Week of 3/39

Dear Parents,

Thank you to all of you for meeting with me the past two weeks for conferences. I enjoyed talking with you all about the progress your children have made, and areas where they may need to continue working to meet the standards. 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 post. You will notice there are A LOT of upcoming events!

We are back to a normal schedule now that conferences are over.  We will have centers again on Monday and Tuesday, and Thursday, we will have special Spring Fling centers. Please check the schedule on the website for future center dates & helpers.

This week, we have a review week again with the letters Ff, Hh, Ss. We will also have a new sight word, you. Since we are having so many review weeks with the letters, we are now working on numbers and vowels 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 in the upcoming weeks, including making a paper mache project.  Another upcoming project will be looking at boxes.  Please send in empty food boxes, etc.  from around your house-- cereal boxes, cracker boxes, packaging boxes (not too big!), snack boxes, etc., will be very helpful.  The kids will get to take apart the boxes and look at how they are made, as well as make fun building projects out of the boxes.  Start collecting boxes from your house & send them in after Spring Break please.

This week's sharing is Letter of the Week, Ff, Hh, Ss sharing. Please have your child hide an item in a bag and write three clues about an item that starts with one of those three letters. Friday children can share any other day this week, since we have no school on Friday.

We have Spring Fling this Thursday, of course. Thank you for answering the call for help!!  We have many parents joining us and if you'd still like to come, please feel free.

Moms will want to note that we have set the date for our Mother's Day Celebration. This is an important day for the kindergartners to celebrate their moms, so please try to attend. If you cannot attend, you are welcome to send an aunt, grandma, special friend, etc. in your place.  This event will be the Friday before Mother's Day on May 8th.  Another date to mark (even though it seems early) is our Kindergarten Promotion Ceremony, which will be held on Tuesday, June 9th.  This is a celebration of our year together, where we take a look back at all our special events and is our official send-off to first grade.  We hope that by giving these dates ahead of time, working parents will be able to take a little time off to join us for these special events.

Blue Bags will not go home this Wednesday due to the upcoming vacation week, but please try to return the bags tomorrow.

Enjoy your Spring Break!

Upcoming Events:
4/2: Spring Fling
4/3: No School: Staff Development Day
4/6-4/10: Spring Break
4/17: Multicultural Family Night
4/29: Wacky Wednesday & Field Trip to Emma Prusch Farm
4/29: Parent Volunteer Tea
5/5: All-Kindergarten Cinco de Mayo dance @ 11:15
5/8: Mother's Day Tea-- moms, mark your calendars!
5/15: Alta Vista Hoedown 5:00-8:30 pm
5/25: Memorial Day
5/27: May's Wacky Wednesday & Open House
6/8: End of the year Party & Water Play Day
6/9: Kindergarten Promotion Ceremony
6/10: June's Wacky Wednesday & Olympic Day
6/11: Last Day of School: All Kindergartners come from 8:05-11:25

Week of 3/22

Dear Parents,

We continue conferences this week, and I am looking forward to meeting with those who haven't yet had their conference. If you are unsure of your conference time, please email me. 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 have a new consonant this week, Xx, and the Alphafriend is "Mr. X-Ray."  For this sound, we mostly focus on it as an ending sound, which sounds like "ks."  We will look at words like box, ox, mix, six, etc. to study the ending sound.  After introducing another vowel last week (Oo), 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://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 a supplemental 25 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.  I have now updated the list on our kindergarten website to organize the words in order of the 25 they need to know first, then the remaining 15, so that you know which ones to really reinforce. As I mentioned to many of you during conferences, after your child has mastered these words, start working on the 1st grade 100 word list, that can be found here: http://goo.gl/ldYnW2

The sharing this week is homemade item. Have your children bring in something they made themselves, either at home or at preschool, etc.  They should be prepared to describe how they made the item.

On Thursday, April 2nd, we will have a favorite kindergarten event, "Spring Fling."  This is an afternoon of spring fun-- special art projects, outside fun, music, and festivity!  We cannot make this event happen without your help.  Spring Fling runs from 9:30 to 11:00 (morning) and 1:00 to 2:30 (afternoon).  Please email us and let us know if you can help on that day!

The afternoon class has a Wacky Wednesday this week.  Class runs from 10:00 to 1:20.

Upcoming Events:
3/19-3/27: Parent-Teacher Conferences
3/25: March's Wacky Wednesday
4/2: Spring Fling
4/3: No School: Staff Development Day
4/6-4/10: Spring Break
4/29: Wacky Wednesday & Field Trip to Emma Prusch Farm
5/5: All-Kindergarten Cinco de Mayo dance @ 11:15
5/8: Mother's Day Tea-- moms, mark your calendars!
5/15: Alta Vista Hoedown 5:00-8:30 pm

Week of 3/15

Dear Parents,

Happy St. Patrick's Day week!  We are looking forward to all the fun with sharing leprechaun traps tomorrow, 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 excited to get building! Just to clarify again, for this week only, everyone is sharing their traps tomorrow. Then, we will set the traps and see if anyone is successful on Tuesday! The rest of the week, we will not have sharing. We will get back to the regular sharing schedule next week.  Tuesday, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, there is also another school spirit day-- it is "Wear Green" day.  Children can wear as much green as possible to participate in this spirit day.

We begin parent-teacher conferences this week. Please contact me if you need a reminder of your date or time.  I am looking forward to meeting with all of you-- 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.

This week, we have another review week with letters. We are reviewing the letters t, k, and n. However, we do have a new vowel, Oo, for Ozzy Octopus.  This means that we can now read and spell CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words with short a, short i, and short o.  Please keep practicing with your children spelling and reading such words as pit, pat, pot, hit, hat, hot, lip, lap, lop, etc. We also have a new high frequency word: said. Our art and writing will center around the theme of Spring.

There are no centers this week due to parent-teacher conferences.

Please remember to send in your child's Blue Bag tomorrow amidst all the excitement of checking 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:
3/19-3/27: Parent-Teacher Conferences
3/25: March's Wacky Wednesday
4/2: Spring Fling
4/3: No School: Staff Development Day
4/6-4/10: Spring Break
4/29: Wacky Wednesday & Field Trip to Emma Prusch Farm
5/5: All-Kindergarten Cinco de Mayo dance @ 11:15
5/8: Mother's Day Tea-- moms, mark your calendars!

Week of 3/8

Dear Parents,

We hope you are getting used to the new schedule after "springing forward."  Please ratchet back those bedtimes accordingly tonight, or we will have some tired children all week long ;)

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 with a math review also.  We will continue to cover the concepts of addition, subtraction, and number sense.  Overall, we are very impressed with how well the children are understanding these topics.  Thank you so much for all the reinforcement you've been providing at home!

The kids continued to enjoy our science unit, "Wood & Paper," this past week.  We checked the absorbency of different woods and sawdust and even made our own particleboard.  We will continue with a few more exciting lessons before conferences start next week.

This week's sharing is Song, Poem, or Nursery Rhyme.  Children should be prepared to recite a short song or poem.  If they are stuck for ideas, they can always sing a favorite Alphafriend song.  Songs & poems in other languages are always welcome and enjoyed!

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 next Monday the 16th, along with the Blue Bag journal (there will be no other homework this week). 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 :)  It's exciting to see the children's creations, and they are so proud to share and talk about how their trap will work. On Monday next week, 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 next Tuesday (St. Patrick's Day) and see if we were successful!

For the Campo di Bocce auction/fundraising event, a final reminder that bidding begins Sunday the 8th at 10:00 a.m.  The kindergarten movie night, which will be held on April 24th (note the date change!) from 5:00-7:00 p.m. should be a popular item.  Bid early if you'd like your child to participate.  We did add an 11th ticket per classroom (4 more tickets) that are not "buy it now."  These last 4 tickets will be auctioned off at whatever price people are willing to pay.  If you want to lock in the $40 price, bid early, but if you miss out on the $40 tickets, know that there are 4 tickets that will be auctioned for the remainder of the week, until the auction closes on Wednesday the 11th at 9:00 pm.  We would prefer the movie night tickets to be for current Alta Vista kindergartners.

Parent-teacher conferences begin Thursday the 19th.  If you have forgotten your date/time, please e-mail me.  There will be no centers the week of 3/15 or the week of 3/22 due to Mrs. Sheikh's and my conference schedule.

Please note a new event below in the "upcoming events." On Thursday, April 2nd, we will have a fun celebration called Spring Fling. This is an annual kindergarten event. Children will participate in many special spring-inspired centers, starting shortly after opening in each session. 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. Email us if you'd like to help with Spring Fling.

Please remember to send in your child's Blue Bag tomorrow. It really makes it MUCH easier to get the bags ready again for Wednesday if they all come in on Monday.  Thank you!

Upcoming Events:
3/14: Bocce Ball Fundraiser at Campo di Bocce
3/19-3/27: Parent-Teacher Conferences
3/25: March's Wacky Wednesday
4/2: Spring Fling
4/3: No School: Staff Development Day
4/6-4/10: Spring Break
4/29: Wacky Wednesday & Field Trip to Emma Prusch Farm
5/5: All-Kindergarten Cinco de Mayo dance @ 11:15
5/8: Mother's Day Tea-- moms, mark your calendars!