Dear Parents,
Apologies in advance for the long post, but I know that many of you are new parents to Alta Vista, and there is much to explain.
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 shapes. At Back-to-School Night, I will be talking to you a bit more about the new national "Common Core Standards" that are focusing on a more intense study of math topics with higher level questioning. Though the topic of shapes sounds simple enough, with our common core standards, we will be talking about angles, sides and points, using higher level mathematical language.
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. Some families may own these traditional tales in another language. If you do, these may be fun for your child to bring in and share with the students
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-- we will introduce a jazzy song called "We Start our Letters at the Top" this week-- 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, starting at 6:00 in the classroom for K2-PM parents. Following this presentation, there is a Home & School Club presentation in the cafeteria at 6:45. Finally, at approximately 7:15, there is another presentation in K2 for the AM parents. This is a night for parents only, as we 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. 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 for field trips. 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. 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 8th. 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 more center helpers, so I’ll hope for a few more volunteers at Back-to-School Night. Center time is a wonderful way to get involved in our classroom, get to know the children, and stay apprised of what we are learning.
There is no school this Friday, August 30th, or Monday, September 2nd. 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!
