Week of 10/5

Dear Parents,

This week is Walk & Roll week, which is an event to promote walking to school for your health, as well as to reduce traffic around the school.  The kids have been informed that children who walk/roll (bike or scooter) to school the most will be entered into a raffle for some prizes.  Please try and walk or scooter/bike to school at least once this week.  Remember that if driving is necessary, that you can always park a few blocks away to get a little extra exercise and reduce congestion around the school.  If your child attends Holy Cross for daycare, I know that they always park the bus further away this week so that the children can participate.

In class this week, we will be focusing on the letter Mm. We will also have a new sight word, see. We will also begin some Halloween projects, with a focus on color words. We have a fun book coming up that is about a ghost who changes colors, depending on what he eats. We will have some great discussions about food and colors!  The color songs that we've been singing (and that hopefully, you've heard your children singing at home) will help the children spell out the color words on their own.

In math, we continue our topic on deconstructing numbers to 10.  Children should be learning combinations that make up numbers to 10, for example, 8 & 2 make 10 or 1 & 4 make 5.  Our next topic is on two & three dimensional shapes.

This week's sharing is Letter of the Week sharing again-- this time for the letter Mm.  It is great to give the children an opportunity to think about things that start with the letter of the week.  Please have three clues about what is inside the bag either written on the bag or on a paper inside the bag.

This week, I will begin assessing your children at center time so that I have up-to-date information to share with you at conference time. I will be working with them individually to check them on things such as letter recognition, letter sounds, sight word recognition, rhyming, etc. I look forward to sharing this information with you in November.  This of course means that it is also time to sign up for conferences!  You will be hearing from us this week about conference sign-ups.

We are doing very well with our walkathon sign-ups!  Keep on registering your children at:  http://www.altavistawalkathon.org  The children all seem very excited about the walkathon, so I hope to see you all there on the 25th!  Not only does it help raise money for all of the wonderful enrichment programs at our school, but it is a great community event.  There is so much to do besides the walking!  Come out and enjoy the day.

And...since I've heard many of your children talking about soccer, I wanted to let you know that if you have to leave for a soccer game (or come a little later because of soccer) please let the people at the check-in desk know.  Your child gets 10 laps of credit for soccer games or other outside sports obligations that they have.

Please continue sending in permission slips for the field trip on the 20th.  I now have enough parent chaperones for the trip-- thank you!

Blue bags, with homework folders inside are due tomorrow.  Thanks for being so great about returning the Blue Bags each week on time.

Upcoming Events:
10/20: Field Trip to California Theater Center
10/25: Alta Vista Walkathon
10/29: October's Wacky Wednesday
10/30: Halloween Parade & Celebration 
10/31:  Staff Development Day: No School
11/10-11/11: No School, Veteran's Day 
11/13-11/21: Parent-Teacher Conferences 
11/19: November's Wacky Wednesday
11/21: Kindergarten Friendship Feast @ 10:15 (a.m. class) and 1:30 (p.m. class)  
11/24-11/28: Thanksgiving Week Vacation
12/19: Kindergarten Nutcracker Performance @ 10:00 (a.m. class) & 1:30 (p.m. class)