Apologies in advance for the long post, but I know that many of you are new parents to Alta Vista, and you will start to notice that I tend to err on the side of over-communication ;)
We had a great first week reading books about showing respect and following rules, and we did a few fun art projects to go along with those books. Next week, we will begin formally introducing the letters Aa and Bb.
We will also begin our first math topic on numbers to five. This topic also introduces shapes, which we will focus more on this week.
On Monday, we will be going outside in small groups with certified solar glasses to view the eclipse. Hopefully, you all received the letter from the school about this. In class, we will watch an informational video about the eclipse as well.
In the next few weeks, we will be listening to familiar tales (Three Pigs, Jack & The Beanstalk, Three Billy Goats Gruff, etc.) and nursery rhymes (Humpty Dumpty, Hey Diddle Diddle, Twinkle Little Star, etc). Hearing different versions of familiar tales and rhymes is a fun way to get children engaged in reading. Some families may own these traditional tales in another language. If you do, these may be fun for your child to bring in and share with the students.
During the past week, I have observed that some of the students will need to work on name-writing skills. One of our kindergarten standards is writing a name with one capital letter and the rest lower-case. We will begin practicing this in class by tracing our names on a worksheet, but I encourage you to reinforce this at home-- we try and drop the all-capital letter name writing as quickly as possible. The faster children can write their names correctly, the easier it is for them to get going on assignments, as we encourage them to write their names first. I appreciate your help with this.
In class, your child will be using a program called, "Handwriting without Tears." This is a wonderful program that really focuses on correct formation of letters along with correct pencil grip. It is so important to get in good habits (and in some cases, break bad habits) with handwriting early on. I will begin introducing the basics of this program by introducing a jazzy song called "We Start our Letters at the Top"--- and we will have a handwriting center weekly when we start academic centers in September.
Please continue to sign up to join the Home & School Club via the "My School Anywhere" system. You can sign up by clicking here. The invitation code is AltaVista (no space). This is how you will keep informed with what is going on at the school, as well as have access to contact info for other parents in the class to arrange playdates, etc. PLEASE try and sign up as soon as possible, if you haven't done so already.
Additionally, some of you have asked for more details about classroom help. You can use the "My School Anywhere" account to sign up to volunteer in our classroom, as well as the Google form I had in the classroom at both the orientation and Back-to-School Night. The Google form can be found here . You will find out which days you are officially helping after I have a chance to look over all of the information, and make sure I have coverage for all the activities and days. Then, I put together a schedule, usually for an entire quarter, so that you know which days to schedule on your calendar in advance for classroom help. If you sign up to help at center time, we will begin centers the week of September 11th. Center time is a wonderful way to get involved in our classroom, get to know the children, and stay apprised of what we are learning. Even if you're only able to help once or twice, I highly recommend it! If you're schedule only allows you to help a few times in class, the best way is to probably serve as a "sub." Often, our regular helpers have conflicts or illnesses that come up and they need somebody to take their spot. They will email the class and if you are available, please sign up-- no prior experience is necessary! :)
Finally, I ask that you please make every effort to support our kindergarten activities by contributing to the Consolidated Classroom Payment (CCP) online via the "My School Anywhere" account. This money goes to support your own child's portion of items like field trip entrance fees, bus fees, your child's class t-shirt, your child's costume for the Friendship Feast, parts of your child's costume for the Nutcracker performance, etc. Instead of asking you for money every time we have an event, we ask for this money up front. We would not be able to provide many of these enrichment opportunities without your support, so please make every effort to donate to this fund, even if it is only a partial payment.
For your upcoming scheduling: There is no school on Friday, September 1st or Monday the 4th.
I am looking forward to another fun week with your children!
