The list of Crocker Bookfair Readers has been announced. Please join us at the Barnes and Noble in Emeryville on June 13 starting at 11 AM.

Wear your Crocker Crazy Hair on Friday 6/11

What’s it like to be Principal for a day? Making sure everyone knows about the important events going on at school this week. Check out these new recruits who won the honor at this year’s Crocker Auction.

Please join us in supporting our final 5th grade fundraiser, a bakesale for tomorrow, Wednesday, June 2, 2010, to benefit fifth grade promotion activities.  We encourage each family to send your child with a dollar or two to purchase home baked goodies as an after-school treat or to save for after dinner tomorrow evening.  Thank you in advance for your support.  

Please contact Kerry Ricketts-Ferris at ferrisfamily4@att.net or 508-9416 if you have any questions 

Thank you in advance for your support,

Kerry Ricketts- Ferris and Sherri Carpenter

Crocker Highlands will be participating in a book faire with Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Emeryville.  The book faire will take place from Saturday, June 12 through Saturday, June 19.  All you will need to do to participate and help raise funds for books to benefit Crocker students is to purchase an item either at the bookstore or online. At the time of check out present a voucher or provide our bookfair I.D. number (I.D. Number 10228005).

Crocker Highlands PTA will receive a percentage of the sale.  This is a great opportunity to stock up for summer reading and purchase gifts for Dads and grads with Father’s Day and many graduations coming up.  It is also a really easy way for the Crocker community, friends and extended family to support Crocker Highlands Elementary School so please feel free to pass on vouchers and send out an email to others with the Crocker I.D. number.

To encourage families to come out to Barnes and Noble personally, we have planned a kickoff event for Sunday, June 13 featuring students and teachers telling stories each hour in the children’s area.  If you or your child has a favorite book that they would like to share and read to others on Sunday, June 13th please contact Kerry Ricketts Ferris at ferrisfamily4@att.net with a preferred time and the name of your book and you will be included on the kickoff schedule.

There will also be a book signing event on  Thursday, June 17th featuring Mark Fauenfelder, author of Made by Hand and cofounder of BoingBoing, one of the world’s most popular blogs.

Just a reminder,  Thursday, May 27th, is Open House.
We would love to see everyone here, admiring all the work done in
classrooms this year and enjoying the beautiful art displays. It is
from 6:30 – 8:30. There will be a silent art auction in the library
(proceeds provide supplies for next year’s art class). Your child
should be your tour guide, showing you around the classroom and the
art room.

Tomorrow is also an additional minimum day. Students are dismissed at
1:40. Please make sure your child is picked up on time. If you are
having a childcare challenge, let me know and we will arrange something.

This upcoming weekend is a 4-day weekend; Friday is a holiday for
Oakland Unified Schools. (In lieu of Lincoln’s Day holiday – I know,
it sounds strange…or a little delayed.) So I hope everyone comes to
see the wonderful Open House and then enjoys the loooong weekend.

Beth Rhine

Oakland School Food Alliance  2nd Annual  “The State of the Plate”

Thursday, June 3, MetWest High School, 314 East 10th Street , 3:30 pm

Oakland parents will meet with Jennifer LeBarre, Director of Nutrition Services to learn about the progress of cafeteria food reform by OUSD for the past school year.  The annual event is sponsored by the Oakland School Food Alliance.  The Alliance is a grass roots organization of students, families, health professionals and community organizations from dozens of Oakland neighborhoods, hills to flatlands, who have banded together to push for the overhaul of Oakland’s school lunch program to learn about the progress of cafeteria food reform by OUSD for the past school year.  Other speakers are Chuck Davies, Associate Director of Residential Dining of UCB, parents from Stonehurst and East Oakland Pride.  Refreshments by Ester Dixon’s students, the Castlemont Chefs will be served, along with childcare and translation services.

The local campaign is part of a national effort to increase healthier fare for American children and increase healthier choices.  Underserved communities rely on the school cafeteria for food security, yet the food over the past two decades has become increasingly high fat, loaded with high fructose and processed resulting in high levels of child obesity and onset of early disease.

Beginning in 2001 OUSD began to reform the program and they can count among their successes removal of sodas and transfat  foods, on-site farmers markets, salad bars and a recent partnership with California Association of Family Farms.  But there is still much to do, to eliminate the main diet of highly processed foods that Oakland student are served each day,  which is all that OUSD can afford with the present budget.

Oakland School Food Alliance was formed in the fall of 2008.  The Alliance works on two main prongs of the fork –to unite community partnership that can provide resources to a beleaguered financially strapped program and to increase and mentor parent leadership, which will support access to healthy food for all the kids of Oakland.

Contact Information:

Allison Rodman  593-6978   arodman@earthlink. net

Visit us on Facebook Oakland School Food Alliance

Our vocal music concerts are scheduled for Tuesday, June 8^th and they promise to be lots of fun.  We’re doing something special in conjunction with the concerts and we hope you will get involved.

As you may know if your child is singing at home with you, our final song this year is We Are the World.  Allison Nelson, mother of Max in the second grade and artist extraordinaire, has come up with a great idea to celebrate the theme of We Are the World.  From June 1 through June 4, we’ll be creating life-sized cut-outs of our Crocker kids who, when put together, will be holding hands all around the Multi-Purpose Room.  We need your help!  Here’s how you can get involved:

From Tuesday, June 1^st through Friday, June 4^th, Allison and some parent volunteers will be helping kids to make their cut-outs.  We’ll be working with the Adventure Time kids and, if your child is not registered in AT, please come with them to help with their cut-out on one of those days.  We’ll be working on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 3-4 and on Wednesday from 1:45-2:45.

You can also make your cut-out/s at home.  Come and get paper from us, do your tracing, coloring/painting at home, and bring it back to the school by Monday morning, June 7^th so that we can put them up in the MPR.

If you’d like to help out with the concerts and/or with this project, please let me know.  You can e-mail me at redros1214@aol. com or leave a note in my mailbox at school.

Thanks so much.  I am looking forward to June 8^th!

Jill Rose

The Crocker Highlands Science Fair  is this Thursday, May 20th from 5:00 to 7:00. It’s being held in the Multi-purpose room. Student attendance is not mandatory, though we would love to see all our scientists! If students do attend, we are encouraging them to stand by their project and be ready to explain experiment to visitors. They don’t have to stay with their project the whole time (15-20 minutes is fine), they can also wander around and enjoy the other projects, too. Everyone can attend, not just students and families who did science projects. New families, it’s a great time to see what the Science Fair is all about!

Morning Concerts:

K, 1 & 2 from 9:15 – 10:00 am

3, 4 & 5 from 10:15-11:00 am

Evening Concerts:

Grades **K, 1 & 2: 6:30-7:15 pm

Grades 3, 4 & 5: 7:30-8:15 pm

 We ask that your child be in his/her classroom 20 minutes prior to the concert time for the evening shows. Attendance at the evening shows is optional but we hope that all of our students will return for the evening performances.

*We encourage the students to dress up a bit for the concerts.

**A special note about the Kindergarten classes: We’d love to have your child back for the evening show but it is a very long day for some of the children so we’d love to see your Kindergartener if they’re able to particpate. The Kindergarteners who do return for the evening concert will meet in the Library with Parent Volunteers and Mrs. Henry who will bring them down as a group to the Multi-Purpose Room.

The children are working hard on a lot of different material and the shows are going to be great. Thank you for your support of music program! I look forward to seeing you on the 8th!

Jill Rose