Dear Parents,
As we head into our final week before Spring break, I hate to say it, but the weeks after the break are going to just fly by! We have a lot to pack in and a lot of upcoming events, so keep updating your calendars with the information at the bottom of this e-mail. You will notice there are A LOT of upcoming events!
This week, we have a new letter, Ww. The alphafriend is Willy Worm. We have a new word, play. We also have a new vowel, Ee. The alphafriend is Edna Elephant. After this week, we only have one vowel and two consonants remaining! In math, we will wrap up the topic on weight & capacity. The children will be comparing baskets and containers by looking at how much they hold. They will also be ordering items by weight (heaviest to lightest, etc.)
In our final week of the science unit on Wood & Paper, we will have the chance to make paper mache. We will also make our own paper by creating some paper pulp, then drying it. Finally, we will take apart boxes and look at how the flat template appears before being folded into a box. Then, we will use the remaining boxes to create structures. This unit has been a lot of fun! Our next science unit will be on animals and will begin in May.
We have Spring Fling this Friday, of course. Thank you again for answering the call for help!! I believe almost all items are now covered, and we have plenty of helpers, but if anyone else would like to join us for the day, feel free to do so.
If you haven't already, please return the permission slip for the upcoming field trip to Emma Prusch Farm so that they don't get forgotten over the Spring Break. Blue Bags will not go home this Wednesday due to the upcoming vacation week, but please try to return the bags tomorrow.
This week's sharing is Song, Poem, or Nursery Rhyme. Please have your children come prepared with a song, poem, alphafriend song, nursery rhyme, etc. that they can recite in front of the class.
A reminder again that we've set the date for Muffins with Mom (May 10). Please come join us for this important event honoring all the moms! All parents will also want to mark their calendars for our Promotion Ceremony on Thursday, June 6th. More details will follow, but this is our celebration of our year together as Friday (the final day of the school year) is just a housekeeping day.
Upcoming Events:
4/2: Dining for Dollars @ Armadillo Willy's
4/5: Spring Fling
4/8-4/12: Spring Break
4/19: Muli-Cultural Family Night @ 5:00
4/24: April's Wacky Wednesday & Field Trip to Prusch Farm
4/24: Alta Vista Science Fair
5/3: Cinco de Mayo Dance
5/9: Art Vista Art Show
5/10: Mother's Day Celebration in Class
5/10: "Under the Big Top" Fantasy Fair 5:00 pm
5/22: Open House
5/29: May's Wacky Wednesday
6/5: June's Wacky Wednesday/Alta Vista Olympic Day
6/6: Kindergarten Promotion Ceremony
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Week of 3/24
Dear Parents,
This week, a letter will be coming home in your child's homework folder about Spring Fling on Friday, April 5th. We need a few donations to make this event happen. We also need MANY volunteers. This is a day of crafting, planting seeds, fun outdoor activities, and face painting. This is definitely a kindergarten favorite, so please join us if you can. Please send in the form to let us know if you can donate an item or sign up to help. Thanks again.
We have the proofs from the Spring pictures also coming home in this week's bag. I know a few of you were concerned that you'd missed the order form. For Spring pictures, you get to see the proof first. If you like it, you can choose to order at that time.
This week, we have a review week again with the letters Ff, Hh, Ss. We will also have two new words, an and you. Since we are having so many review weeks with the letters, we are now working on numbers in the Handwriting without Tears program.
We are continuing our science unit on wood & paper. We are now on the "paper" part of the unit. We have many great hands-on activities ahead of us this week, including making a paper mache project.
This week's sharing is letter of the week share for Ff, Hh, or Ss. Your child can choose an item that starts with any one of those letters. Hide it in a bag and write clues-- the kids did really well last week with writing their own clues.
Moms will want to note that we have set the date for Muffins with Mom. This is an important day to the kindergartners to celebrate their moms, so please try to attend. Muffins with Mom will be the Friday before Mother's Day on May 10th. We hope that by giving these dates ahead of time, working moms will be able to take a little time off to join us.
The afternoon class has a Wacky Wednesday this week. Class runs from 10:00 to 1:20 on the 27th.
Please remember your Blue Bags tomorrow. This Wednesday we will send home the last Blue Bag before Spring Break-- there will be no homework next week.
Upcoming Events:
3/27: March's Wacky Wednesday
4/2: Dining for Dollars @ Armadillo Willy's
4/5: Spring Fling
4/8-4/12: Spring Break
4/19: Muli-Cultural Family Night @ 5:00
4/24: April's Wacky Wednesday & Field Trip to Prusch Farm
5/3: Cinco de Mayo Dance
5/10: Mother's Day Celebration in Class
5/22: Open House
5/29: May's Wacky Wednesday
This week, a letter will be coming home in your child's homework folder about Spring Fling on Friday, April 5th. We need a few donations to make this event happen. We also need MANY volunteers. This is a day of crafting, planting seeds, fun outdoor activities, and face painting. This is definitely a kindergarten favorite, so please join us if you can. Please send in the form to let us know if you can donate an item or sign up to help. Thanks again.
We have the proofs from the Spring pictures also coming home in this week's bag. I know a few of you were concerned that you'd missed the order form. For Spring pictures, you get to see the proof first. If you like it, you can choose to order at that time.
This week, we have a review week again with the letters Ff, Hh, Ss. We will also have two new words, an and you. Since we are having so many review weeks with the letters, we are now working on numbers in the Handwriting without Tears program.
We are continuing our science unit on wood & paper. We are now on the "paper" part of the unit. We have many great hands-on activities ahead of us this week, including making a paper mache project.
This week's sharing is letter of the week share for Ff, Hh, or Ss. Your child can choose an item that starts with any one of those letters. Hide it in a bag and write clues-- the kids did really well last week with writing their own clues.
Moms will want to note that we have set the date for Muffins with Mom. This is an important day to the kindergartners to celebrate their moms, so please try to attend. Muffins with Mom will be the Friday before Mother's Day on May 10th. We hope that by giving these dates ahead of time, working moms will be able to take a little time off to join us.
The afternoon class has a Wacky Wednesday this week. Class runs from 10:00 to 1:20 on the 27th.
Please remember your Blue Bags tomorrow. This Wednesday we will send home the last Blue Bag before Spring Break-- there will be no homework next week.
Upcoming Events:
3/27: March's Wacky Wednesday
4/2: Dining for Dollars @ Armadillo Willy's
4/5: Spring Fling
4/8-4/12: Spring Break
4/19: Muli-Cultural Family Night @ 5:00
4/24: April's Wacky Wednesday & Field Trip to Prusch Farm
5/3: Cinco de Mayo Dance
5/10: Mother's Day Celebration in Class
5/22: Open House
5/29: May's Wacky Wednesday
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Week of 3/17
Dear Parents,
Happy St. Patrick's Day! We enjoyed all the fun with trapping leprechauns last week, and I thank you for your help and encouragement with the traps! I hope that it was a fun family project-- I know that the kids certainly seemed to enjoy sharing them and seeing what happened after setting them up.
It was great to see many of you at the Donate & Celebrate Auction on Friday night. Thanks again to all the parents who helped with our class project that was up for auction. It turned out great!
Thank you to all of you for meeting with me the past two weeks for conferences. 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 are back to a normal schedule now that conferences are over. We will have centers again on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Please check the schedule on the website-- I have now updated the schedule on the website through the end of the year. Let me know of any conflicts.
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 have introduced 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 25 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 the full 40 word list, a 25 word kindergarten list, and the expanded 50 word list that includes more 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 will continue our math topic on measuring this week, and will also get back to science. We could still use a few more boxes to take apart, so it's not too late to send in empty cereal boxes, cookie boxes, etc.-- thank you for all the donations so far.
Another plea again to please try and turn the Blue Bags in on Monday of each week. As the year progresses, we are getting more late blue bags, and it makes it difficult to get them ready for the upcoming week. Thank you so much for your help!
Upcoming Events:
3/27: March's Wacky Wednesday
4/2: Dining for Dollars @ Armadillo Willy's
4/5: Spring Fling
4/8-4/12: Spring Break
4/19: Muli-Cultural Family Night @ 5:00
4/24: April's Wacky Wednesday & Field Trip to Prusch Farm
5/3: Cinco de Mayo Dance
5/10: Mother's Day Celebration in Class
5/22: Open House
Happy St. Patrick's Day! We enjoyed all the fun with trapping leprechauns last week, and I thank you for your help and encouragement with the traps! I hope that it was a fun family project-- I know that the kids certainly seemed to enjoy sharing them and seeing what happened after setting them up.
It was great to see many of you at the Donate & Celebrate Auction on Friday night. Thanks again to all the parents who helped with our class project that was up for auction. It turned out great!
Thank you to all of you for meeting with me the past two weeks for conferences. 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 are back to a normal schedule now that conferences are over. We will have centers again on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Please check the schedule on the website-- I have now updated the schedule on the website through the end of the year. Let me know of any conflicts.
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 have introduced 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 25 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 the full 40 word list, a 25 word kindergarten list, and the expanded 50 word list that includes more 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 will continue our math topic on measuring this week, and will also get back to science. We could still use a few more boxes to take apart, so it's not too late to send in empty cereal boxes, cookie boxes, etc.-- thank you for all the donations so far.
Another plea again to please try and turn the Blue Bags in on Monday of each week. As the year progresses, we are getting more late blue bags, and it makes it difficult to get them ready for the upcoming week. Thank you so much for your help!
Upcoming Events:
3/27: March's Wacky Wednesday
4/2: Dining for Dollars @ Armadillo Willy's
4/5: Spring Fling
4/8-4/12: Spring Break
4/19: Muli-Cultural Family Night @ 5:00
4/24: April's Wacky Wednesday & Field Trip to Prusch Farm
5/3: Cinco de Mayo Dance
5/10: Mother's Day Celebration in Class
5/22: Open House
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Week of 3/10
Dear Parents,
I hope you are now all getting used to the new schedule after "springing forward"!
We continue parent-teacher conferences this week. Please contact me if you need a reminder of your date or time. I enjoyed meeting with many of you last week, and I am looking forward to the conferences this week-- it's great to share your child's successes with you. It's hard to believe that we are already in our last trimester of kindergarten. The time will pass quickly in this last 3 months, and before you know it, we will be moving on to first grade! After we meet, please be sure to praise your children for the progress they've made, and also continue to support them in areas where they still need reinforcement to meet end-of-year standards.
I am looking forward to seeing some of the wonderful leprechaun traps tomorrow! It's exciting to see the children's creations, and they are so proud to share and talk about how there trap will work. On Monday through Thursday (on their share day, or any other day this week for Friday kids) they will have that opportunity. They will share their design with the class and tell us how it will hopefully catch a leprechaun! Then, we will all come in on Friday and see if we were successful! In addition to all the excitement with the leprechauns, on Friday, we have wear green day. Wear green for St. Patrick's Day!
This week, we have another review week with letters. We are reviewing the letters t, k, and n. We do have a new high frequency word: said. Our art and writing will center around St. Patrick's Day activities.
We also finished the math topic on geometric shapes. Thank you for all the great items you sent in last week for your child's sharing. I think this really helped them learn those shapes! Please continue to keep the words sphere, cone, cube, and cylinder in your child's vocabulary. These words will continue to be a big part of the math program in years to come, so it is a good idea to keep your children familiar with them. Our next math topic is on length. We will be measuring different things using one-inch cubes and also paperclips.
There are still no centers this week due to parent-teacher conferences.
Please note a few events below in the "upcoming events." On April 5th, we will have a fun celebration called Spring Fling. This is an annual kindergarten event. Children will participate in many special spring-inspired centers for the duration of their school day. There will be spin art, seed planting, outside games and activities, etc. We will need many parent volunteers to run the centers on this day, so please plan on joining us if you are able. On April 24th, we have our 2nd field trip to Emma Prusch Farm. I have already heard from several of you that you'd like to join in on this trip as a chaperone. I know space is limited, but I would love for those who are able to join us. If space restrictions prevent you from coming on the farm field trip, please consider helping with Spring Fling instead.
Please remember to send in your child's Blue Bag tomorrow amidst all the excitement of starting to bring in the leprechaun traps. It really makes it MUCH easier to get the bags ready again for Wednesday if they all come in on Monday.
Upcoming Events:
3/10: Chipotle Dinner Fundraiser 4:00-8:00
3/4-3/15: 2nd Trimester Parent-Teacher Conferences
3/15: Donate & Celebrate Auction
3/27: March's Wacky Wednesday
4/5: Spring Fling
4/8-4/12: Spring Break
4/24: April's Wacky Wednesday & Field trip to Farm
5/3: Cinco de Mayo Dance
5/10: Mother's Day Celebration in class
I hope you are now all getting used to the new schedule after "springing forward"!
We continue parent-teacher conferences this week. Please contact me if you need a reminder of your date or time. I enjoyed meeting with many of you last week, and I am looking forward to the conferences this week-- it's great to share your child's successes with you. It's hard to believe that we are already in our last trimester of kindergarten. The time will pass quickly in this last 3 months, and before you know it, we will be moving on to first grade! After we meet, please be sure to praise your children for the progress they've made, and also continue to support them in areas where they still need reinforcement to meet end-of-year standards.
I am looking forward to seeing some of the wonderful leprechaun traps tomorrow! It's exciting to see the children's creations, and they are so proud to share and talk about how there trap will work. On Monday through Thursday (on their share day, or any other day this week for Friday kids) they will have that opportunity. They will share their design with the class and tell us how it will hopefully catch a leprechaun! Then, we will all come in on Friday and see if we were successful! In addition to all the excitement with the leprechauns, on Friday, we have wear green day. Wear green for St. Patrick's Day!
This week, we have another review week with letters. We are reviewing the letters t, k, and n. We do have a new high frequency word: said. Our art and writing will center around St. Patrick's Day activities.
We also finished the math topic on geometric shapes. Thank you for all the great items you sent in last week for your child's sharing. I think this really helped them learn those shapes! Please continue to keep the words sphere, cone, cube, and cylinder in your child's vocabulary. These words will continue to be a big part of the math program in years to come, so it is a good idea to keep your children familiar with them. Our next math topic is on length. We will be measuring different things using one-inch cubes and also paperclips.
There are still no centers this week due to parent-teacher conferences.
Please note a few events below in the "upcoming events." On April 5th, we will have a fun celebration called Spring Fling. This is an annual kindergarten event. Children will participate in many special spring-inspired centers for the duration of their school day. There will be spin art, seed planting, outside games and activities, etc. We will need many parent volunteers to run the centers on this day, so please plan on joining us if you are able. On April 24th, we have our 2nd field trip to Emma Prusch Farm. I have already heard from several of you that you'd like to join in on this trip as a chaperone. I know space is limited, but I would love for those who are able to join us. If space restrictions prevent you from coming on the farm field trip, please consider helping with Spring Fling instead.
Please remember to send in your child's Blue Bag tomorrow amidst all the excitement of starting to bring in the leprechaun traps. It really makes it MUCH easier to get the bags ready again for Wednesday if they all come in on Monday.
Upcoming Events:
3/10: Chipotle Dinner Fundraiser 4:00-8:00
3/4-3/15: 2nd Trimester Parent-Teacher Conferences
3/15: Donate & Celebrate Auction
3/27: March's Wacky Wednesday
4/5: Spring Fling
4/8-4/12: Spring Break
4/24: April's Wacky Wednesday & Field trip to Farm
5/3: Cinco de Mayo Dance
5/10: Mother's Day Celebration in class
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Week of 3/3
Dear Parents,
The upcoming week is a review week in language arts. We will start to have many more of these, as we have now learned 19 of the 26 letter sounds. We will be reviewing Dd & Zz this week, as well as reviewing for and have. From our expanded word list (those that are also covered in first grade) we will introduce the words of and not.
We will continue the study of shapes this week in math. Last week was a review of the plane shapes-- square, rectangle, circle, and triangle. This week we will focus more on the solid shapes-- sphere, cone, cube, cylinder. Again, whatever reinforcement you can provide at home on this vocabulary will be helpful. Additionally, to reinforce the solid shape names, we will have "solid shape sharing" this week! Have your child bring in something shaped like a sphere, cone, cube, or cylinder. Items such as blocks, different types of balls/marbles, canned food, etc. have been brought in the past for these shapes. They need to tell which shape the item is. It will be fun to see the different way that solid shapes can look.
The kids enjoyed the lessons from our science unit, "Wood & Paper," last week. They had fun going on a wood hunt, learning about 5 different types of wood, and checking how well those woods absorbed water, as well as trying to sink the wood! We will get back to science after parent-teacher conferences, when we will be sanding wood and looking at sawdust and also adding water to sawdust, along with several other experiments with wood.
For the "Donate & Celebrate" auction, both the a.m. & p.m. classes will be auctioning off large versions of the beautiful blossom scrolls that the children did (which are still hanging in our classroom) for Chinese New Year. This should be a beautiful contribution to the auction and you will definitely want to bid on them! Even if you are unable to attend the auction, you can still bid on items online. Information about the online auction has been sent out and will continue to be updated. This may be an item you'd be interested in bidding on, along with the "after school playdate" that we will be hosting in K2. Information about this item is posted next to the classroom door-- check it out when you pick your child up!
This Wednesday, your child will bring home a special homework assignment. We will be building leprechaun traps! Get creative and have fun-- traps are due on your child's sharing day the week of the 10th, along with the Blue Bag journal (there will be no other homework this week). Children who normally share on Friday will need to bring their traps Mon-Thurs, as we are setting up the traps at the end of the day on Thursday. There will be more specific directions in the Blue Bag this week, but we do ask two things-- that the traps not contain any unwrapped food items (we've had trouble with ants in the past!) and that the traps are not overly large-- shoebox sized is perfect. We have to store traps from both the a.m. class & the p.m. class, and it gets tricky if we have huge traps. Plus, we're only catching tiny leprechauns :) We will share the traps each day on your child's sharing day (or earlier if your child shares on Friday), then on the 14th, we will set the traps in hopes of catching the little guys! We will come in on Friday the 15th and check the results of our traps, then send the traps home with the children for the weekend!!
Parent-teacher conferences begin Monday the 4th. If you have forgotten your date/time, please e-mail me. I will again be meeting with you up in the office conference room, which is the 2nd door on the right after you go past Miss Vicki's desk. We will not have centers during conference time.
Upcoming Events:
3/4-3/15: 2nd Trimester Parent-Teacher Conferences
3/15: Donate & Celebrate Auction
3/27: March's Wacky Wednesday
4/5: Spring Fling
4/8-4/12: Spring Break
4/24: April's Wacky Wednesday & Field trip to Farm
5/3: Cinco de Mayo Dance
5/10: Mother's Day Celebration
The upcoming week is a review week in language arts. We will start to have many more of these, as we have now learned 19 of the 26 letter sounds. We will be reviewing Dd & Zz this week, as well as reviewing for and have. From our expanded word list (those that are also covered in first grade) we will introduce the words of and not.
We will continue the study of shapes this week in math. Last week was a review of the plane shapes-- square, rectangle, circle, and triangle. This week we will focus more on the solid shapes-- sphere, cone, cube, cylinder. Again, whatever reinforcement you can provide at home on this vocabulary will be helpful. Additionally, to reinforce the solid shape names, we will have "solid shape sharing" this week! Have your child bring in something shaped like a sphere, cone, cube, or cylinder. Items such as blocks, different types of balls/marbles, canned food, etc. have been brought in the past for these shapes. They need to tell which shape the item is. It will be fun to see the different way that solid shapes can look.
The kids enjoyed the lessons from our science unit, "Wood & Paper," last week. They had fun going on a wood hunt, learning about 5 different types of wood, and checking how well those woods absorbed water, as well as trying to sink the wood! We will get back to science after parent-teacher conferences, when we will be sanding wood and looking at sawdust and also adding water to sawdust, along with several other experiments with wood.
For the "Donate & Celebrate" auction, both the a.m. & p.m. classes will be auctioning off large versions of the beautiful blossom scrolls that the children did (which are still hanging in our classroom) for Chinese New Year. This should be a beautiful contribution to the auction and you will definitely want to bid on them! Even if you are unable to attend the auction, you can still bid on items online. Information about the online auction has been sent out and will continue to be updated. This may be an item you'd be interested in bidding on, along with the "after school playdate" that we will be hosting in K2. Information about this item is posted next to the classroom door-- check it out when you pick your child up!
This Wednesday, your child will bring home a special homework assignment. We will be building leprechaun traps! Get creative and have fun-- traps are due on your child's sharing day the week of the 10th, along with the Blue Bag journal (there will be no other homework this week). Children who normally share on Friday will need to bring their traps Mon-Thurs, as we are setting up the traps at the end of the day on Thursday. There will be more specific directions in the Blue Bag this week, but we do ask two things-- that the traps not contain any unwrapped food items (we've had trouble with ants in the past!) and that the traps are not overly large-- shoebox sized is perfect. We have to store traps from both the a.m. class & the p.m. class, and it gets tricky if we have huge traps. Plus, we're only catching tiny leprechauns :) We will share the traps each day on your child's sharing day (or earlier if your child shares on Friday), then on the 14th, we will set the traps in hopes of catching the little guys! We will come in on Friday the 15th and check the results of our traps, then send the traps home with the children for the weekend!!
Parent-teacher conferences begin Monday the 4th. If you have forgotten your date/time, please e-mail me. I will again be meeting with you up in the office conference room, which is the 2nd door on the right after you go past Miss Vicki's desk. We will not have centers during conference time.
Upcoming Events:
3/4-3/15: 2nd Trimester Parent-Teacher Conferences
3/15: Donate & Celebrate Auction
3/27: March's Wacky Wednesday
4/5: Spring Fling
4/8-4/12: Spring Break
4/24: April's Wacky Wednesday & Field trip to Farm
5/3: Cinco de Mayo Dance
5/10: Mother's Day Celebration