Dear Parents,
We have an exciting week this week as we begin our intensive study of each letter of the alphabet, which will not be in alphabetical order. Instead, it is in the order of frequency of these sounds in words. We introduce an "Alphafriend" to help your child remember the sounds of the letter. The children really enjoy the Alphafriends, and singing the songs that accompany each one. At this point, it is very helpful for the children to have recognition of most letters under their belts, so that they can focus on learning the sounds.
This week we will introduce the letter Ss. The worksheets that accompany our Language Arts program will all be about the letter Ss-- we will cover the sound and the handwriting of the letter, and the Alphafriend's name is Sammy Seal.
We will also officially begin the Handwriting without Tears program this week. Whatever the letter of the week is, that will be the letter we are learning in Handwriting. We will be using mini-chalkboards on Mondays to help the children practice the formation of letters in an engaging & multi-sensory way. On Tuesday, we will do a sentence writing lesson using the Sentence School part of the program.
This week's share is "Letter of the Week" share. Since our letter of the week is Ss, please have your child bring something that starts with Ss. They do like to do the guessing game with this item, so please have it hidden in a bag with three clues written about the item. Because it has to start with the letter Ss, this will also encourage them to think of things that start with the sound.
In addition to a letter of the week, we will also begin introducing a sight word each week. These are words that the children should know instantly, by sight, when the words are shown to them. Many of these words cannot be sounded out. This week's word is I. We will write sentences using the word I and look for the word in things that we are reading. There is a link on this webpage that has the list of sight words so that you can begin practicing with your child. There are 40 words that we will be covering this year. Words that have an asterisk next to them are words that I've introduced in class. I will be assessing the children on these words each trimester for report card information, and they continue using the sight words in first grade (their list has 100 words), so these are important words to master.
Our art this week will center around scarecrows and Fall things. We have a fun scarecrow book that will help reinforce the spelling and reading of color words.
We completed our FOSS science unit on Trees & Leaves. The children really enjoyed looking at different trees, learning about the parts of a tree, and looking closely at leaves & other things that grow on trees. Thank you for sending in leaves, fruit, and other items from your trees-- the unit was a lot of fun for the kids.
I also want to remind you that the Walkathon is coming up quickly on Saturday, October 25th! We will have a kick-off mini-assembly in our classroom on Monday, and then the children will do a practice lap with me some time before the 25th. The practice lap will give them a sense of where they will be walking and how big the lap is, and they will also earn their first "foot," which they will receive the Friday before the walkathon. The children will be collecting these plastic feet on a necklace on the day of the event. Every five laps at the walkathon, they add a foot to the necklace chain. When the children come to school on Monday following the Walkathon, they love to wear the necklace to show-off all the laps they completed! You can start registering your children and checking our progress on the walkathon website: http://www.altavistawalkathon.org I hope you are all planning to come out for the Walkathon-- it is a great community event & your child won't want to miss it.
Remember your child's Blue Bag tomorrow, with the homework folder inside the bag :)
Upcoming Events:
10/20: Field Trip to California Theater Center
10/25: Alta Vista Walkathon
10/29: October's Wacky Wednesday
10/30: Halloween Parade & Celebration
10/31: Staff Development Day: No School
11/10-11/11: No School, Veteran's Day
11/13-11/21: Parent-Teacher Conferences
11/19: November's Wacky Wednesday
11/21: Kindergarten Friendship Feast @ 10:15 (a.m. class) and 1:30 (p.m. class)
11/24-11/28: Thanksgiving Week Vacation
12/19: Kindergarten Nutcracker Performance @ 10:00 (a.m. class) & 1:30 (p.m. class)
