Monica Ros School

Red Room News

February 15, 2008

We have had a festive and wonderful week and to top that off we welcomed a new friend to the Red Room this week.  Help me in welcoming Robbie W and his parents Valarie and Robert.  It has been a true pleasure to include Robbie in our class.  Robbie is a child with autism and he has been accompanied by another new friend, his shadow teacher Lauren F.  Robbie and Lauren have both settled into our routines at school and we look forward to sharing more time with them.  There certainly is a lot about autism that we don’t know and many myths as well.  Attached is some information we hope you might find useful when explaining autism to your child.  As members of our community it is important for us and our children to learn to understand and accept the differences in all of us. 

Last week we celebrated the beginning of Chinese New Year.  Families like to welcome the New Year with a clean slate.  Houses are cleaned from top to bottom to remove all traces of the old year and its misfortunes, and to bring good luck for the coming year.  Special attention is paid to the Kitchen God and alters were set up in the home to celebrate passed family members.  Our focus has taken us to make beautiful watercolor lanterns as well as creating good luck fish prints with a real fish.  We are writing Chinese symbols with our unique Zen Boards and we have learned how to say Hello in Chinese Ni-Hao.  Friday we wrapped up our celebration with an authentic Chinese snack and a lantern celebration.  If that isn’t enough celebrating, this week we have three parents to thank for providing us with the loveliest Valentine’s celebration, Wendy_Thurston, Denise_Hansen and Sarah_DelVecchio.  Thank you so much for the fun and yummy party.  We would also like to thank Elizabeth_Moore for providing us with the most beautiful flower arrangement to grace our table.

Yesterday we saw the 3^rd graders musical play American Tales and Heroes about American Tall Tells and Legends.  We feel most fortunate to have such strong connections with the upper grades.  Their ability to role model for us in such positive ways makes the school year so meaningful.  Our second grader buddies are another example of this experience.  We will meet with them today and over the course of the next three months we will seek their help in writing our year end play.  Are your calendars marked?  Our play is scheduled for Friday, May 23^rd at 11am.

 Attention Auction Shoppers, our classroom has elected to present an Arts and Crafts basket at the silent auction.  We need your favorite arts and crafts materials and kits to complete this wonderful basket.  Please bring in your items by Monday, March 3rd!!!  Thank you for helping to support the school in our biggest “fun-raising” event.  You’re going to love our live auction items as well.  Thank you to Elizabeth_Moore and Heidi_Bradbury who are helping us as we create a lovely acrylic garden scene on an 18” x 24” canvas.  Your support means so much to us and the school.  We hope you have your calendars marked for Saturday, March 8^th. As we celebrate you and have a great adult evening as well.  Remember to invite your friends.  Tickets are available in the office. 

Fondly, Kathy_Smith

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.         Dr. Seuss 

January 23, 2008

Hard to believe we are almost entering the last week of January.  We have been busy at work this month with many varied art experiences.  Today we discussed friendship and the act of complimenting each other.  We introduced our “Friend of the Week” program and Noelle was the first friend selected.  The children share their observations of each other noting their special interests and talents.  These comments are illustrated in a poster and book that will go home with the each week’s student. 

Along these lines we have introduced a program called “Second Step”.  It is a curriculum presented in sequence as each unit builds upon skills presented in the previous lessons.  The first unit involved the concept of empathy.  Empathy is an important ingredient in developing pro-social behaviors and being able to solve interpersonal problems successfully.  We begin by giving children a selection of dolls which they use to identify their own feelings and extend this awareness to the feelings of others.  Developing the ability to perceive, predict, and identify with another’s feelings helps children to choose appropriate behaviors and help them develop and maintain friendships.  These lessons involve the use of pictures, posters, puppets, songs, and poems.  Your children can recite “eyes watching, mouths quiet, ears listening, and body still”. 

Thursday, January 31, 2008 is Founder’s Day. We are planning on sharing the little poem “When Clouds Meet” in the school-wide assembly.  Don’t forget to drop by Meyer Hall for the Arts Month exhibit.  Our work will be on display next week, until Friday afternoon at which time it will be taken down.      

Founder’s Day is a fitting end to the month’s activities.  We hope you all take the opportunity to enjoy not only our exhibit in Meyer Hall, but those of the entire school.  Art’s month is meant to be a showcase of the wonderful opportunities in the arts that our children are afforded and one of the traditions that sets Monica Ros apart.  Mrs. Ros felt so strongly about exposing children to creative arts, music, and theater and we still hold true to those ideals today.  We are honored to pay tribute to Mrs. Ros in such a fine way.    Should Mrs. Ros ever pause to look down, she would be proud to have established this lovely place where children still begin their school careers with such a rich and full experience.  We celebrate what would have been her 107^th birthday; she was born 1-30-1901. 

In language arts we began work on our alphabet books.  Even though we started with A we are concentrating on consonant sounds.  They are much easier to detect as beginning, middle, or ending sounds in a word.  Our daily chapter read is getting exciting.  We are traveling with Jack and Annie through the Amazon rainforest.  We have encountered millions of ants, snakes, crocodiles, and a prankster monkey.  We can’t wait to see what happens next.  The Magic Tree House series provides the perfect platform for a little research into these compelling topics.  We have gone back in time and visited the Dinosaurs.  We are saving our visit with the pirates until the years end, June is the time for pirates in the Red Room!

In math we are working on recognizing and writing numbers 0-5.  As we play games like number bingo, dice games, and 5 little pumpkins (or valentines!), we observe, manipulate and chant the numbers, thereby making our work more meaningful and memorable. 

A look forward to February:

The children are blossoming into great writers as they “write” letters to their friends and family and mail them in our classroom mailboxes.  We will be learning our addresses, the role of the mail carrier and learning to identify objects found in a post office.  This practice of writing to each other is further spirited by the upcoming Valentine’s Day Holiday. 

With a classroom focus on the garden and insects we will begin our work on an acrylic on canvas painting of garden life.  We look forward to creating this enchanted masterpiece as a group and plan to showcase this work in the Art Auction.  Be sure to keep that bidder number handy at the auction, the concept of this painting is simply charming. 

Points to Ponder:  “what would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” unknown   Fondly, Kathy_Smith

September 11, 2007

Once upon a time an Australian woman named Monica Ros started a music school up the block on Grand Avenue. Upon her husband’s death in 1939, Mrs. Ros traveled to Cuba to visit his family for nearly a year. When she returned to Ojai she continued to teach music lessons.  Thereafter she was encouraged to expand her school and in 1942 she began the Ojai Nursery School, she later purchased the property on McNell.  Mrs. Ros wished for “children to have good and right beginnings, an education that reflects not only an appreciation of surroundings, and of the things that the child learns, but good values, and good relationships, and the responses brought about by all that beautiful music, of all kinds, conveys, so that an inward experience takes place which carries over into later years.”  She went on to say, “I just thought that a natural setting was a great place for the little ones to learn.  They didn’t feel so much as though they were away from home then.”    We believe that Mrs. Ros would have been proud to be here last Thursday night as we sat in her house and spoke about your children.  We take pleasure in the fact that we strive today, some 65 years later to provide the “right beginnings” she spoke about.  We expose your children to dance, music, Spanish, drama and art while at the same time, providing an environment that is emotionally safe and intellectually stimulating.   

Thank you for coming out to Open House.  It is sometimes difficult to arrange to leave our children at home and we appreciate your support.  We played a DVD movie compiled of digital photos of your children in action.  If you’d like to check out the DVD, the sign out sheet and DVD will be in the classroom on the Parent news board above our computer.   I will continue to photograph the class and will share this with you at our parent/teacher conference in November.

You of course know, that by “signing up” for the six year Monica Ros experience, this is the longest time in your child’s academic career that he/she will remain at the same school.  Unless of course they pursue their doctorate degrees, go to law school and or become teachers.  It really is true, when you looked around the classroom at the other parents present; these are the people that will be a part of your life for the next 15 or so years.  Your children will attend the same dance classes, art classes, music lessons, taekwondo, soccer, baseball and softball games.  Enjoy your relationships with each other. 

At Monica Ros, we think reading is important……see the attached flyer.  Did you know that the greatest predictor of intelligence is a greater vocabulary? 
The average vocabulary of a                        fifteen month-old child is 185 words
                             “                               “      two year old child is 295 words
                             “                               “      five year old child is 3000 words (more than half the amount of words as an adult, 65% of the words they will use for the rest of their lives)
                            “                                 “        an adult is 5000 words
                             “                                “        Shakespeare, a 23,000 word vocabulary.

In the spirit of vocabulary enrichment, thank you for completing that first “homework” assignment.  The assignment required you to list the names of family members and pets.  Most children learn to recite the alphabet at a young age by singing the ABC song.  Then they learn the shapes of the letters made familiar by learning the letters of their names.  Readers must understand that a letter is a symbol that represents one or more sounds.  An even more complex level of understanding comes with knowing that these symbols can be grouped together to form words and that words have meanings.  I will use the completed homework assignment to create your child’s vocabulary cards.  Each child will have a set of words unique to his/her interests.  The set of cards will grow as the year progresses.  I will send home simple assignments about twice each month.  Please return the envelope by the following Friday. 
I would like to thank Wendy_Thurston and Elizabeth_Moore for volunteering to be our Room Parents.  They will be working closely with us as we plan special events all through the year, beginning with Fiesta.  A Sign-up sheet for the Carnival is on our front door.  Please sign up if you haven’t yet had the opportunity.  There are many ways all of you can help in the classroom, and we welcome your involvement.  Please let us know if you have a special interest you would like to share with us.  Reading to the class, cooking, sharing your interests or career with the children are just a few ways you can become involved. 

Thank you to Ryan and his family for bringing in the beautiful dragon fly so we could examine it up close.  Thank you to Noelle and her family for the delicious cow shaped sugar cookies, yum and thank you for Kate and her family for Bird sitting Joey and Rootbeer over the Labor Day weekend. 

Speaking of Rootbeer, our beloved parakeet of 5 years, some of you may have noticed, she has developed a tumor in her sinus cavity.  The tumor has caused a large blood clot on her beak and one eye is now all but shut.  I took her to a Veterinarian who specializes in aviary study two weeks ago and he recommended she be “put down”.  She has continued on eating, playing and interacting with Joey without any obvious stress since our appointment.  The decision to take it day-by-day has been a difficult one but at the same time an optimistic one as well.  I tell you this because the day will come that she will no longer be with us and a classroom discussion will ensue.  We have watched her through this process and cheered her along.  If you have any concerns or questions, please let us know.  We are planning to replace Rootbeer with possibly another Cockatiel as we want Joey to have a mate. 

We have set aside Wednesday as Sharing Day.  Sharing time provides your child with an opportunity to bring an item from home to share with classmates.  Please encourage your child to bring in an item that is special to him/her.  Photographs depicting a family vacation, a stuffed animal or favorite rocks are all appropriate.  We discourage bringing toys in; when they are lost or broken your child may have a difficult time dealing with the loss.  Sharing items will be shared with the class directly after circle time and they will be kept in your child’s cubby for “safekeeping”.  Please encourage your child to bring things from home only on Wednesday. 

This week we will also begin our first  Chapter Book.  An afternoon “teacher read” session happens each day at 1pm.  We began reading the Magic Treehouse series featuring two inquisitive children Jack and Annie.  The first book in the series is “Dinosaurs before Dark” I look forward to enjoying this time each afternoon with your child.

We are working with intentionality with your child as we approach our goal for the day.  We want your children to be investigators and to be challenged as risk takers in their considerations of all materials presented.  We look forward to witnessing each child’s development as they solve problems and learn to manage their time.  Their discoveries are the gems we treasure.  Thank you for giving us this opportunity to nurture your child.

Two summers ago, I had the sheer pleasure of transcribing Mrs. Ros’ personal memories.  She fortunately left us several documents which included her childhood memories, her thoughts about beginning a school and her vision for the school.  She was also a collector of newspaper articles and photographs.  Going through these school artifacts was like taking a peek into our history and affirming where the school is today.  Below is a quote from a newspaper article.  Watch our newsletters as we share some of these memories with you from time to time.  

Excerpt from a newspaper article in The Ojai, June 28, 1946 written by Ethel_Bret_Harte as she describes an outdoor performance:

“I was especially struck by the feeling of cooperative enjoyment between grown-ups and youngsters, and thought to myself what lucky little children these are to have such an auspicious start in life”.

Lucky indeed and still 60 years later, we feel the same!

Fondly,

Mrs._Smith

Red Room News  - September 21, 2007

We have had an exciting week of color exploration.  We focused on Green as we completed our Big Green Monsters and acted out a new poem, “Five Little Speckled Frogs”.  We painted with unusual materials this week.  We used shaving cream and paint to make our green headbands.  We used colored glue to create “magic dots” of glue on a strip of paper.  In Spanish, we created our Rainbow Smoothies, or should I say, “zalamero de arco iris”, using fruits and juice inspired by the colors of the rainbow. Delicious!  We even squeezed our own orange juice.  Look for your Big Green Monster; it’s coming home today.

Our work this week also involved a lot of planting.  Heidi_Bradbury brought us a very large outdoor bird cage for Joey and enough food and toys to keep him occupied for quite some time.  Thank you Heidi! But that is not all; she also brought in numerous plants and shrubs to create this beautiful environment as well.  We scrubbed and cleaned the birdcage, planted flowers, and helped set up this wonderful outdoor space.  Change can be traumatic for birds so we have not introduced Rootbeer to the outside cage.  Joey appeared nervous at first, completely rejecting the cage the second day but now he can be heard whistling and squawking as far off as the parking lot.  Rootbeer is doing fine, by the way and has been seen napping when Joey is outside.  She seems full of energy and willing to eat. The blood clot on her beak actually seems to be drying up.  We spend our day caring for the birds and watching them care for each other.  It really is touching to watch Joey clean Rootbeer’s beak and head and, then, cuddle her with his head.  Yesterday, we gave Joey a shower with a spray bottle in his outside cage; he just loved it! It was exciting for the children to watch him spread his wings and all but ask for more. Heidi, thank you for helping to make this time exciting for all.   

Your child is bringing home his/her collage work today as well as the first still life project of the year.  We will continue to work at observation skills and recreating what we see.  The process of observation: examining details, reflecting on them, and duplicating them, is quite useful in many aspects of our school work and, quite frankly, our lives.

Tonight at 5:30, providing there is no rain, we will meet at Soule

Fondly, Mrs.Smith

News from the Red Room  - August 31, 2007 

We have enjoyed getting to know the nooks and crannies of our classroom and, of course, our new friends.  It is amazing how familiar we are with this room already.   We have been busy at small group time drawing our self-portraits and writing our names.  We even explored a sensory activity as we created the letters of our names in salt-trays.  The children seem to enjoy signing in each day when they arrive to class.  This activity will continue through the school year.   Please don’t feel the need to assist your child.  This activity will illustrate the growth in his/her writing ability over the course of the year. 

We have a busy this week with our first dictated story about friendships.  We started work on a book about the friends in our classroom and I will be asking the children biography-type questions. We will put it all together in a book to take home.    We have spent time introducing to your children the names of other children in the class.  By clapping out syllables and holding up name cards both with and without photographs, we learn quite a bit about a child’s awareness of phonemes and words in print.  It is wonderful to see the ability that already exists as they recognize their names and the names of the other children in print. 

We are exploring ways to attract and hold the attention of others in a pleasant way.  We are realizing that each one of us is an important member of our classroom.  We are working on establishing daily routines and on being members of a group.  Your children are so pleasant with each other and some true friendships have already formed.   Each Monday we participate in music and movement classes with Miss Lamar.  These weekly sessions prove to be very popular with the children.  Miss Lamar introduce cooperative dance as well as use music from the Parachute Express and other popular children’s musicians.  Next week we will have our first Spanish class with Senorita Carlson.  These bi-weekly classes will focus on common everyday words through song and game.   

Next week we will be making the transition from discussing friendships to a focus on colors and shapes.  Color is an important part of every child’s world.  We will focus on a different color each week, we begin Tuesday with the color RED, Thursday and Friday will be devoted to BLUE.  As an introduction to color, we created colorful windsocks on Wednesday. There are several activities you can do at home to foster the concepts of this unit.  Begin by looking for various colors and shapes around the house and pay special attention to them.  Encourage your child to select clothing that reflects the color of the week 

Have you noticed that your child has not been finishing his/her lunch?  The weather has been warm and we have noticed that children are not as hungry.  We provide a balanced snack at 10:30 each morning.  We provide milk and water as well and are making sure children are hydrated.  Lunches should be similar to a lunch your child has at home.  Just a few items, please don’t feel like you need to provide a four course meal.  Anytime you have a concern, we hope you will feel free to share it with us.   Please remember to send in an extra change of play clothes as our work is sometimes messy and we do need them.  This is in addition to the changes of clothes requested by the office in case of an earthquake/disaster.  

Attached is our first book order of the year.  Our class receives points toward classroom purchases for every book bought.  This is an opportunity to build your library at home while benefiting our classroom.  If you’d like to participate, please send your book order in by Friday, September 14.     Tuesday, September 11 we will be hosting an Open House for Parents.  This is a time for you to experience your child’s classroom and hear a little about what we have planned for him/her.  Please mark your calendars.  We look forward to seeing you at 6:00p.m.  (Reminder: this is a parents-only event; please plan to hire a babysitter).   Fondly,  Mrs. Smith

Red Room News - January 22, 2007

Arts Month has allowed us the opportunity to look at objects with new focus. As we consider flowers in a vase we focus on the lines and color before painting a still-life with watercolor. We study various types of Greek vases as we look at their shape and function then draw our own representation on paper before transferring our ideas to our gourd vases. We revisit the customs of the Ancient Greeks as we consider the gods and goddesses. We consider the stories of Midas, Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, and Pegasus and discuss whether they are fact or fantasy before creating wax paper Greek gods and goddesses in our own image. Arts Month provides a wonderful opportunity to express our creativity in so many forms, this month is a favorite each year. This week we will continue work on our gourd vases as we add dye and stain. Please send your child to school in “paint clothes” all week. Tuesday and Wednesday we will be using permanent dyes and stain. Thursday and Friday we will be painting Jackson Pollack style. We will do our best to wear gloves as well!

Arts Month culminates with a spectacular Art Show. Each student is represented with various works of art and it provides for a great backdrop as we celebrate Founder’s Day on January 31^st. Mrs. Ros would be delighted to see the work that continues on in her name. Watch your mailbox for a special Founder’s Day invitation to see your child’s work, to hear each class perform at a brief ceremony honoring Mrs. Ros and a chance to visit the Kindergarten as well.

Tonight is the final workshop in this series of Love and Logic presentations. If you haven’t attended to date it’s not too late to take home some important concepts and tips. Please try attending tonight, you will not be sorry. Meyer Hall 5:30 – 7:30, call the office for childcare 646-8184.

Tomorrow we celebrate Zoe’s 5^th birthday, Happy Birthday Zoe.

The History behind Greek Vases
The Greeks made vases in many different shapes and sizes. Some were made of metal, but most of the ones that have survived were made of clay. A lot of the shapes are considered particularly beautiful, but it is the decoration of these clay vases that is most admired. The Greeks usually decorated their vases by covering them with a very thin layer of a special type of clay mixture. Sometimes, they would paint people, animals and patterns with this mixture, leaving the rest of the pot blank. When the pot was fired, the mixture turned black, but the rest of the pot turned red/orange; this is called black-figure. Sometimes, they left the space for the people, animals and patterns blank and painted all around them, so that the figures would stay red/orange and the background turn black; this is called red-figure. The artists also sometimes added white or purple paint as well.

Many scenes on the vases depict events from Greek myth. We can learn a lot about how the Greeks saw their gods and heroes from these vases. Other Greek vases show scenes from daily life. These are also an important source of information for us today about how the Greeks lived.

Fondly, Nancy_Klimbal and Kathy_Smith

January brings a new unit of discovery as we explore the arts. Our study of visual arts will create many art opportunities, which coincides with Arts Month. We are working with Greek art as we transform ordinary gourds into “Greek vessels”, we are currently working on still-life representation, planning a Jackson Pollack project and silk fabric dying will round up the month. The entire school will use the month of January to focus on the arts. Art projects will be on display for Founder’s Day and remain up the last week of the month.