The Weekly Blink

Every week seems to go by in a blink of an eye. I blink and it’s Friday again! Here’s a summary of some of the progress we have made:

Student Body
Our second round of admissions is closed and we are on track with our enrollment forecast. We are now in rolling admissions and looking towards bringing the kids and families together to create a community. Through a series of social events this summer around the DC area, including a Naturalist Program at Riverbend Park, a trip to the movies to see Tomorrowland and a visit to Gadsby's Tavern Museum and Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum, we hope to provide opportunities for the children and their families to start forming new friendships.

Curriculum

• Homeroom and Community Service period planning is complete. Homeroom activities will encompass announcements and the plan for the week, as well as short lessons on social and emotional intelligence. We’ll be covering topics ranging from mindsets and recognizing anxiety, to accepting differences and understanding cliques. The Community Service hour is a living project, defined and implemented by the students, conducted under the mentorship of the teacher.
  
• We also made significant progress on the elective choices. We defined a preliminary and expansive set of electives for next year. This list was sent to the students for their feedback, which we will incorporate before sending out the list of options to choose from in June.
  
• We’ve started to define the list of activity period clubs by giving students our brainstormed list of possible clubs. Students will be responding with their preferences and additions to the list. This list contains 19 options we came up with, which include choices such as competitions like Destination Imagination, game clubs like Minecraft, outdoor clubs like naturalist club or sports clubs like running club. We can’t wait to see what the kids send back!

Faculty
We have continued working through the selection process for our open positions in Earth Science, Math and Engineering. We don’t have any new updates to report.

Construction
We had our site walkthrough with the general contractor and project team and review of the project plan. Equipment and fixtures are being selected and ordered. Everything is progressing on schedule to the start of construction on Monday, May 18. The next construction update will be the update on May 22.

Communications
On the communications front, we have set up the Ideaventions Academy Facebook page and will begin posting updates on events and construction on the page. Follow us so you get the real-time updates.

Have a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend!