Happy Summer! :)

Wow! What a fun last day of Kindergarten we had! We celebrated with a popsicle party and a "Happy" Dance! Here is a video that we hope makes you very "Happy!" We also included pictures from our popsicle party. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think. We hope you all have a very Happy Summer! :)

Shine Your Light, Share Your Song

In order to make our Music Around the World experiences even bigger and better this year, I wanted to find a way to provide my students with an opportunity to go out into the community and share their songs with our friends in our neighborhood. I also wanted to provide them with the opportunity to hear some of my very talented orchestra friends play their songs for them. So with the love and support of our orchestra director, Mark Hill, we created this program entitled, "Shine Your Light, Share Your Song." During this very special evening of music, my students opened the show with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and closed our show with "Shine On", our theme song for our Find Your Light service project. Between these two pieces some of my dearest friends took a moment and shared their songs with my students. My students also shared our Find Your Light service project with the audience and provided them with the opportunity to purchase "Cookies for Quarters", after the show. Here is what I hoped our audience was able to take away with them that night:

Music is magical. It can move you to fight for something that you believe in, dissolve you into tears, and send you soaring over the rainbow. It is a universal language that we all share. In a world that often feels so divided it is the one great connector that reminds us that on the inside we are all the same. Each one of us has been blessed with a very special gift...a light inside us that has been lit to shine in our world and make our world just a little bit brighter...a song to share so that others might have hope for tomorrow. On this night we celebrated the power of music and this amazing gift that we have been blessed with. These are our songs...may you feel light shinning through them as well.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_CGJElEYcj8VnJEb2xuM091Vm8/view?usp=sharing

Music Around the World Celebration Night

I was blessed this school year to be able to host our second year of Music Around the World with our Kindergarten-Second Grade students here at Watson MST. Together with fifty-six of our talented students, we learned about the different songs and instruments that countries around our world have to offer. After enjoying our Music Around the World Club together for six weeks, we had the opportunity to present everything that we had learned to our parents and school family at our Music Around the World Celebration Night. I was so very proud of our boys and girls! They did a fantastic job! I want to thank our school family, our friends, and our wonderful Watson families for joining us in this celebration by attending our performance and showing us all such great love and support. In conjunction with our Music Around the World Club, we participated in a service project benefiting Josh Groban's Find You Light Foundation. Working together for a special cause, my Kindergarten class and my Music Around the World Club, sold "Cookies for Quarters" at all of our music events here at Watson this year. My Music Around the World Club also sold dvds of their performance to help raise funds for this important service project. I am excited to announce that we made $3,000! That means in the three years that we have partnered with Josh's Find Your Light Foundation, we have made a total of $6,000! I can not wait to see how Josh Groban's Find Your Light Foundation can use this money to help students around the world who might not be blessed with the music opportunities that we have experienced here at Watson. You might also have noticed our super cool Find Your Light t-shirts that we wore during our performance. Find Your Light Foundation did an amazing job of creating these for us this year. We decided to have a bit of fun when we gave them to our kids. If you would like to see how we surprised them, check it out here. (Disclaimer---Josh's voice is provided by my Dad. Josh was out of the country at the time, and I thought that he would rather sound a bit Texan than like a girl, so my Dad was kind enough to fill in for him.) We could not be more grateful for the shirts. My sweet kids love them and have been wearing them on Fridays ever since they received them! Thank you for allowing me the great privilege of working with your wonderful students and celebrating the universal language of music together. I had a wonderful time, and I look forward to watching our students as they continue to "Find Their Light" and "Shine On"! Here is a link to our program and some pictures from this exciting event.

Music Around the World Celebration Night
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_CGJElEYcj8bzJyZGMzdmhwS3c/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_CGJElEYcj8S0FkV1NVZ2hmWFk/view?usp=sharing

Slide Show

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_CGJElEYcj8cDJNb0x6SVhLbnM/view?usp=sharing

Kindergarten Awards Ceremony

What an amazing day! I could not be more proud of my sweet students today. They have worked so very hard to learn so much this year. From reading and writing to solving math problems and learning to be good friends, this year has been full of wonderful experiences that we will never forget. We have had so much fun together this year going on field trips, participating in project based learning experiences, and helping others through service projects.  It is so hard to let my kids move on, but they are ready! I know that they are going to be fabulous First Graders! You have all been such a wonderful blessing to me this year! I wish you the best in First Grade! :)

Today we celebrated our accomplishments, our friendships, and our Watson Kindergarten family! Here are some pictures from our exciting day and a link to our slide show from the year:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_CGJElEYcj8TEtfdFJnNElCaVk/view?usp=sharing