Long Night Moon

This month's Book-of-the-month connects the entire Chets Creek family by choosing content that weaves its way through each child's Chets Creek career. The Kindergarten tradition is to have students participate in an authentic study of tribal nations around the Thanksgiving holiday culminating in a Pow Wow celebration. First graders are invited to attend the actual Pow Wow, along with families, to commemorate and write about their memories of the Pow Wow experience. Fifth graders revisits the same tribes as part of their Social Studies requirement during November. Students individually and in small groups make glogs and as a class develop an authentic scaled representation of the tribal grounds for the tribe they are studying. They present these class dioramas to the individual Kindergarten class that is studying their same tribe and then present them again for family and friends at a Kindergarten-Fifth Grade Family Night.

To honor this Kindergarten to fifth grade connection Principal Susan Phillips chose as this month's selection, Long Night Moon by Cynthia Rylant. It's a beautifully illustrated poem in the Native American tradition. This is a book by a favorite author that will be read to legions of children who pass through our doors. They will first hear the story in Kindergarten, and before they leave on their final leg of their elementary journey, they will hear it again with a new depth of its meaning and beauty. Children will also have the advantage of hearing their very own Principal, dressed at Chief Jumping Frog (a native American name that goes back to Susan Phillip's days as a Kindergarten teacher at Chets Creek leading our very first Pow Wow) read this powerful poem. Enjoy the reading below.

Long Night Moon - Nov. 2009 Book of the Month from Melanie Holtsman on Vimeo.