WHPS May-June 2025 Newsletter: Year-End Highlights & Key Dates

May-June 2025 Newsletter

A Strong Finish: Celebrating Learning, Friendship & Milestones at WHPS

Year-End Promotion & Culmination Events

📋 Inside This Issue

🧠 How Children Grow: Memory, Kindness, Curiosity & Care

🌱 Head of School: When Feelings Shape the Story
💖🪣 Elementary: Bucket Filling: Building a Culture of Caring
🧮 Preschool: Early Math Foundations: Building Number Sense Through Play
🐮 Barnyard News: Celebrating Life Cycles, Ecology & Our Barnyard Friends
📅 Calendar of Events: Full WHPS Calendar

Special Edition

Seth Pozzi, Head of School

Many people imagine memory as an objective record of what happened, but in reality, it’s shaped far more by emotion than fact. What we notice, feel, and focus on changes how we remember events—often without us even realizing it. Helping children learn to hold multiple perspectives, manage big feelings, and speak with clarity nurtures character, strengthens relationships, and builds lifelong resilience.

Inside This Month’s Article:

✨ How memory works—like a camera 📷, it remembers what it’s pointed at
✨ How we teach honesty, empathy, and accountability
✨ When to be curious about language or processing challenges

Elementary News

Melanie Henson, Principal | Cynthia Baroudi, Dean of Students

🪣 Have You Filled a Bucket Today?

Building a Culture of Kindness & Leadership

What if a single daily habit could build your child’s confidence, empathy, and resilience? Bucketfilling isn’t just a sweet phrase or WHPS-invented term—it’s a powerful, research-informed practice that helps students build emotional strength, leadership skills, and a true sense of community.

This month, we’re “lifting the lid” on bucketfilling—taking you behind the scenes of how small acts of kindness, weekly celebrations, and leadership reflections create a culture where kindness isn’t just encouraged—it’s lived.

Inside This Month’s Article:

✨ What bucketfilling really means (and why it works)
✨ How kindness fuels leadership and emotional growth
✨ Why we celebrate with purpose—not prizes—and what it teaches kids

Preschool News

Robin Gee & Ailin Sacks | Collins Campus
Christine Chiché-Lopez & Roxana Mackey | Oxnard Campus

🌱➕🧠 Growing Mathematical Thinkers

From Curiosity to Critical Thinking

At WHPS, math isn't memorized—it’s discovered. Through real-world play and exploration, our students naturally build number sense, problem-solving skills, and critical thinking long before traditional programs even introduce them.

In Early-Transitional Kindergarten (ETK), we take it further with Singapore Math—a world-renowned approach that teaches children to understand the ‘why’ behind math, not just the steps. This foundation flows naturally into our elementary program, where learning becomes even more personalized, dynamic, and advanced.

Inside This Month’s Article:

✨ How real-world play sparks deeper math thinking
✨ Why Singapore Math builds flexible, confident problem-solvers
✨ Easy ways to grow your child’s mathematical thinking at home

Science & Nature Center News

🐾 Life Cycles and Celebrations in the Barnyard

Spring is a season of milestones in the Barnyard, and we’re excited to celebrate the life cycle events of many of our animal friends:

🐣 Mini Chickens Polly & Pocket (hatched May 2022) are now 3 years old.
🦆 Princess Ducks Ariel, Cinderella, Moana, and Snow turn 4 on May 17.
🐇 Rabbit Ziggy celebrates his 6th birthday on May 18.
🐐 Goat Crick turns 12 years old on May 17.
🫏 Mini-Donkey Muslo reaches an amazing milestone—30 years old on May 20!

We are saddened to share that our beloved peacock, Colonel Sanders, has passed away. A proud and graceful presence in the Barnyard, Colonel Sanders was deeply loved by students and staff alike. His beauty, character, and spirit will be dearly missed.

🐾 May in the Barnyard

This month, students are exploring how animals grow, adapt, and thrive. Our focus includes care, adaptation, and conservation.

🦖 4th & 5th Grade: Students are wrapping up their flower dissection lab and investigating plant reproduction, fossils, evolution, and the impact of climate change on animal habitats. To culminate, they’ll design habitat simulations that synthesize their learning about adaptation, survival, and ecosystems.
🦎 2nd & 3rd Grade + Kindergarten: Students are studying nutrition in humans and animals, exploring how food choices affect health. They’ll analyze the diets of our Barnyard animals and complete a final project designing care plans that meet each animal’s dietary and environmental needs.
🌱 1st Grade: First graders are nurturing lima bean seedlings while learning about planting, germination, and growth cycles. They’re also exploring species classification—how scientists name and group living things—and will end the year with a harvest celebration that brings their learning home.
🪺 Preschool & TK: Our youngest scientists are learning how animals raise their young—building nests, caring for eggs, and protecting their babies.

[Science & Nature Center on Instagram →]

📅 Important May-June Dates

See the Full WHPS Calendar

School Wide Events

May 5–9: Teacher Appreciation Week
May 16: Spring Extracurricular Classes End
May 26: Memorial Day – WHPS Closed
June 5: Last Day of Preschool
June 6: WHPS Closed for Summer Camp Set-Up
June 9: Summer Camp Begins!

Oxnard Campus Events

May 1: Open House from 4:00–6:00 PM (ALL students off campus before 3 PM)
May 7: PAWS Meeting at 6:30 PM (on campus)
May 13: TK & Kindergarten Orientation from 2:30–3:30 PM
May 14: First Grade Orientation from 2:30–3:30 PM
May 19–23: ERB Testing for Grades 3–5
May 20: Second & Third Grade Orientation from 2:30–3:30 PM
May 21: Fourth & Fifth Grade Orientation from 2:30–3:30 PM
May 27: Handel’s Ice Cream “Fun”-raiser
May 29: ETK Promotion Ceremony for Room 5 at 10:45 AM
May 29: ETK Promotion Ceremony for Room 10 at 1:00 PM
May 30: Elementary Parent Appreciation Assembly & Breakfast from 8:00–8:45 AM
May 30: Kindergarten Stepping-Up Ceremony from 1:00–2:00 PM
June 3: Fifth Grade Culmination Ceremony at 6:00 PM (students arrive by 5:30 PM)
June 3: Last Day on Campus for Elementary School (picnic is off campus on June 4)
June 4: Elementary All-School Picnic at the Park (watch for email with details)
June 5: Elementary Teacher Prep Day – No Elementary School (or childcare)
June 5: Last Day of Preschool
June 6: WHPS Closed for Summer Camp Set-Up

Collins Campus Events

May 5: Mariachi Performance (sponsored by PAG)
May 6: Final PAG Meeting at 7:30 PM (on Zoom)
May 10: Parents’ Night Out at Sagebrush Cantina from 6:00–9:00 PM
May 29: Reptacular Reptile Show (sponsored by PAG)
May 31: End of Year Party from 10:00 AM–12:30 PM
June 4: ETK Promotion Ceremony for Room 10 at 10:00 AM
June 5: Last Day of Preschool
June 6: WHPS Closed for Summer Camp Set-Up