Please join us for this fun, family filled event. Here is the information you need to know:

Description: Drop off time is from 11am-12:30pm and the swapping starts at 12:30pm

Park in the Fusion Schools/caltrans parking lot and enter into the Caltrans building through the front doors.

All clothing MUST be on hangers (with the exception of onsies, pants, shorts and skirts 1-18m)
…
PLEASE review the FAQ’s and guidelines on the website (www.peaceloveswap.com) before attending. ALL items MUST be clean and free from stains or tears! Please do not bring items you would not want to lend to a friend, We are not a donation site and unacceptable items will NOT be accepted!

We will be entering thru the CalTrans parking lot once there just follow the signs.

There will also be lots of great vendors & raffle prizes and fun activities for kids.

Hope to see you there! This is going to be a GREAT swap!

Hello Parents,

Just an FYI.  Looks like it will be a great event!

John Carter & Family Fun Night

Friday, May 18th @ 5 p.m.

Gauche Park – 421 C Street, Yuba City

This event is FREE to the public.  Celebrate tobacco-free parks with fun games and activities beginning at 5 p.m.  At 6 pm John Carter will give a special concert, playing many of his well-known songs.  The event is presented by Yuba City Parks & Recreation and Sutter County Public Health and Tobacco Control Program.

For more information, call 822-4655.

Yuba City Parks & Rec
1201 Civic Center Boulevard
Yuba City, CA
95993

We are excited to announce the addition of a new program at Fusion Schools: Transitional Kindergarten.

As you know, the age at which children may enter Kindergarten is changing. Starting next year, children must be 5 by November 1st to enter Kindergarten. In 2013, they must have turned 5 by October 1st and in 2014, students must be 5 by September 1st. The law is changing because many children who enter Kindergarten before the age of 5 years are simply not quite ready socially (and potentially academically) for what is required of them that first year of school. With the content standards in California continually rising, we need to now, more than ever, be absolutely sure that our little ones are ready for what they will encounter during that precious first year of elementary school.

Transitional Kindergarten is a program designed for children who will be or have turned 5 in 2012. For the 2012-2103 school year we will be offering one class of 12 students.  However, if necessary we may add a second class.  Transitional Kindergarten will be taught in Yuba City by a K-12 credentialed teacher. It is a 5 day/week program that runs from 9am – 2:00pm. This class will be a version of our Fusion Early Learning Curriculum that is designed specifically for the learning needs of a Kindergartener, including extra emphasis on reading and writing. Our Transitional Kindergarten class will be available to any student who has turned 5 or will be turning 5 in 2012.

Transitional Kindergarten is a great option for you and your child if you feel that your 5 year-old is not quite ready for Kindergarten. Most of our Transitional Kindergarten students will be reading by the end of the school year, which means, depending on their age, they may be able to choose between Kindergarten and 1st grade upon entering elementary school.

The Transitional Kindergarten schedule is as follows:

Daily Schedule   (Monday – Thursday)

8:45 am – 9:00 am Arrival

9:05 am – 9:30 am Circle Time

9:30 am – 11:00 am Session 1 (Blue Room)

11:00 am – 11:30 am Recess

11:30 am – 12:00 pm Lunch

12:00 pm – 12:30 pm Choice Time

12:30 pm – 2:00 pm Session 2 (Green Room)

2:00 pm – 2:10 pm Pick up

Daily Schedule   (Friday)

8:45 am – 9:00 am Arrival

9:05 am – 9:30 am Circle Time

9:30 am – 11:00 am Session 1 (Red Room)

11:00 am – 11:30 am Recess

11:30 am – 12:00 pm Lunch

12:00 pm – 12:30 pm Choice Time

12:30 pm – 2:00 pm Session 2 (Red Room)

2:00 pm – 2:10 pm Pick up

We are very excited about offering this program for the 2012-2013 year and can’t wait to provide yet another amazing program to the Yuba/Sutter area! This class is only $115/week  (or $23/day or $4.60/hour!) and will fill up fast!

Enroll today by following this link! (http://www.fusionkids.com/programs/transitional-kindergarten/) Just scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the blue button that says, “Enroll Today!” If you have any questions about Transitional Kindergarten please send an email to Meghan Hamilton at meghan@fusionkids.com.

When: Tuesday, May 8th

Time: 5:30-6:30

Place: 701 B Street, Marysville, CA

***We will also be raffling off some prizes for those who attend!***

For more information about Juice Plus please visit www.FusionSchoolsJuicePlus.com!

Please join me on Tuesday May 8th at the Fusion in Marysville for a family wellness night.  Learn how easy it can be to get you family healthier and happier.  There will be a FREE Kid Fit class for the kids.  Feel free to bring a guest.

Appetizers will be provided!

Tuesday May 8th

5:30pm to 6:30pm

Marysville Fusion 701 B Street

RSVP to Micheyl Walker

530-933-0824

micheyl@fusionkids.com

Right now we are taking a trip through the land of make believe… soon it will be Summer!  This means that Discovery Camp is approaching.  We are looking forward to lots of learning fun.  We will become artists, musicians, scientists and heroes!  Discovery Camp is a great way to make sure that your child is exercising their bodies and brains.  Staying in the school routine will help your child be better prepared for the school year.  If you have any questions about Discovery Camp please call or email me.

The following script is from “Redshirting” which aired on March 4, 2012. Morley Safer is the correspondent. Deirdre Naphin, producer.

Kindergarten was once milk, cookies and finger paints. In a countrywide epidemic of hyper-parenting, it’s becoming blood, sweat and tears. So maybe you played Mozart for your baby while he was still in the womb and gave him Chinese lessons at age 2, tried everything to give your kid an edge and then when he’s 5, well you don’t exactly cheat, but you game the system.

It’s called “redshirting”: holding your 5-year-old back from kindergarten ’til he’s 6 so he’ll be among the oldest and smartest kids in class. Parents of a 5-year-old with a late birthday despair that little Johnny will forever be a failure if he has to compete with kids six or eight months older so they put the fix in; hold him back a year so he has the edge in class and ultimately an edge in life.

In the high stakes world of early education, Barrett Hoffecker was unlucky enough to have a summer birthday. If he’d started kindergarten just after turning five in August of 2009, Barrett would have been among the youngest in his class so his mother Megan played the numbers game and put him in a Canton, Georgia, preschool. He went to kindergarten at age 6.

Megan Hoffecker: We wanted to give him that extra year of growth for both size for later on, as well as maturity for him.

Morley Safer: But do you think that gives him an advantage not just in school, but in life?

Hoffecker: I think it does. I would prefer him to be an older in the class and become a leader in his environment, rather than a younger and be more of a follower.

Barrett is now 7, a first grader, oldest in his class and among the brightest.

Hoffecker: He was already reading when he started kindergarten and was pretty ahead of a lot of the people in the– in his class when he started.

And she has few qualms about giving Barrett a leg up on the competition.

Hoffecker: I don’t think it’s really cheating the system. I’d do whatever I think within my realm as a parent to make sure that my child is as prepared as they can be for the life challenges.

Safer: And have every advantage?

Hoffecker: Yes.

She’s hardly alone. It used to be that everyone started kindergarten at age 5. Today nearly a quarter of some kindergarten classrooms are populated by 6-year-olds. Kindergarten redshirting has more than tripled since the 1970s. Boys are twice as likely to be held back as girls, whites more than minorities and rich more than poor.

Holly Korbey had never heard of redshirting when she and her family moved to Dallas. She assumed her son Holden would start kindergarten shortly after he turned 5 in August of 2008, but she was shocked when her son’s preschool teacher urged her to hold him back.

Holly Korbey: And I said, “What? Why?” And I said, “He reads. He’s fully reading. He has no behavioral issues.” And she said, “Well, he’s the very youngest. And here, all the youngest boys are held back.”

And then there were the other parents.

Korbey: They started asking me, “Are you going to–what are you going to do with Holden next year?” And I said, “Well, I think we’re gonna send him to kindergarten.” And they would go, “Hmmm, I don’t know about that. You know, that’s not a good idea.” And they gave me all kinds of reasons.

Safer: Like?

Korbey: Like he’ll be the last to drive and he won’t get to go on dates like the other kids. There’s a lot of talk of, “I want my son to be a leader.” I mean academics were never mentioned.

Safer: Any suggestion that you can get an edge up on the other kids?

Korbey: Yes, I think that there is a subtle message that we’re gonna have an advantage over everyone else.

Korbey says much of the talk among parents centered upon the work of Malcolm Gladwell whose best-selling book “Outliers” has become the Bible for parents of 4 and 5-year-olds.

Safer: In your book, you argue that the month you were born in can well dictate your success or failure in later life.

Malcolm Gladwell: In that part of the book, I’m talking about a concept called “cumulative advantage” and that is the idea that a little extra nudge ahead when you’re 6 can mean that you’re slightly better positioned when you’re 7, and that means you’re slightly better positioned when you’re 8, and so on. And you can see this pattern in one field after another.

Like hockey, Gladwell reported that a majority of Canadian junior all-stars had one thing in common.

Gladwell: The overwhelming number of kids are born in the first half of the year.

Safer: So, January, February, March…

Gladwell: Yeah, it’s kind of amazing. Look at the list, it’s like, January, January, January, February, February, February, and there’s like one kid from December, you know.

Gladwell says there’s a simple explanation. In Canada, the birthday cutoff for junior hockey is January 1st.

And, if you’re better from the outset, you attract far more interest from coaches and get more practice. Gladwell says that the predominance of winter birthdays extends into the pros.

Gladwell: You think that at some point these early advantages would dissipate. They don’t. They snowball.

Safer: Okay, but that’s a sport. But how about in academics?

Gladwell: Yeah, in academics, we see the same effect. The kids who are born closest to the cutoff date, who are the, relatively speaking, the eldest in their class have a small but not insignificant advantage, not just in first grade, but throughout their schooling history.

Gladwell cites the work of economist Elizabeth Dhuey at the University of Toronto who analyzed the data of hundreds of thousands of students in 19 countries. Even as late as the eighth grade the older kids had higher test scores than their classmates. She believes that’s because the older kids got more attention from the start.

Elizabeth Dhuey: They’re just older but they look more able so they get in the higher reading group in kindergarten so they learn how to read a little better. And then in first grade they know to read a little better so they’re put in the higher reading group again. And then they know how to read a little better in the first grade. And it perpetuates over time.

She says the data also show that older kids are more likely to attend college. And then there is the issue that haunts so many parents: popularity.

Dhuey: I have a study looking at leadership effects. And I find that if you’re relatively old in kindergarten and that– that you’re more likely to be a high school leader or a sports team captain, a club president. And so I think a lot of this works in this confidence-boosting leadership kind of capacity.

Safer: When you completed this, dare I say, rather arcane university study, did you think it would get the kind of attention that it got?

Dhuey: No, not at all. Not at all.

Safer: But if you had a 5-year-old, would you hold him back?

Dhuey: If they were the very youngest, probably. Yes.

Samuel Meisels: The funny thing is that in the past if you wanted your kid to get ahead, you would want him to skip a grade. Now in order to get ahead, you want him to stay back a year.

Samuel Meisels, president of Chicago’s Erikson Institute, says while redshirting may be appropriate for some kids, it mostly amounts to educational quackery.

Meisels: I think that as children get older that whatever advantage is conferred by starting school a year older decreases dramatically.

Meisels: We see more dropouts among children who are held out. We see less achievement despite the fact that some research shows it one way, more research shows it the other way. At best we could conclude that the research is split on this and there’s another moral lesson for the parents which I know most parents don’t wanna hear. And that is this is inequitable.

Poor families can’t afford the luxury of holding kids back. The sooner they get them into school, the less childcare they have to deal with. But with redshirting, their children must now compete with kids who can be as much as 18 months older.

Meisels: I’d like to see everyone have a level playing field. Then maybe we could stop some of the panic that we’re seeing among parents who are rushing to do this.

Safer: And when everybody holds back, we start all over again, correct?

Meisels: Well, I suppose so if everyone does it.

Safer: So they’ll be shaving in kindergarten?

Meisels: This is called the graying of the kindergarten.

Some school systems are cracking down on redshirting. Heather Wasilew tried to hold her son Jacob back, but the Chicago Public School system said ‘no way.’ She was told he would have to go to first grade.

Heather Wasilew: And I was stunned. The policy is 5 by September 1 goes into kindergarten, 6 by September 1 goes into first grade no matter what.

Safer: So when you got this absolute no, what did you decide to do?

Wasilew: I cried a lot. I was prepared to move to the suburbs.

Safer: Really?

Wasilew: Really.

Safer: Over the issue of kindergarten?

Wasilew: Over the issue of kindergarten.

Wasilew: He’s a little tall. But he’s not any taller than the other, you know, some of the other boys in the class. And I love the school. It’s very small and intimate.

Safer: And expensive, no doubt.

Wasilew: And more expensive than public school. Yes.

Safer: You’re spending a lot of money on this issue that I guess some people would say will solve itself. I mean, if you may– he doesn’t do well at kindergarten by the time he’s in third grade he’ll be shining like the rest of the kids. So what’s the big deal?

Wasilew: Well, actually I think it’s the opposite. I think he would be okay if he got pushed ahead. But I think come third, fourth, fifth, sixth grade he would not be okay socially. I think he would be too young.

The Chicago Public School system met with so much resistance from parents that they are reviewing their policy. And redshirting only seems to be increasing. Malcolm Gladwell believes that most parents need to take a deep breath.

Gladwell: Parents are grasping at every straw available to them to try and maximize their children’s chances of doing well in the world. I wonder if we’ll look back on the way children were raised in our particular time and place and say, “What were we thinking?”

Safer: One of the effects of your book has been an epidemic of people holding their kids back from kindergarten. Do you feel a responsibility in this?

Gladwell: Yeah well, I mean first of all I’ll take this to my grave but if everyone does it then the effect is cancelled out. The irony, of course, is that the kinds of parents who are doing this are the parents whose children are the least at risk.

And then there is the Jock Effect: holding kids back to give them a sporting edge or more accurately an unsporting edge.

Safer: Did the issue of athletics play into your decision as well?

Megan Hoffecker: It did. That one year has made a huge difference for him.

Megan Hoffecker insists that all is fair when it comes to the game of life.

Hoffecker: I want to give him an advantage in every aspect that he has. And if that’s in the sports realm, I’ll give him the advantages that he can have. I’m not trying to make others disadvantaged, but it does benefit him.

Holly Korbey also believed that the advantage of being not just older, but bigger was the real motivation behind redshirting.

Korbey: Several parents said to me, “Don’t you want him to be competitive?” And I said, “He’s 4! I don’t even know if he likes sports.”

Despite all the pressure to hold her son back, Korbey felt Holden was ready to start kindergarten just after he turned 5.

Korbey: And everything went fine. Nothing exploded.

Now age 8 and in the third grade Holden Korbey seems to be thriving despite being the youngest in his class.

Korbey: He gets excellent grades. He has never had a behavioral issue. He has lots of friends. He’s absolutely normal.

Safer: Having been through this experience how would you advise young parents?

Korbey: Okay, I have one message: Have your babies in the wintertime. If you are thinking about becoming a parent, have your babies in the wintertime, and then you will get to avoid this issue completely.

The Marysville Preschool is now full.  I have a wait list for the Fall, so if you know someone that would like to have there child attend please let them know that they should get on the waiting list as soon as possible. They can contact me via email at micheyl@fusionkids.com

The school is bustling with the sounds of learning.  The students are doing really well and they impress us every day with the things they are learning. I am sure you have all noticed how busy the school is and because it is so full we are unable to extend the courtesy of make up days.  There is no longer room to have students attend on a non-scheduled day.  I apologize for the inconvenience.  Also, part day students need to be dropped off no earlier than 8:15 am.  Having them there earlier puts us at risk of being over ratio.  If you have questions about drop off time or pick up time please contact me.

Lastly the weather is beginning to warm up! The change in the weather is always a great time to check your child’s cubby to make sure they have spare clothes that are appropriate for the weather.

Please remember that if you ever have a question or concern I am always available by email or phone.

-Micheyl

Tomorrow is the field trip to the zoo.  The following is information to help make sure the trip goes smoothly:

1. Please wear RED so that we can stand out!

2. Make sure you bring a sack lunch for you and your child- there is food at the zoo but we will be eating in the park and their food is pretty expensive.

3. Most importantly!!! Make sure you are at the school no later than 8 am.  ALL schools must leave by 8am to get to the zoo by 9am.  Please meet in front of the zoo!

If you have any questions please feel free to ask your director or call me directly.

Micheyl

530-933-0824

The contest was a great success bringing many new fans to our site. We would like to thank everyone who participated. There were, however, 3 contestants who were continuing to push for that win until the very end. Each of these contestants managed to get over 100 people to come to Fusion’s Facebook page and “like” their comment. Because of the time and energy each of these individuals put into promoting this contest, we would like to award each of them with a free session of Discovery Camp, leaving us with 3 amazing winners!

The winning comments are as follows:

In first place with 149 likes is Kuw Xiong!

**”Hayden spent last summer at the water park near our home. It was definitely the highlight of her summer. She has been asking every season to go back to the water park. She’s had her bathing suit, sun glass, and beach toys ready since winter. Good thing summer is right around the corner. I know she can’t wait to play at the water park again!”**

In second place with 136 likes is Michelle Reyno!

**”Ethan loves to hang out with mommy and grandpa doing things around the community. We love to go to the Gold Sox games. He is completely facinated with Mr. G, even though he is frightened of him. He also loves going to the stolls that occur around town, dancing to the music and making friends with the vendors.”**

And in  a very close third place with 130 likes is  Annette Rockenstein!

**”Summertime will consist of LOTS of trips to the park and bike riding. The girls LOVE to be outside. This summer will be filled with lots of water play and painting outside too! We hope to go back to the beach too since every time we see water Raegan yells “BEACH” at the top of her lungs!”**

Congratulations to all of our winners! Please send me an e-mail at meghan@fusionkids.com so that I can tell you how to redeem your FREE 2 week session of Discovery Camp! Again a BIG thank you to everyone who participated! We enjoyed reading each and every precious story!

Have a wonderful week and keep your eyes peeled for more contests coming in the VERY near future!