What's New in Kindergarten

The New Book

2008-06-02T12:13:00.000-07:00

Dear parents,

We hope you enjoy this new book we wrote, it is called Bees. Bees by By Room 12 Please read our book (Rachel). I hope you had a good time at the western carnival (Ryan). I hope you have a great time looking at our books (Onika). In our class we are learning subtraction (Jackie). Our moms will look at our books (Selena). Please come to our brunch on June 16th (Trae).

Love,

Room 12

Happy Memorial Day

2008-05-27T19:18:00.001-07:00

Hello Room 12 families,

I can't believe we are already at the end of May. With only 3 weeks left in Kindergarten we have a lot to be proud of. To honor all the hard work our kids have done this year Room 12 will be hosting a Last Day of School Brunch at 10am on Monday June 16th in Room 12. Join us for an hour or two for a lite brunch, brief performance and awards ceremony. Then, we will join Room 2 on the Kinder playground for our Kinder Fair. Brunch is on us but we will need your help and donations to make our fair a success. I will be sending out a volunteer sign up sheet, a brief summary of the activities taking place on that day and a list of items we would appreciate receiving as donations.

Field Trip! Our last field trip of the year will be to the New Children's Museum on Friday June 6th. We could use chaperones for this day of fun. Permission slips and chaperone sign-up sheets will be sent home tomorrow, May 28th.

Library Books due...
Today was our last day to check out books from our school's library. Please remember to return all library book by next Friday, June 6th.

Mission Trails Park trip We had a lot of fun at MTRP, despite the rain we took a nice 5k hike around the park and then returned to the visitor's center where we enjoyed lunch, an educational movie and time in the learning center.

2008-05-06T12:13:00.001-07:00

Crazy Broccoli by by Room 12

2008-05-06T12:01:00.000-07:00

Cute Penguins by By Room12

Our New Books

2008-05-06T11:47:00.001-07:00

Crocodiles by by Room 12

May is here already!

2008-05-02T15:20:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday! I am so sorry I haven't been keeping up with the blog this past month. It has been a hectic one with the hearing for the lay-offs and the rally. I want to thank all of you for supporting me and the other teachers at Bay Park who are affected by the budget cuts.

We have been busy little bees in Room 12, we are learning addition now and writing up a storm. In science we are learning about fish, worms, snails, and isopods (also known as "roly-polies"). Our garden looks great and we are reading like first graders. I am excited to see the progress your children have made over the last few months but sad at the realization that they will soon be going on to first grade.

Tomorrow is the Kids Magic Mile, I was hoping to attend but will be celebrating three birthdays inlcuding my 87 year grandpa's.
Open House is next Thursday and I hope all of you are able to make it to Bay Park. Your children will be your tour guides as you visit our classroom and our garden.

I hope you all have a restful weekend.

2008-04-06T11:55:00.000-07:00

Happy Sunday room 12ers!

We had so much fun at Sea World on Friday! I would like to thank all of the chaperones who accompanied us and ask that they send me any and all photos they took. I would like to add them to our Kindergarten website, which you can find on the Bay Park site.

Our class is moving along at a wonderfully fast pace. We have recently begun the new math chapter on Measurement. We just wrapped up a few week unit with Mrs. Bailey on Nutrition and plants which lead perfectly into our work in the garden. The students helped me transplant some new flowers into our flower beds and they have been working deligently in our vegetable garden. We found a grasshopper, ladybugs and caterpillars last week. Our students are learning the value of hard work and the responsibility it takes to maintain a garden, these "teachable moments" tied in perfectly with out lesson on Cesar Chavez. In rotations, both Mrs. Schwab and myself will be teaching science. I will be teaching a short unit on fish and she has graciously stepped up to teach the lessons on worms and snails.

Next Saturday Kappa Delta Pi, an international honor society in education at SDSU, will be hosting a Reading Fair in Balboa Park. As president of this organization I will be there all day and would like to invite you all to attend. There will be read alouds, crafts, music, face painting, a raffle, and magician. The event starts at 10, doors close at 4. Bring the whole family! The fair will be held on the west side of the park just north of the Lawn Balling facility. Afterwards you can enjoy a nice stroll through Balboa Park and visit museums and maybe even the zoo.

Have a great day and we will see you tomorrow.

Friday March28th

2008-03-28T13:21:00.000-07:00

Hello parents of room 12,

I am so sorry for my absence this afternoon. My family has had a difficult few months and unfortunately my grandmother is taking it very hard. Sadly, today my cousin lost her baby to complications with her pregnancy and I had to leave early to take my grandmother to the hsopital. I am very thankful to Mrs. Heinze for covering me this afternoon and to the wonderful office staff here for working with me and their support in this very sad time.
As many of you have heard I received a pink slip this month due to budget cuts within our district. While I am keeping a positive outlook I know that the next few months will be difficult ones while I wait to see if my pink slip is rescinded. I will be out for 3 consecutive days next month to attend a legal hearing regarding this subject. I want to assure you that our class will continue to run smoothly and that your children are my number one priority. I hope that you understand how difficult it is for me to not be here.

On a little note, Mr. Formo and I have completed the Kindergarten website and it has been linked to our Bay Park site. You can access information regarding the Kindergarten classes, view pictures from field trips and access our class blog through this site. Simply go to the Bay Park School website and click on Kindergarten on the lower left-hand side.
This week our students worked exceptionally hard and produced amazing work. I would like to invite all of you to view our Little Red Hen dioramas at your convenience. They look great.

Its Almost Spring!

2008-03-12T11:40:00.000-07:00

Hello friends and families of Room 12,

Can you believe that Spring Break is right around the corner? The next three days are minimum days to accomodate parent/teacher conferences. I will not be meeting with all of you this time, I have decided to only meet with the parents of students who have yet to reach grade level in one or more areas. This allows me more time to meet with parents and to plan/prep activities as I begin to differentiate my instruction even more. Our class, unlike most Kindergarten classes, has moved to a learning contract style. This means that each student has their own contract of tasks that need to be completed every day and then a handful of extra activities they can complete as they finish their "must haves". This allows students to work at their own pace. However, since not all students learn the same or work at the same pace each students' workload will be individualized based on their abilities.

Next week Bay Park will be observing spring break, campus will be closed.

We have had a very busy winter. We are moving along quckly in Math and our writing is really improving. Mrs. Bailey, one of our garden growing partners, has begun teaching Nutrition on Wednesdays. The kids are having fun learning about healthy foods and where they come from.

Our garden is in full bloom. We recently harvested our broccoli, lettuce and some celery. We had a delicious salad party. I couldn't believe how much the kids ate! We are hoping to harvest the rest of our celery soon.

The Blog Rocks!

2008-02-20T14:33:00.001-08:00

Dear parents,

We learned about bugs today. (Onika)

We learned about spiders. We had fun. Miss Allen is sick :( (Rachel)

We wrote our own book:

Bugs and Insects

Tomorrow is our 100th day celebration. (Zavien)

We are going to show our families the best work we can do. (Selena)

Tomorrow on the 100th day of school everyone will bring in their collections of 100 things. (Derek)

In our new Math chapter we are learning about money. We did our N book today. (Margaret)

In our book we learned about insects. We love school. Rachel came back today.(Evan)

Today we drew pictures of insects. (Ryan)

Today some people learned about ants. (Charlie)

We learned about pennies. (Gaby)

We dyed fabric with Ms. Schwab. (Laura)

We drew a picture of what we want to be when we are grown-ups with Miss Allen. (Kyle)

We had a lot of fun with Miss Allen this week. (Jackie)

Love,

Room 12 (Marie-Anne)

Our New Book

2008-02-13T12:27:00.000-08:00

Dear parents,

Happy Valentine's Day! We have had a busy week as usual. Today we wrote part of the blog entry together. I hope to do this with the class more often. I think it is a great way to show them that our writing has a purpose and an audience. I am posting this blog a few days early because I know tomorrow will be chaotic after our Valentine celebration. I'd like to thank all of you for donating items to our event. I know the class will have a great time. Remember, there is no school Friday the 15th or Monday the 18th in observance of Presidents' Day. We will resume class on Tuesday.
Miss Katie was vey happy to get her flowers and read her card this morning. The bouquet looked beautiful and the childrens' drawings and hand written notes made a nice book for her to remember her 17th (not 16th-oops!) birthday.

Don't forget! next Thursday is our 100th Day celebration. We will start our day with the other kindergarteners in the auditorium and then return to our classroom for centers. I still need 2 volunteers to help me in the afternoon on that day. I have a sign up sheet posted on the door. Have a great holiday weekend and enjoy the notes from our class...

Dear Parents,

We made this book. I hope you enjoy it. (-Evan)

Sea Creatures by Students of Room 12

We did a lot of fun stuff this week. (-Onika)
We learned about sea creatures. (-Zavien)
We did writing in our journals and we did math. (-Margaret)
We did Free Choice Centers before going home. (-Charlie)
We had a great day at school. (-Selena)
We did lots of stuff. (-Ryan)
Today is Miss Katie's birthday. (-Derek)
We made 3 books. (-Vanessa)
We hope you like our books. (-Rachel)

Love,
Room 12 (-Gaby)

February 4th-8th

2008-02-08T12:33:00.000-08:00

Hi family and friends,

I am excited to launch our new blog. I think this will be a great way for us to all keep in touch and for you to share Bay Park news with family and friends. This week has been a busy one for us, as usual. We started with Laura's birthday party. And we got to watch Ms Allison on The Ellen Degeneres show! We also learned about Groundhog Day and Chinese Lunar New Year. Our week ended with P.E. and a visit to our 3rd grade buddies.

Mr. T introduced a new Character Trait for February: Honesty.

In Math we are learning about numbers 21-30. One activity we did was counting and graphing our Box Tops. We set a classoom goal of 155 Box Tops which should be an easy goal to meet since we already have 75 of them. Keep sending in those BTs! In Language Arts we have begun working on finding the Beginning, Middle and End of stories. We are creating our own books summarizing these three parts of a story.

Today we learned how to use a fun new tool to write and publish books. We will continue to create and publish books together until we are experienced enough to create them on our own. You can view our new book by clicking on the title: The Bug Book by by Room 12
You may need to download a free version of Flash

Here are the latest Run Club tallies:

Charlie: 130 laps
Derek: 110 laps
Evan: 140 laps
Kyle: 100 laps
Rachel: 140 laps
Vanessa: 80 laps (on her way towards her second goal of 10 miles!)

100th Day News:
Don't forget-our collections of 100 items are due next Thursday. We have had a great response to the volunteer request for that day but could still use a few extra hands, if you are available to help please let me know.

Library Books due Tuesday!

The Valentine's Day Student Store will be open next Wednesday after school. You can previw items in the display case outside of the office.

No school Friday 2/15 or Monday 2/18!

Enjoy the holiday weekend.

Hello!

2008-02-05T13:11:00.000-08:00

As some of you might already know I am currently working on my Master's in Educational Technology. In my last class we were introduced to blogs and how they can be used in the classroom. I thought a blog for room 12 would be a great alternative to the weekly newsletter. The following information is from last week's newsletter. Please let me know how you feel about this new idea and whether or not I should make the switch. I can also add images and video to the blog so you can see pictures from our field trips or videos of what goes on in our classroom. Thank you so much.

Dear families,

This week has been a very busy one for Room 12. We are continuing to make progress as writers by learning about Strong sentences. A strong sentence is also known as a compound sentence. When we write strong sentences we combine two ideas with the strong word and. We will continue to write both Strong and Powerful sentences. Mrs. Schwab and I began rotations again. We have been learning about our community in Social Studies and about fabric in Science.
Our trip to the zoo was a blast! Thank you to all of our parents who volunteered to chaperone this field trip.
We have been busy gardeners this week. Carol Baker took the kids into the garden to weed and Allison Rogers helped our class plant tulip bulbs donated to our class by Mrs. Vian.
We have so much going on in the month of February! I can’t wait to get the month started.
I hope you all have a prosperous new year. I am excited to see what 2008 has in store for us.
Website of the month:
http://parenting.kaboose.com/

Take care,
Miss Allen

Important Dates-

February 14th-Valentine’s Day Party
February 15th-18th– No school in observance of President’s Day
February 21st-100th Day Celebration

Run Club News… Valentine’s Day… Box Top Challenge...

Here are the new totals for all my little runners. Keep up the good work. And remember, it’s not too late to join run club. They meet every Tuesday and Thursday morning before school down on the field.
· Charlie = 128 laps
· Derek = 98 laps
· Evan = 143 laps
· Kyle = 104 laps
· Rachel = 110 laps

150 laps = 15 miles

The next goal is 10 miles (100 laps).

Our Valentine’s Day Celebration is scheduled for Thursday the 14th. We will have four adult supervised stations and plenty of treats. If you would like to send your child with Valentine’s for the class I have included a class list below. If you have not signed up to donate an item for our party we are still in need of strawberries, cubed melon and cube pineapple for our fruit kabobs. We also need two more parent volunteers to run the stations.

Our school is right in the middle of our Box Top for Education Challenge. We are collecting Box Tops from participating food and non-food items. The class the collects the most Box Tops wins an ice cream party but I am upping the stakes-for every Box Top that Room 12 turns in I will give the class one marble. We’ve already earned 21 marbles! For a list of participating brands go to

http://www.boxtops4education.com/

100th Day Celebration

On Thursday February 21st we will be celebrating the 100th day of Kindergarten. To honor this special day we will be joining the other Kinder classes and Mrs. Risty’s K/1 Special Day class in the auditorium from 9:30-11:00am. We will be participating in 7 math centers and we need your help! We are in need of two additional parents who can supervise a couple of the centers during this time as well as 5-6 parents who can help in our classroom from 11:45-12:45 as we complete 100th Day themed math activities. Thank you and we look forward to celebrating this important day with you.