Si tiene alguna duda sobre esta nota debido a la traduccion,
por favor comuniquese con Rafael Friedmann via email: rfriedmann@aol.com

HEART OF EMERSON FUNDRAISING

We are in the home stretch and have just a few weeks left to meet our annual fundraising goal! As of this week, we have received $149K towards our $195K target. Donate and continue to track our progress here: https://emersonelementary.org/heart-of-emerson

We have just 2 more weeks left to meet our annual fundraising goal! We are so close to meeting our goal, so please donate (or donate again!) to help our Emerson community secure the full funding needed to continue offering art, PE, field trips, staff support, community events, equity circles, classroom and library supplies, and more for every single one of our kids. Once we meet our annual fundraising goal, we will be giving out Emerson T-shirts for all students and staff in 2024!

As the 2023 calendar year draws to a close, a reminder that your donations to the Heart of Emerson are fully tax deductible. Didn’t get a receipt? Email fundraising@emersonelementary.org

UPCOMING EVENTS AND KEY DATES

Friday, December 22: Fall PTA after school classes end

December 25 - January 5: Winter Break — NO SCHOOL

January 1- February 2- Round 1 enrollment dates for 2024- 2025 school year https://www.berkeleyschools.net/admissions/

Thursday, January 18: PTA Association Meeting #2

Saturday, January 20: Winter Equity Circle series kick-off, 10am-2pm (Library) Dinner and childcare are provided - RSVP here. (Subsequent sessions will be on Thursday evenings through the end of February).

Add the Emerson Google Calendar to yours!

Note to Readers: BearFacts articles and calendar items are based on submissions from the community and reviewed and edited under the PTA communication policy. Inclusion of an item in BearFacts by itself does not indicate sponsorship or endorsement by the PTA, Emerson school staff, or BUSD.

HOUR OF CODE

Hour of Code was a success last week! Students in each grade were introduced to computer programming concepts through fun and interactive games tailored to their particular age group. Thank you to the teachers for making room in the day for this special curriculum and to the parent volunteers who helped out in the classrooms. Special thanks to Kaolin and Amy Fire for organizing this school-wide event! Kaolin made his way to classrooms throughout the week to give a coding introduction and mini-lessons. The kids had a blast and learned some coding fundamentals at the same time.

This year TK, K, and 1st Grades learned to program little fuzzballs through mazes, some of them even pushing through to conditionals or making their own mazes to follow! There was a lot of joy and excitement as they saw that they could program and debug! https://hourofcode.com/kodable-pre

2nd Grade did Flappy Code, introducing them to blocks-style programming, loops, and event triggers. Walkthrough: https://youtu.be/2lFvVAw2Ago

3rd Grade did Blocks Jumper, expanding their blocks-style programming to a full suite of libraries, conditionals, widgets, and a lot more room to explore their own creativity. Walkthrough: https://youtu.be/uf8krjJAymE

4th and 5th Grades did AI is a Hoot, where they (again) expanded their blocks-style programming to include developing their own machine learning models to recognize different human "poses," controlling an owl by raising their hands, standing up, or squatting. Walkthrough: https://youtu.be/ODvl4QPZ8s4

Finally, a HUGE thank you to the many parent volunteers who took time out of their day to share their love of being creative with computers and problem-solving who helped make Emerson’s Hour of Code 2023 a success!

If you have any questions about the hour of code, next steps, or more details on what your children learned, feel free to reach out to hourofcode@emersonelementary.org — or visit https://code.org for a full suite of exercises!

*Ms. Medina’s fourth grade class participating in Hour of Code.*

*Ms. Davis’s second grade class participated in Hour of Code, focusing on Flappy Code, blocks-style programming, loops, and event triggers.*

LIBRARY CORNER

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

The Emerson Library is looking for 1-2 volunteers who are able to come in for an hour or so each week. The main job will be shelving books (the circulation rate at Emerson is HIGH!).

Please email Ms. Rachel at rachelbudge@berkeley.net if you are interested! Thank you!

HALLOWEEN PARADE VIDEO

The video of Emerson’s Halloween parade is up! Thank you to Emerson volunteer and chief videographer Mr. Phil! https://youtu.be/JPsf18KvaDU

GIFT CARD DRIVE FOR EMERSON FAMILIES

We want to make sure that every child in our community has a good winter holiday. Ms Lily, our Family Engagement Specialist, will be collecting donations of gift cards to distribute to families who need them this Holiday season. If this is something your family would like to contribute to, we would love your support. We would appreciate gift cards to Target, Walmart, Ross, or Amazon. Grocery store gift cards are also appreciated. If you are interested in contributing you may bring donated gift cards to the front office or directly to Ms. Lily in the Family Engagement Office HERE from now until Wednesday, December 20th. Thank you for supporting all our families in our amazing community! If you have any questions or concerns please reach out to Ms. Lily at lilyhowell@berkeley.net or at 510-609-5090.

EQUITY CORNER

WINTER EQUITY CIRCLE SERIES KICKS OFF IN JANUARY!

The PTA welcomes you to sign up for the Winter Equity Circle. We will meet for six sessions, with a kick-off on January 20, and subsequent meetings on Thursday evenings through February (1/25, 2/1, 2/8, 2/22, 2/29). Dinner and childcare are provided - RSVP here. Hear from a past participant about her experience participating in a past Equity Circle here: Why Equity Circle? and visit our program site at https://emersonelementary.org/equity.

FIND EMERSON ONLINE

Website: https://emersonelementary.org/

Remind: Text @7f6hb to 81010; or go to www.remind.com/join/7f6hb

Facebook: www.facebook.com/emersonpta (or follow @emersonPTA)

About BearFacts News:

BearFacts News is a weekly publication created by parent volunteers and posted online at emersonelementary.org.

BearFacts articles and calendar items are based on submissions from the community and reviewed and edited under the PTA communication policy. Inclusion of an item in BearFacts by itself does not indicate sponsorship or endorsement by the PTA, Emerson school staff, or BUSD.

If you have a news item or announcement to include in the BearFacts News, please send an email to bearfacts@emersonelementary.org. Please keep your message brief and include all the pertinent details including dates, times, locations and contact information. Send images as an e-mail attachment and include alt-text. The submission deadline is each Monday at 6 p.m.