Sunday, June 13, 2021

Find Your Light Foundation Service Project 2020-2021

 



For the past eight years, my Kindergartners and I have had the special blessing to partner with Josh Groban and his "Find Your Light" Foundation to help raise funds to provide music and instruments to public schools who would not otherwise have these items. In our eight year journey together, we have raised over $27, 500 for Josh's Find Your Light Foundation. 


In addition to teaching Kindergarten, I am blessed to have the opportunity to teach a Music

Around the World class, as well. Our enrichment class provides our Kindergarten-Second

Grade students an opportunity to learn about the different songs and instruments that

countries around our world have to offer. After creating instruments out of recyclable

materials and learning a song from each country, my children present a Music Around the

World Celebration Night for our Watson families. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 we were

not able to host our Music Around the World Celebration Night and our Music Around the

World classes were all virtual this year. However, our students still very much enjoyed an

opportunity to continue this enrichment program even if it was virtual this year.


Despite the challenges COVID-19 created, we were able to host monthly events for our Watson Wildcats which benefited our service project, as well. These included a Popsicles and Pinwheel Pick-Up event, Dream Catchers and Little Debbie Drive Through, Snowman and Smores Event, Find Your Light Paint Night, Watson Movie Night and Cook Out, and a Surprise Treat and Summer Send-Off event. While this year has been one full of many challenges, the one thing that I could always point to as a beacon of light for us was our Find Your Light Foundation service project. I could offer our kids opportunities for creativity and camaraderie in a world where there were times we could not even be in the same room together. While most of our events were virtual or drive through opportunities, they were still moments of joy for our kids. Our Find Your Light Foundation service project has always been our opportunity to help others around the world, but this year it also served as a blessing to our Watson Wildcats, as well.  Check out this highlight video of these special moments we shared this year all for a very important cause: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z4OkoXF9Z-e53Mm5gJtVj9qMwiVNo1to/view?usp=sharing


I am proud to announce that we raised $2, 500 despite the difficulties we faced this year. Because of you and your support for our service project, along with your very generous donations, we were able to continue to make Find Your Light Foundation proud! I would like to thank our Watson family and friends for your unending love that you have shown us and the dedication to help us make this possible. Without you, none of this would have happened, and I am forever grateful for your kindness! 

Through our service project, we have learned about the importance of giving and how little people can do big things to help our world. Thank you for helping us to make a difference in our world by helping a child to “Find his Light!” I can not thank you enough for that! May we continue to make our world a better place through arts education! May we continue to help others to Find Their Light!

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

Happy Summer!



I cannot thank you enough for sharing your beautiful children with me this year! They have been such blessings to me, and I have learned so very much from them. Despite the many challenges that this year brought us, I am proud to say that our children have thrived and not just survived Kindergarten! While I will miss each and everyone of them next year, I know that they are all going to make fantastic First Graders. I cannot wait to see them as they work hard to "Find Their Light!" Shine bright my little ones! Your mountain awaits!

Love, Miss Todd :) 



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/1UeNeojIWpFFCdgVXbwKzbM4A3Uzd6-jU/view?usp=sharing









Wow! What a fun last day of Kindergarten we had! We celebrated with a popsicle party!  We have included pictures from our popsicle party and one last sweet class picture. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think. We hope you all have a very Happy Summer! :)








Friday, June 4, 2021

Endangered Animals PBL and Dallas Zoo Virtual Visit

 During the past two weeks our Kindergarten students have been hard at work researching endangered animals through a PBL experience. Our students learned about panda bears, polar bears, tigers, elephants, gorillas, and sea turtles. They studied ways to help these endangered animals and then created propaganda to help educate others about the needs of these animals. Then, we took to the hallways and advocated for the protection of our endangered animals as we paraded through our school encouraging our Watson family to help save these animals. We also created commercials which our Watson family viewed in support of our cause. After all of our hard work these past two weeks, we had some fun exploring the Dallas Zoo virtually and seeing the animals that we learned about all week. You can enjoy our parade, commercials, and zoo show below. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think.


Endangered Animals Parade
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ixePRDDMgUsFytULCzUDd1Q-Vuvav5bK/view?usp=sharing


Sea Turtle Commercial--Miss Todd's Class
















Gorilla Commercial--Dr. Mendoza's Class





Dallas Zoo Virtual Field Trip