Dear Parents,
I believe we now have almost everyone receiving our e-mails. Thank you for responding to my various tests. If you haven’t replied to one of the e-mails to let me know you are receiving it, please do so. Otherwise, I will check in with you at Back-to-School Night to make sure I have all addresses entered correctly. Also, I still need those pink “Rules for RESPECT” signature sheets, as well as the Student Handbook signature sheet that I handed out at Orientation. Please send those in on Monday if you can.
Along with sending out the weekly update via e-mail, I also post this letter (or similar info) on my webpage. If you ever need to double-check what's going on, you can find it all there, too.
We had a great first week searching for and finding our runaway Gingerbread Men and getting to know one another, along with beginning our Language Arts workbook! Right now, our workbook pages are focusing on a quick overview of the alphabet—one letter a day, in alphabetical order. We familiarize ourselves with all the names of our classmates by looking for those letters in each person’s name. Of course, when we are done with the overview, we will begin a more intense study of each letter—a week per consonant/vowel, along with meeting that letter’s “Alphafriend.” The Alphafriends go along with our reading program and help the children remember letter names & sounds in a fun & catchy way.
We will also begin our math program this week. Our first unit is on sorting & classifying. Children will study how things are alike and different, and sort them accordingly.
In the next few weeks, we will be listening to familiar tales (Three Pigs, Three Billy Goats Gruff, etc.) and nursery rhymes. Hearing different versions of familiar tales and rhymes is a fun way to get children engaged in reading.
During the past week, I have observed that many 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. We 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. We find that it is so important to get in good habits (and in some cases, break bad habits) with handwriting early on. We have already begun the basics of this program-- starting with a jazzy song called "We Start our Letters at the Top"-- and we will use it in conjunction with our letter program in language arts. When your child is learning about the letter "s," s/he will also be learning the correct formation of that letter.
Back-to-School Night is this Wednesday at 6:00 in K2. This is a night for parents only, as I go over our curriculum and classroom policies. Please make every effort to attend. I cover a lot of information that night in only 45 minutes, so afterwards, if you need more information on anything, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Please also plan on attending the Home & School Club meeting in the cafeteria immediately following my presentation. If you are unable to attend Back-to-School Night, please let me know so that I can set aside materials for you.
One item I will be covering during our meeting is the Consolidated Classroom Payment. The
CCP is a payment that each grade level at Alta Vista asks for at the
beginning of each year. It is different than a donation to the Home & School Club, which goes to school-wide programs such as Art Vistas, Clay, etc. This payment goes directly to your child. Rather than asking for money and items every
time we have an event, the kindergarten team has totaled up what our
costs will be for the entire year. So instead of paying for your
child's entrance fee each time we have a field trip, or running out to
buy a pillow case when we have our Thanksgiving Feast (it's part of the
costume), we ask for the money for these items
up front. Then we go out and do the purchasing in bulk, saving you
time and money. The CCP for kindergarten this year is around $70-- I
will get the exact total for you before Back-to-School Night. Please do
whatever you can to make this payment, as it
covers the costs of your own child's supplies and entrance fees and bus fees. Even if you can only make a partial payment at this time-- every little bit helps. If for some reason we don’t spend all of the money, it stays with your child and will go toward their first grade consolidated payment.
It is a lot easier to collect this payment at Back-to-School Night, so I’d appreciate it if you bring your checkbooks. Plus, there's usually a school-wide contest to see which class can get their CCP payments in first, and K2 has won that contest for the past two years, earning a class pizza party! We would love to win again! If this payment is a hardship, the Home & School Club does help supplement the CCP money for our grade level. Thank you in advance for your support with this payment—it helps us do a lot of projects and activities that would otherwise not be possible.
Some of you have asked about classroom help. I will put our parent helper opportunities back out at Back-to-School Night, then make the final schedule. 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. If you sign up to help at center time, we will begin centers the week of September 11th. Thank you to so many of you who signed up to help at the Orientation—we already have most of our activities covered! I know we do still need center helpers and a Wednesday envelope/Red Bag person, so I’ll hope for a few more volunteers at Back-to-School Night.
There is no school this Friday, September 2nd, or Monday, September 5th. Friday there will be a staff development meeting throughout the district, and Monday is of course Labor Day.
I am looking forward to another fun week with your children, and I am excited to meet and talk with you all Wednesday night!
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Wednesday, August 31st @ 6:00: Back-to-School Night
Friday, September 2nd: No School-- Teacher Inservice Day
Monday, September 5th: No School-- Labor Day
Friday, September 9th: Back-to-School Movie Night
Thursday, September 22nd: Family Science Night
Wednesday, September 28th: First Wacky Wednesday
Wednesday, September 28th: Willow Street Pizza Fundraiser
Friday, September 30th: Picture Day
