Congratulations!

To Alice Yang and Zhiyong Huang, Grand Prix Winners at the Music-Fest who recently performed in the Carnegie Hall, their families and their teacher Ms. Nina Arabuli!
To Sloane Blue, a 96% winner of the Kangaroo Math Olympiad (grade 3) and her teacher, Ms. Elena Shtraks! (A previous teacher Ms. Natalia Kamenetskaya.)

Special Issue: From Our History

Irina Lopukhina (1939-2017)
Russian and Speech Therapy
I remember when, before school was started, at one of the music lessons for young kids, I introduced a song based on a Russian tongue-twister. The kids' performance was not even close :) It occurred to me that they would actually benefit from Russian instruction, including pronunciation. At that point I invited Irina Lupokhina to teach Russian - and it was delightful.
Irina Solomonovna was a well-known speech therapist back in Leningrad, author of several books for language and general children development. The title of her book that became classic, "Речь, Ритм, Движение - стихи, игры и упражнения для гармоничного развития детей" (Speech Therapy: Language, Rhythm, Movement. Poems, games and exercises for harmonious development) reflects her teaching philosophy: language development is interconnected with fine and gross motion. I even remember her referring young kids to ... swimming lessons to normalize their breathing prior to trying to address their speech delay. Her "activities" are joyful, so the kids love them and want to repeat them again and again; I remember those enthusiastic yells, "Яблоко! Яблоко! Ублоко! Ублоко! Тыблоко! Тыблоко" (a-pple, oo-ple, you-pple) and a very efficient results.
Irina's legacy continues to be an important source for our language teachers in creating engaging, efficient lessons, year after year bringing joy into a difficult endeavor of mastering language.

ALEKSANDRA KHEYFITS, Math

I believe the best compliment that Aleksandra that received came from Elan R., her 6 yo student: "When I come to your lessons, MY HEAD right away STARTS THINKING".
Isn't it what real math lessons are all about?..
Aleksandra was the first teacher in the Do-Re-Mi except for myself, before I actually started the school - for a very practical reason that she's my mom and she was coming to my home weekly anyway, to help with the baby :)
Leningrad Pedagogical Institute’s graduate, professional math teacher with almost 40 years in public schools in Kharkov, back in 1970's she became involved in a "field testing" of the "System of Developmental Education" by Ehlkonin-Davydov (https://externat.foxford.ru/polezno-znat/razvivayushchaya-sistema-ehlkonina-davydova) run by the National Academy of Еducational Sciences in 70 schools around the country. Her school in Kharkov was one of the "lab schools" for this endeavor.
In her article for one of the parenting magazines in America, Aleksandra explained, "If a child is a capable athlete, but he never runs, jumps, throws a ball etc - you will never even know that he's a capable athlete.

Same with the brain. No matter what a child's inborn aptitudes, they need to be developed - otherwise they will just remain a potential and never become actual abilities." Thanks to Aleksandra, our math program from the very start was focusing on logical thinking, and we cherish this approach since then.

After ten years, Aleksandra retired in 2011.
Many of her students, who are in college or beyond college now, warmly remember her lessons.

IRINA ZINKEVICH, Early Childhood Development
When I decided to start a school, I asked the parents to refer to me amazing teachers - from personal experience. Irina was one of these first teachers.
She graduated from Leningrad Herzen's State Pedagogical Institute with MS in Natural Sciences and was working in a public school for 10 years. Upon arrival to the USA, she was a docent in Brooklyn Aquarium and Brooklyn Botanical Garden, at the same time working with young Russian-speaking children. Irina created a lot of educational games, when children were learning concepts through movement, through doing, through active participation. Kids were fascinated. This was the beginning of our 3-hour "combo" program for the young.

EKATERINA KARDONOVA, Art

Ekaterina Kardonova was teaching ART at the Do-Re-Mi for 13 years, 2006-2019. With a M.A. in Fine Arts from Moscow Pedagogical University, she brought the best classical tradition to our art classroom. Not only dozens of her students got an invaluable first-hand experience in classical art, but also, in 2019, one of her students, Maria Gronowska, was admitted to École de Condé in Paris, France to study Conservation and Restoration and started working professionally during the lockdown.

Katya is an avid landscape and portrait painter who has honed her skills for fine detail from her classical training. Her working experience includes installation of art in several public settings including the Tropicana Pavilion in Atlantic City, the Palm restaurants, and the Suraya restaurant in Philadelphia. In addition she has steadily worked to build a portfolio of commissioned portraits and figurative compositions in her New Jersey studio, https://www.kardonova.com/

**Memorial Day Weekend**
Saturday, May 28 - Monday, May 30
No lessons
**20-years Anniversary Recital and Teachers Acknowledgements**
Sunday, June 12

**Last Day of Spring Semester**
For Art, Chess, English, Math and Russian: Thursday, June 23
For Piano, Singing and all Instruments: Sunday, June 26

**First Day of Summer Semester**
Monday, June 27

Summer Registration for Day CAMPS and Weekly LESSONS is in Progress

Thank You for Helping Us Help Others

This Spring, among our recepients there were a lot of Ukrainian organizations and causes:

https://unitedhelpukraine.org/ for Medical Help and Humanitarian Relief for Front Lines
Cash for Refugees Inc.
Pediatric hospital # 6 in Kharkiv
A shipment of knee pads to Donetsk region
Soldiers’ boots collected by Kharkiv mothers for their sons
Chessed, a Jewish organization that provides food in Ukraine
Tikva US (“Tikva” means “Hope” in Hebrew) to help with evacuation of Odessa Orphanage and others;

And to https://shivsthirdeye.org/ - the organization that supports mental health in adolescence - in memory of Shiv Kulkarni, our past student.

We Conducted Fundraisers

Ukrainian Pysanky - egg-decorating workshop to benefit “Titmouse yellow and blue”, an Ukrainian children’s magazine for refugees. Thank you, Natalia Bessonova for conduscting this workshop!