Thank you for your patience while we work out the parent helper schedule. We are still waiting for clarification from the district regarding how many helpers can be in the room at once, and whether we may need to have the same group of people assigned to a day of the week for contact tracing purposes. We do want you to be aware that a negative COVID test for the month that you will be volunteering is required. The district is offering COVID tests through their partnership with Grapefruit, so we are also awaiting information on when and where that will take place. Due to all of these questions, we may need to wait an additional week before starting with parent helpers, and push it out until the week of October 4th. If I can launch helpers the week of 9/27, and you are able to get a COVID test during the upcoming week through the county at these sites: https://covid19.sccgov.org/covid-19-testing OR through a facility of your choice (cannot be a home test), please let me know. I have already spoken to a couple of people who do testing through their work sites anyway who said they might be able to help the week of the 27th. If I have a few people ready to go with their COVID testing completed, and the clarifications come through from the district, I might be able to get centers going on 9/27. For your scheduling purposes, I am planning to run centers on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 12:25 to 1:30.
I will be wrapping up assessments this week. Thank you again to everyone for coming back to school for these. The updated assessment schedule can be found here.
Language Arts
This is a review week for letters and sounds. We have now introduced 17 letters/sounds: Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, Ee, Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Jj, Ll, Mm, Nn, Oo, Qq, Rr, and Tt. With the letter sounds we've learned so far, we are able to spell & sound out a large number of CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant) such as: hot, ham, ran, mat, dot, bit, rig, etc. Encourage your children to try to blend/sound out CVC words that you come across while reading. Decodable books such as Bob Books are great for beginning readers to practice this skill. We have two new sight words this week, that and ran.
Math
We are wrapping up the topic on Numbers to 10. This week, we introduced the concept of one more & one less. This was quite hard for many students. Number writing in general is very difficult for most of my students and could use extra reinforcement.
Kimochis
On Friday, your child came home with a picture of Lovey Dove. We didn't end up having time to color this in class, but I told the children they could color it at home and hang it in their house so that they know that Lovey Dove is sending them warm & loving feelings while at home too. This week, we will introduce Cloud. Cloud is moody & unpredictable, and helps children understand how to manage upset feelings. Cloud also helps children develop patience, tolerance, and understanding for friends who are still learning how to express upset feelings in positive, healthy ways.
Virtual Field Trip
Our first virtual field trip is on Tuesday. We will be exploring shadows using the book Bear's Shadow by Frank Asch. I am looking forward to seeing this presentation offered by the California Academy of Sciences.
Upcoming Events
Tuesday 9/21: Virtual Field Trip: "Moonbear's Shadow"
Monday, 9/27: Extended Kindergarten Days begin (8:15-1:40, except Wednesdays, dismissal is at 1:15)
Wednesday, 10/11: Virtual Field Trip: "Mission to the Moon"
