In-Person Early Learning Openings Available

New Horizons Academy is still accepting students, Preschool through Second Grade, for both its Wauseon and Toledo, Ohio campuses. New Horizons Academy’s Early Intervention Services include; Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Conductive Education and Behavioral Supports, to serve its’ special needs students.

New Horizons Academy plans to hold in-person classes for students, five days a week during the 2020-2021 school year following health department guidelines.

New Horizons Academy’s early learning classes focus on foundational skills necessary for your child’s future education. Your student’s day is filled with a variety of activities that promote skills so that they learn naturally.

Specialized programming allows students to rotate through classes gaining foundational skills. Structured set-up within each room helps develop consistent expectations for your child. In this focused environment they are supported by a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) who oversees all aspects of your child’s educational growth and development. Our BCBA also supervises our Ohio licensed staff delivering targeted instruction in Language and Literacy, Foundations in Math, Fine Motor and Handwriting, and Play and Social Skills.

Student Supports with Applied Behavior Focus:

Positive reinforcement for skill acquisition
Visual schedules and visual supports for expectations and routines
Differential reinforcement for appropriate behavior
Modeling skills
Breaking down skills into small steps
Data-driven decision making

Our early learning students’ days are filled with many activities to promote generalization of skills in a natural way. Children receive instruction focused on:

Language and Literacy (Including embedded speech services)
Foundations in Math
Fine Motor and Hand Writing
Play and Social Skills

In these classes children complete activities targeting individual needs with the goal of completing independent activities. The second portion of the school day revisits all of the concepts taught in the morning rotations using a more natural, less intense approach such as during specials, circle time, and group games.

NHA Students Growing, Learning & Having Fun with MobyMax!

Since the coronavirus school closure, New Horizons Academy has been using the comprehensive, individualized, online MobyMax educational program to help serve our kindergarten through eighth graders. MobyMax meets the students’ educational, curriculum, and IEP needs while still being fun, imaginative, and rewarding. MobyMax is proven effective! In a 2018 large-scale research study of 4,000 students, MobyMax helped students learn 53% more than students without it. With just 20 minutes of instruction a day, some students advanced a full grade level. According to Tech & Learning, “The study results offer particular hope for students who are below grade level and need to catch up quickly and effectively. Teachers who need differentiated solutions to help struggling students can also reliably turn to MobyMax for personalized tools like built-in IEP reporting and continuous progress monitoring to find and fix learning gaps.” That’s what the experts say about MobyMax and why NHA selected it.

But let’s hear from one of our students, who earned a MobyMax badge the first week of the school closure. “Thank you, I deserve that, because I have been doing really good in science, CRAZY good!” And he and all of our students have been doing “CRAZY good” on MobyMax. In the first week alone, they studied and worked 16,850 minutes or 280.8 hours. So far, over 95% of our kindergarten through 8th graders have been working hard on their reading, math, science, and social studies. A big thank you goes out to Title I Reading Specialist Ellen Rupp, who has been coordinating and tracking the MobyMax lessons; and most importantly for our students, she has been awarding their badges, extra games, and rewards! If you haven’t already asked your child how they are doing on MobyMax or asked them what badges they have earned, please sit down with them, and watch them rock out and learn on MobyMax this week.

Virtual Learning Presents Unique Challenges & Opportunities

This is clearly not how we wanted to be serving our students. No one ever envisioned that we would be facing such a unique challenge in how we are allowed to interact with each other. Thankfully, our paras, teachers and therapists have been up for the challenge and have enjoyed their opportunities to to get to know our students in whole new ways. They have enjoyed being able to share their own children with their students as they’ve done virtual lessons, read stories and played together through the computer.

We are SO PROUD of the perseverance and communication we’ve seen from our staff. Their passion and commitment to our students and families has been inspiring. We have loved seeing the paraprofessionals stepping in and making videos, running lessons or leading story times. The entire team came together with their concerns and ideas and were able to work as such a close team that it came together as something we hope you can all be proud of. We are so very thankful for this amazing team.

We are SO BLESSED by the support we’ve have from the families we serve. Thank you for working with us in finding creative ways to stay in touch! We know this has been hard on you. Thank you for helping make time for us to have our “silly” video incentives and spend time together with staff. Your commitment to this process has been crucial in helping our students to stay motivated while completing school work from home! It has been so much fun getting to know more about our students and their families (and even pets) through this crazy process.

We are happy to report that Taco (our retired therapy dog) has even been getting the opportunity to reconnect with students too!

Tips for Easing Children’s Anxiety About the Coronavirus

During these difficult times with the coronavirus, closed schools, and the Stay at Home Order, many of our NHA students are having a great deal of anxiety, depression, and emotional concerns.

Here are a few tips for easing your children’ s anxiety about the coronavirus:

Get the facts about the virus, and talk with your children about it.
Ask them what they already know about it and what scares them about it.
Share that it is OK to be anxious and scared but that we are doing everything that we can as a family, school, and country to keep them safe.
Turn off the television and computers, and spend time together. Media overload may add to rather than reduce children’s anxiety.
With school closed, establish a new home routine to help them regain a sense of control (Wake up, get dressed, brush teeth, eat breakfast, go to a designated spot in the house for schoolwork, take a walk, finish schoolwork, eat lunch, etc.). Maintain a consistent bedtime and wake up time.
Eat healthy, and get enough sleep and exercise.
Encourage children to do something they enjoy as a stress break or to cope with an anxiety attack.
Help them to stay connected with their teacher, para, and classmates through google classes, phone calls, and teleconferences through Skype, Zoom, Facetime, or Google Meet, Hangout, or Class.
Help them write letters to family or friends, so they can look forward to getting the mail every day.
Stay positive. Talk about all the things people are doing together to help each other and to stay healthy.

If they are still having trouble talking to you or you don’t know what to say or do, please encourage them to reach out to someone whether that is their mental health counselor through a teleconference, a social worker over the phone, or the Teen Line website.

Please remind your kids that they are not alone!

2019-20 NHA Yearbook Sponsorship

We are so thankful to our sponsors for making this past year’s yearbook project possible.

Our goal is to once again provide our students and their parents with this very special memento. We hope to raise funds through sponsors in order to keep the costs of the yearbooks as low as possible, so that more students and their families will be able to afford one.

We invite you to consider being a sponsor of this very special project!

We also gladly accept general donations for those not interested in being recognized as sponsors.

COST: $150.00

This level of sponsorship includes a 3.75″ x 4.25″ (approx.) color advertisement in the yearbook, recognition on our website and recognition on social media with a link to your business’ social media page or website.

COST: $90.00

This level of sponsorship includes a business card sized color advertisement in the yearbook and recognition on our website.

COST: $30.00

This level of sponsorship includes your business or name listed in the yearbook and website.

SPONSORSHIP NOTES

Advertisements must be received by April 30, 2020.
Ads can be emailed in .jpg/.jpeg format to karab@sarasgarden.org.
Ads may be dropped off at Sara’s Garden or New Horizons Academy.

Sara’s Garden is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization and your donation is tax-deductible within the guidelines of U.S. law. To claim a donation as a deduction on your U.S. taxes, please keep your email donation receipt as your official record. We’ll send it to you upon successful completion of your donation.

NHA Students Take a Bow

NHA Students Take a Bow, Because We’re All Just a Bunch of FLAKES!

Take a bow New Horizons Academy (NHA) students, teachers, and Christmas Musical Coordinator Melissa Valentine! You all put on a dynamite show, and reminded us that we are all unique, have all different talents, gifts, and abilities; and in the end, we’re all just a bunch of (snow)FLAKES.

On December 10 at Pettisville Missionary Church, NHA preschool to high school students shivered, shimmied, sang, and shook their booties for a full house of over 500 parents, friends, family members, and even community well-wishers. They put on FLAKES, NHA’s second annual Christmas musical, directed by music teacher Valentine. During the musical, the North Wind started blowing, and the temperatures started dropping and dropping down to 10 below zero. A big blizzard hit the stage with a cool bunch of jazzy, finger-snappin’ snowflakes. The Flakes and Snirts helped the Littlest Snowflake to see how no two flakes are alike and that we are all special in our own way. This important lesson culminated with the refrain:

You’re one, one in a million! No other ‘neath the sun. You’re one, one in a million! And the reasons you’re special are a million in one. Just one in a million, but you’re a million in one!

Without Melissa, this Christmas miracle would not have been possible. Without all of her hard work, vision, dedication, and creativity, the show would not have gone on. It was her inspiration, her brain child. She found or created the absolute perfect role for each of our students’ abilities and personalities and corralled and coached over 100 of our special needs kids through the entire Christmas show. Melissa was truly our miracle worker!

Just as everyone is special and unique in their own way, so everyone helped make this musical a night to remember from our students to our staff to our family and even community. Thank you NHA and Northwest Ohio for making our students feel like stars (and FLAKES)!

If you missed this special Christmas show, check out all of the musical pictures on the New Horizons Academy’s Facebook page.

NHA Now Accepting Applications for 2020-21

New Horizons Academy is NOW accepting new special education student applications for the 2020-2021 school year for both its Wauseon and Holland/Springfield campuses. Call TODAY to begin the enrollment process for August’s classes.

We are very excited to be accepting applications for NEW special education students for the 2020-21 school year for our preschool to high school classes. If you are looking for the right special education placement, a place where your child feels like he or she fits in, consider New Horizons Academy (NHA).

At NHA, kids come first. We exist for our students; our students do not exist for the school. Students don’t have to fit into the classes. The class and program are made to meet the individual student’s needs. Please visit us, and see if we are the right fit for your special needs student.

NHA’s Wauseon & Holland Campuses:

Are regional preschool to 12th grade special education schools.
Have less than a 1:2 staff to student ratio.
Specialize in individualized, personalized education.
Provide strong academics, community involvement, life skills classes, vocational skills, work site placements, and job coaches.
Offer early intervention, conductive education (CE), sensory integration, occupational therapy, speech/language pathology & music instruction.
Participate in the College Credit Plus (CCP) Program.
Are Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) Schools.
Accept both the Autism & Jon Peterson Scholarships (Categories 5 & 6) as payment in full.
Serve students from 9 counties and over 20 different school districts.

Our mission is to help your child achieve the greatest independence possible through early intervention programs, classes, community activities, life skills training, vocational placements, and job coaching.

Steps to Enrollment:

Call the school for more information.
Submit a copy of your child’s IEP & ETR for review.
Schedule a school tour, interview, and student assessment.
If accepted, complete student enrollment paperwork, and provide proof of residency.
Complete and accept the Autism or Jon Peterson Scholarship.

For more information on New Horizons Academy or to schedule a tour, call Admissions Coordinator Ronda Rupp at 419-335-7272, email rondar@sarasgarden.org, or log onto newhorizonsacademy.org.

Thanks for our Thanksgiving Dinner!

Thank you, Wauseon Machine Employee Driven Charity (W.E. Care Fund) Committee, for making Thanksgiving SO SPECIAL for our New Horizons Academy (NHA) students! W.E. Care’s donation made this year’s Thanksgiving luncheon possible.

On November 25, all of NHA’s students will sit down together to share a traditional meal of turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, salad, corn, and a roll and share what they are TRULY THANKFUL for (No one needs to pack a lunch.). This is an opportunity for them to think about who is important in their lives and to truly share of themselves in decorating the hall or serving their fellow students and teachers. This is one of those school traditions, which helps us to remember and be grateful for such a loving, caring school family! To see pictures from last year’s Thanksgiving feast, click HERE.

Thank you, Wauseon Machine’s W.E. Care Fund, for helping our students to feel such a part of a caring, thankful community!

2019 NHA Christmas Program

“Get ready to shiver, shimmy and shake! The North wind is starting to blow and temperatures are dropping to 10 below… zero, that is! A big blizzard is on the way as a cool bunch of jazzy, finger-snappin’ snowflakes take center stage. What a glistening sight. Uh Oh! Here comes the snowplow!”

The 2019 NHA Christmas program will be taking place on Tuesday, December 10th at 6pm. It will again be held Pettisville Missionary Church in Pettisville, Ohio with overflow parking available at nearby Pettisville school. It will feature students from New Horizons Academy and will include the musical Flakes! as the main event of the evening.

Join the fun as the Flakes and Snirts help the Littlest Snowflake see how no two flakes are alike and we are all special in our own way.

Artwork shown here is by some of our talented students!

Welcome Christmas (An Event for Families)

Tired of feeling stressed, rushed, and joyless at Christmas? Then “Welcome Christmas” is for you. A time to slow down, relax, and focus on what truly matters during Advent and at Christmas. Families from St. John Lutheran Church, south of Archbold, will be hosting this event at our facilities.

Event Date:	Wednesday, December 4, 2019
Event Time:	6:00 – 7:30 p.m.
Event Location:	The Hope Center at Sara’s Garden, Wauseon, Ohio
Event Cost:	$0 ~ FREE

The evening includes supper and a fun family project to help you “Welcome Christmas” during Advent and Christmas caroling! Families will be creating 20 simple ornaments to put on small Christmas tree (provided) every day between the event and Christmas day to count down to Christmas and learn about its true meaning!

To help us prepare how much food is needed, please preregister by Friday, November 8 by completing the registration form below. If you have any questions, please contact Matt Rychener (mattr@sarasgarden.org) at 419.335.7272 or Jennifer Grime (grimejen@gmail.com) at 419.267.5266.