Week of 1/13

**Please note that this is a four-day week, due to a staff professional development day on Friday. There is no school on both Friday, January 17th and Monday, January 20th. Enjoy your 4-day weekend!

Last Friday, we hit the half-way mark in our kindergarten year. This is where the kindergarten curriculum really takes off, and your continued support with the curriculum will be especially important at this time. Reading to your children and asking them questions about what they are reading, helping them blend and read/write short vowel words (eg: hop, can, rat, etc.) and reinforcing math facts and sight words is really important at this time. I want to ensure that everyone is prepared for first grade, and I definitely need your help :).

A real emphasis at this time of year is sentence writing. In class, we are working daily on either handwriting skills or sentence writing skills. Children should be able to put together a simple sentence using a mixture of sight words and phonetic spelling (for example, "bej" for "beach" is totally normal/expected at this time).  Children will have a writing assessment this trimester where they will be expected to write a minimum of one sentence to the topic. The sentence should have appropriate capitalization and punctuation at the end. If you notice that your child is still using a lot of capital letters in his/her writing or is unable to put together a simple sentence, please reinforce this further at home.

Language Arts
Our story this week is a classic, Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats. We will also be reading other snow-themed stories. We will introduce the sight word for.  Please review the "High Frequency Word" tab on the right to learn which words we've introduced so far this year. We will also be working with the word families og/od to read and write words such as: log, hog, dog, rod, and sod. 

Math
We are still on the addition component of Module 4: Number Pairs, Addition & Subtraction to 10. Parent tips for this module can be found here.

STEAM
This week, we will be taking a trip to the Makerspace to build and create with a product called the Rigamajig. Last year, the creations children made using the pieces from Rigamajig were truly amazing! We are looking forward to our upcoming lessons using this fun building center.

Upcoming 

• Kindergarten Registration Info Night 1/22 6:00:  If you have friends or neighbors with incoming kindergartners who live in the AV attendance area, please let them know about this informational evening about the upcoming 2020-21 school year.
• 100 Day 1/28-- we celebrate the 100th day of school with some special activities.  
• Snow Day 1/31: children will dress up in whatever snow gear they have-- hats, mittens, coats, scarves, etc. and we will have a fake snowball fight with the other K classes.
• Alta Vista Family Valentine's Dance 2/14: Come to the Alta Vista Cafeteria from 6:00 to 8:30 pm for this fun family evening. There will be a DJ, photo booth, desserts & drinks. You can buy tickets for this event at the Membership Toolkit site.

**There are just two center spots left for the next five weeks! Thank you so much for your support! Please check the Sign-Up Genius to see if you are able to fill those last two spots.

This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: Return Blue Bags, Daily 5, Centers (Tiffany & Agnieszka)
Tuesday: Daily 5, Centers (Claire & Pauline)
Wednesday: P.E., Rigamajig in the Makerspace, Music, Blue Bags go home
Thursday: Daily 5, Centers (Hema & Doreen)
Friday: NO SCHOOL

Upcoming Events:

Friday 01/17: No School: Professional Development Day
Monday 01/20: No School: MLK Day
Wednesday 01/22: Kindergarten Registration Night at 6:00 for Incoming Parents
Tuesday 01/28: 100 Day
Friday 01/31: Snow Day
02/17-02/21: President's Week Vacation