Week of 8/26

Dear Parents,

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 in K2.  The schedule for the night is as follows:
6:00-6:45:  Mrs. Sheikh's class meets in K2
6:45-7:15:  All classes meet in the cafeteria for a Home & School Club presentation
7:15-8:00:  Mrs. Grist's class meets 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.   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 $65-- 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 three 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 9th. Thank you to so many of you who signed up to help at the Orientation—we already have most of our activities covered!

There is no school this Friday, August 31st, or Monday, September 3rd.  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:
8/29: Back-to-School Night
8/31:  No School: Staff Development Day
9/3:  No School: Labor Day
9/7:  Alta Vista Movie Night
9/20:  Family Science Night
9/26:  Wacky Wednesday
9/28:  School Picture Day
10/20:  Alta Vista Walkathon

Welcome!

Dear Parents,

We'd like to welcome you and your children to our kindergarten class, and we were happy to meet so many of you at the orientation.  

Our primary form of communication is via e-mail, so hopefully, you were able to provide an e-mail address to us at the orientation.  If not, please make sure to do so between now and Back-to-School Night.   We will send a few test e-mails between now and then, too, so look for those in your inbox.

The kindergarten daily schedules are:

• 8:05-11:25 AM Session
• 11:30-2:50 PM Session

For Monday:

• Please arrive on time and have your child ready to enter the classroom at the start time.
• Please say goodbye to your children at the door, rather than following them into the classroom and prolonging the goodbyes. We will both be there to comfort any children who need an extra hug!
• Pack a healthy snack for your child that includes a drink.  If your child is attending day care either before or after kindergarten, it is a good idea to separate the snack items from the lunch items, as kindergartners often get confused and will eat all the food in one sitting!
• We do like your children to have a small backpack. Although it may often come home empty (except on Wednesdays!), we do have a project here and there that we send home during the week. Having a backpack gets the children in an early habit of taking responsibility for their things and putting them all in one place.
• All supplies are provided for your children, but we do appreciate donations of baby wipes, tissues, glue sticks, and dry-erase markers.
• The kindergarten parking lot will be closed this year at 7:45 a.m.  This is a new policy due to traffic congestion problems.  Please plan on walking or parking on Westchester between the hours of 7:45 to 8:15 a.m. AND 2:15 to 3:00.

Next week in class will of course be all about procedures and getting to know the children.  We will be reading the story of the "Gingerbread Man" and decorating some gingerbread cookies of our own.  In years past, those gingerbread cookies have run away and so we have to go on a hunt around the school looking for them!  This is our way of familiarizing your children with the campus, and it is an extremely memorable event for the children-- look forward to them coming home and talking all about the gingerbread cookies later next week.  We will also be enjoying the story, "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" and doing some fun art projects that go along with that.

Please mark your calendars and arrange babysitters for Back-to-School Night on Wednesday, August 29th.   The schedule is as follows:

• 6:00-6:45 AM Class Presentation
• 6:45-7:15 Home & School Club Presentation
• 7:15-8:00 PM Class Presentation

We will go over our classroom policies and procedures, discuss our curriculum, and answer any questions that you may have. Of course, if you have any questions prior to that, please feel free to ask! We are both very good about responding to e-mails.

At the orientation, we provided you with the Alta Vista Student handbook.  Please look over the handbook with your child this weekend and go over all grade-appropriate rules with your child.  Please return the signature page (last page of handbook) to class as soon as possible.

We are looking forward to an exciting year!