poets use to create pictures in our imaginations. In the next few weeks we will start writing our odes and hope to share them with the school community.

In 5th grade we are almost done reading Ban This Book, and will be using our tech blocks to explore the ALA (American Library Association) website and how we can become advocates for intellectual freedom and readers rights.

Jen Peake

jpeake@bsdvt.org

On Instagram: @iaa_library

Five IAA students participated in this year's Music-COMP mentoring program.
Each student was paired, online, with a professional composer who helped the student with the process of creating a piece of music in the Noteflight software. They were given certain instruments to write for, and after 2 months, 25 pieces were chosen from all Vermont students to be performed by a professional ensemble at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, in Montpelier, on March 26th, at the Opus 34 concert.

This year, Jasper, Max, Bjorn, Nasra and Brynna chose to participate in the program.

Brynna's was one that was chosen for the Opus 34 concert!

You can see the scores and listen to the pieces by following the link from my IAA Music website here:

http://iaamusic.weebly.com/opus-34.html

(Don't forget to tell them what you thought of their music:)

Bill Myregaard, Music

Integrated Arts Academy

Burlington, VT

www.iaamusic.weebly.com

Twitter: @IAAMusicVT

Kids and Violence in Media

How do the images our children see on TV, in movies and video games affect them—and how can parents dial down the exposure?

Find out more in this article from Parenting.com

The Flynn has you covered for creative fun on April vacation (April 22-26) with two camp options as well as scholarship and payment plan options. Magic Treehouse, a beloved summer camp based on the popular children's series, will be led by Mark Stein, who recently worked with IAA 4th and 5th graders. In this camp for ages 6-8, students take thrilling trips through time and space using drama and movement to discover a new world every day. Students ages 9-14 will have a blast acting, singing, and dancing in Musical Theater, a high-energy camp led by Randal Pierce! New and veteran performers learn kid-friendly showstoppers and gain confidence as well as onstage skills.

PLUS, families are invited to the following spring programs, please pre-register for all (scholarships and payment plans are available)

• Tiger Monkey Dragon - IAA 4-5 graders encouraged to join
• Youth Dance: Hip-Hip, Jazz & Lyrical - IAA 4-5 graders encouraged to join
• FREE Inclusion Fusion - sensory friendly; ages 10-adult
• Kindermusik® - ages 5-7
• FREE Red Kite Green Mountain April 26 at Fletcher Free - sensory friendly; ages 4+
• FREE Family Saturdays for all ages: Family Rave May 11 and Birdcode June 1

Email: briley@bsdvt.org
Website: https://iaa.bsdvt.org/
Location: 6 Archibald Street, Burlington, VT, USA
Phone: (802) 864-8475