Jo Lawson
- Oct 31, 2022
- 2 min read

Weekly Update + Upcoming Offerings

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Last week at Sapna we created and celebrated FALL HOLIDAYS. Being well into our second year running the Sapna Academy self-directed learning center, it’s always fun to watch student interest develop and change over time. Fall holiday week allowed us to really dive into our new love of drawing tutorials! What started as just a single offering has morphed into a daily activity of creativity, art, and mindfulness. We have all fallen in love with Art For Kids Hub. Below you will find pictures of our students honing their drawing (and coloring!) skills.

Other new interests that have been pushed by students include two months now (!) of student-driven math lessons. We have four leveled math groups at Sapna Academy: Roots, Deep Roots, Pre-Algebra, and Algebra Plus. The best part of these offerings is how we can group students based on their abilities and not age. This allows us to celebrate each learner and their abilities. They all come to us with their own unique math background and knowledge which allows them to solve challenges together; however, a common theme in all of our math groups is practicing our understanding of base-ten knowledge, working with variables, and using manipulatives/visuals to model our thinking.

Perhaps the main observation from the past week includes the influence Sapna Shorts has had on our dramatic performances. In case you missed it, we presented our 2022 Halloween performance on Thursday night! The set list was packed with live and pre-recorded performances, including our Roots students taking center stage while acting out the stories The Little Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything, as well as Room on the Broom. In between live shows, Matt prepared and presented two original Sapna Shorts highlighting our older Roots students. Our resident dance master, Isaiah, led us in an original routine that found all Sapna students (and Ms. Jo!) up on the stage getting down! The night concluded with a performance from Macbeth (“Around the cauldron we go…”) performed by three Branches witches.

It was another amazing week at Sapna, and we are thrilled to begin planning for our winter performance, as well as continuing to develop our Odyssey of the Mind teams’ long-term presentations. We hope to see you this Saturday at River City Science Academy (off Philips Hwy, just north of the Avonlea Antique Mall, a great place to go have lunch and relax while our OMers explore the OM Spontaneous Fair) from 9a to 12p.