East Palo Alto Family Sleepover at the Zoo

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

I am a Kindergarten teacher in East Palo Alto in a school where 88% of students are served a free/reduced lunch. I am writing this proposal in order to provide an amazing experience for my Kindergarten class and one of their family members to spend the night at the Oakland zoo. This program is called "Bedtime with the Beasts". I have done this outing three other years with my previous classes' in East Oakland. This is an amazing experience for everyone involved. I enjoy it because it supports our science curriculum on learning about animals and thier habitats. Most of all it is an experience that the students would most likley not have a chance to experience without it being provided for them. I have had first hand experience of watching the child spend quality time with his/her family member while learning at the same time. I enjoy having some bonding time with my families and students. I sure notice a difference in our classroom culture when we return from the weekend at the zoo. Not to mention my students get a kick out of seeing their teacher in her pajamas. Here is a little gist of how the weekend goes: We arrive Saturday about 6:00 p.m we set up camp either in the education builing or out on the field depending on weather and how the families feel about sleeping outside. Our zoo guide does introductions and rules. After we set up we go on a night hike with our flashlights. The zoo guide gives us tons of fun facts. We then go back to camp the to eat a night snack: fruits, veggies, cookies and hot chocolate. We then go to one of the classrooms and make an art project and they get to play around in the classroom. Their favorite part is going into the dramatic play area and dressing up like the animals they have seen on the night hike. We head back to camp and read a story and our guide selects a few small critters to share with us and then lights out. We wake up in the morning and eat breakfast that the guide and families help prepare. We then head off for our last encounter with the animals. We take a morning hike and get a chance to see the zoo keepers feeding the animals. The Howler monkeys are wide awake and quite loud at this time in the morning. After our hike we go back to camp and pack up and go home. When we all go back to our cars I can already feel a fresh new bond that we will bring back to the classroom and build on. After our trip we make a class book filled with all the fabulous pictures we took and keep a copy for our class library and sent one to our guide. I make each child a page for them to hang in thier own house. In Kindergarten often kids tend to forget some of the memories as they grow up because it was so long ago. This experience is a hard one to forget. I would love to be able to provide this experience for my families without the hardship of cost. My familes are all working familes some with two jobs just trying to make ends meet. Many times there is not enough income to support these types of experiences and for once they could attend without having to think about finances. Thank you for taking the time to read about our request. This event would take place in early Spring. I would have to reserve the space in the next month or two. Again thank you for visiting DonorsChoose. It is people like you that make the world a better place.