Third grade students are studying the Oregon trail in their Pioneer Unit at Clairbourn. Thanks to first-hand accounts from journals kept by about 2,500 pioneers, they have been learning how a “dream for a better life” captivated half-a-million people to plunge into a journey filled with extreme hardships and sacrifice. This mass migration also resulted in serious and devastating effects to the Native American population and the physical environment. (The Oregon Trail was a journey of 1,932 miles that extended from Missouri to Oregon. The Federal Government opened up the state of Oregon for people to claim land, and over 500,000 people set out to stake a claim. 50,000 people died along the way from drowning, disease, animal attack, bullet wounds, and even starvation.)
Congratulations to Clairbourn’s Class of 2019. They will be attending high school at FSHA, Flintridge Prep, Gabrielino, Harvard-Westlake, LaSalle, Loyola, Maranatha, Mayfield, Polytechnic, Principia, San Marino, St. Francis, and Westridge. Way to go, Cougars!
Clairbourn School Provides Private School Education for Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary School, and Middle School Grades | Serving Families in the Pasadena, California, Area and Surrounding Cities (K-12 Private Schools) | Clairbourn is a 501(c)3 charitable organization. Click here to request information.
Clairbourn students sort and count pocket change collected for the Door of Hope during their service learning project.
Clairbourn’s second grade class successfully completed their 20th consecutive service learning fundraiser for the Door of Hope homeless shelter for families in Pasadena. They presented a check for $1,137.67 to the Door of Hope Executive Director Megan Katerjian, on Friday April 26, 2019, at the school’s Morning Assembly.
Their presentation included highlights from their week of sorting, counting, and weighing the donated coins and bills which they collected from the Clairbourn. They found all kinds of entertaining donations, in addition to US coins. They found coins from Costa Rica, Mexico, Serbia, Hong Kong, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, and Slovakia. They also found flattened pennies, tokens for Disneyland, and even the bottom half of a broken key. Overall they counted and sorted $371.67 in coins and $766 in bills, all of which will be used by the Door of Hope to feed families in their care for a little over four months.
Jane and Jerry Marks have a long and happy history with Clairbourn School. Jane Marks currently serves on Clairbourn’s Board of Trustees, and the Marks’ three children, Jordan ’08, Taylor ’11, and Christian *20, loved their time at Clairbourn and benefited from outstanding teachers along the way.
Four students perform a “Three Little Pigs” skit containing a message of ‘do what is right instead of what is fast and easy’ as part of the “Character Matters” play.
Clairbourn’s second grade is known for ramping-up
opportunities for students to express themselves and to learn how to present
ideas in a public setting. In prior
years, the second grade poetry unit allowed students to hone their presentation
and memorization skills through learning the poems of Jack Prelutsky and other
child-friendly authors.
But this year, our new second grade teacher Karen Roberts
brought some additional ideas to the table. The level of creativity of
her students inspired her to look for a musical play that her students could
perform. She picked a play called “Character Matters” designed to use
fairy tale characters and their famous storylines to reinforce good social and
personal actions. Not only would that tie in with Clairbourn’s Code of Ethics, which
cover the qualities of Honesty, Respect, Responsibility, Spirituality, and
Citizenship, but it would also teach students how to handle a variety of common
interpersonal conflicts plus enhance their memorization skills and public-speaking
ability.
This petri dish filled with bacteria swabbed from a student’s phone and from their chair.
Clairbourn seventh-graders experienced a bacteria lab where they studied the microbiota of their daily lives. Each student swabbed their phone or laptop and then had the option of a swabbing a second item.
Students inoculated petri dishes with the bacteria collected in and around the classroom, and the growth was aided by an agar growth medium added to the dishes. Each day, the petri dishes were studied and diagramed.
On the second day, students noticed a slight scent emanating from the petri dishes. As bacteria grow and replicate, they release a wide variety of compounds—many of which give off a strong odor—the smell of science!
Growing bacteria in the petri dishes released odoriferous chemical compounds.
There is no better teacher than Mother Nature, and
preschoolers at Clairbourn are immersed in a comprehensive Camping Unit that
puts the lessons and benefits of time spent in nature front-and-center.
Many of Clairbourn’s preschool units come from student-initiated ideas. So, when teacher Lee Rankin’s Junior Pre-Kindergarten class showed an interest in making tents in the classroom, she developed a camping unit to expand on their interests.
Students have a big yellow reading tent in the corner of their classroom. They also have poles and connectors to build smaller pup tents where they can play “camping.”
As a result, the classroom has been transformed into a full campsite complete with a ranger station, pup tents, a big reading tent, and a “campfire” space where students can pretend to cook hot dogs and s’mores.
Four-time Boston Marathon champ Bill Rodgers has wisely said, “The advice I have for beginners is the same philosophy that I have for runners of all levels of experience and ability: consistency, a sane approach, moderation, and making your running an enjoyable, rather than dreaded, part of your life.”
That’s the same kind of wise approach fueling Clairbourn Head of School Dr. Amy Patzlaff’s interest in running. She explains, “I like to run in races because they keep me motivated and give me a goal—and the goal for me is self-improvement…to perform incrementally better than in my previous races.” In addition to the LA Marathon, some of her recent races include several 10K runs, and two Pasadena Half Marathons which she ran in 2018 and 2019.
Students sell their wares at recent Entrepreneur Fairs at Clairbourn School.
Early entrepreneurship experiences are becoming increasingly important as an education tool to teach students a host of important lessons that can pay off later in life. According to inc.com editor Tom Foster, who wrote about student entrepreneurship programs in February 2017, “The big idea underpinning all of them: Work has changed, and no matter what career kids ultimately pursue, they’re going to have to constantly adapt and innovate in order to succeed–just like entrepreneurs do.”
There is no escape from learning what it means to be a consumer who is constantly shelling out money for purchases. But, everything changes when there is early exposure to the basics of business thinking. This can change a student’s entire outlook–especially when they can explore, in an age-appropriate way, how to generate valuable ideas, create products and services, and hopefully build wealth.
At Clairbourn School, these lessons can start as early as preschool where students can play “store” in the classroom or even “go big” by having their own booth at the Annual Entrepreneur Fair where they can sell goods and services to the school community. Then as they move through the higher grade levels at Clairbourn, the entrepreneur opportunities repeat and expand so they can continue to develop their skills, business thinking, and overall success.
Recently, Clairbourn’s first grade class, taught by Miss Lindsay Dezutter, held their own First Grade Classroom Store Activity as part of their social studies unit. This project was an introduction to economics, and it provided background knowledge to prepare students for future economics units and the 3rd Grade Marketplace project. Their class activity covered the economic concepts of consumers and producers, wants and needs, money exchanged for goods and services, and time and materials costs.
For this activity, students were asked to create individual shops that would sell goods they produced themselves. They only could use paper to make their products and everything had to be handmade. They also were required to set the price for their products.
Clairbourn first-graders participated in a Classroom Store Activity where they created their own store with handmade paper products. These two students made 3D paper characters to sell.
Claire Louise Bourne was Clairbourn School’s original student and the reason for the school’s founding.
Clairbourn School celebrates the life of Claire Bourne (known in later years as Claire L. “Deede” Phillips), the namesake of the school, who passed away peacefully in Montana at the age of 97 in January of 2019.
Clairbourn School was started in 1926 by her parents Mr. and Mrs. Arthur K. Bourne, a prominent San Marino, California, couple. A. K. Bourne (1877–1967) was the second son of Frederick Gilbert Bourne who is widely credited with the success of the Singer sewing machine company. In 1919 when his father died, A.K. Bourne inherited a large portion of the company fortune.
