Week of 3/20

Dear Parents,

We enjoyed all the fun with trapping leprechauns last week, and we thank you for your help and encouragement with the traps! We hope that it was a fun family project-- we know that the kids certainly seemed to enjoy sharing them and seeing what happened after setting them up.

Thank you to all the families who have met with us so far for conferences. We look forward to meeting with the rest of you this week. We have one trimester left together to prepare your children for first grade-- let's continue working as a team to make that happen.

We have a new consonant this week, and we did introduce another vowel last week that I forgot to mention. Our consonant will be Xx, and our vowel was Oo. The Alphafriends are "Mr. X-ray" and "Ozzy Octopus." Now that we are introducing another vowel, we will be able to do even more blending and spelling on our own. Keep practicing! We also have a new sight word, the. Children should now know 22 of our 40 sight words. See the list of words on our webpage for more reinforcement, or go to http://www.spellingcity.com, click on "find a list," and enter my last name under teacher search. You will be able to see both the kindergarten list, and the expanded list that includes first grade words. Your children will be able to play word games on this website to become more familiar with these words.

The sharing this week is toy in a bag. At this point in the year, your children can probably write a few words in the clues, if not the entire clue. Even if they just write single words to help them with their presentation (eg. "red" instead of "It is red."), sharing is a great chance to encourage your children to do more writing on their own.

We are continuing with our math topic on measuring this week, and will get back to science next week. We now have plenty of boxes to take apart-- thank you for all the donations.

We will have a Cornerstone lesson on Tuesday. We continue without centers this week. We will return to our regular center schedule next week when conferences are over.

On a final note, please plan on attending the Alta Vista Home & School Club's auction this Saturday, March 26th. The auction money goes toward supporting all of the great enrichment programs that the Home & School Club funds-- Art Vistas, Clay, I Love to Read, Cornerstone, Music (grades 1-5), and playground improvements. There will be appetizers and drinks and of course time to bid on all of the fabulous classroom creations and teacher adventures. Mrs. Sheikh & I both have items up for bidding-- Mrs. Sheikh will take children to the park for a play date, and I will take children to Golfland for a round of mini-golf. Our classroom creation along with creations from all the classrooms will be up for bidding. It is a fun event that helps raise a good percentage of the Home & School Club's budget, so come on out and support Alta Vista!

Helpers/Activities This Week:
MONDAY: NO CENTERS, Sharing, Library
TUESDAY: NO Centers, Sharing, Cornerstone
WEDNESDAY: Weds. Envelopes & Red Bags prepped (Karla/Derek/Angie), Computers (Margaret), Red Bags go home
THURSDAY: NO Centers
FRIDAY: Author visit, SPARK P.E. (Megan/Mark, Derek, Tim, Margaret)

Upcoming Events:
3/14-3/25: Parent-Teacher Conferences
3/25: Author Tim Myers visits Alta Vista
3/26: Home & School Club Auction
3/28: Spring Pictures  
4/7: Field Trip to Prusch Farm  
4/8: Spring Fling  
4/9-4/17: Spring Break
5/5: Cinco de Mayo Hat Dance