Week of 1/30

Dear Parents,

We had a wonderful presentation from Isabella's mom on Friday about the Lunar New Year. She brought a dragon costume, a Buddha mask, and noisemakers for the kids to "parade" to. The kids all had a great time, and I will send out pictures soon!

The 100th day of school is this Thursday, and we will have lots of fun projects and activities in class in celebration of the day. We are looking forward to a fun day of celebrating 100.

We have 180 total school days, so we are more than half-way through the year. Spring conferences are rapidly approaching (March) and I sent out those sign-ups in a separate e-mail last week. Thank you to so many of you for already signing up-- if you haven't done so already, please select a time.

Language Arts

This week's word families are ot/op/ox. Children will read and spell words like dot, hop, and fox. We will be learning a new sight word this week, have.  We are now up to 20 sight words.  Please check the sight word link on the website and make sure that your child knows the words we've introduced, as this is a heavy emphasis at this time.  If your child is struggling with these words, a good website to go to is: http://www.spellingcity.com/k2grist and check the "40 Word List" of all the sight words we're covering this year.  The list is also in your child's homework folder to help them with journal writing.

This week's sharing will be the 100 day collections. Children should bring the collection/project that they worked on for homework on their sharing day this week.

Math
We will continue working on number bonds and ten frames to familiarize ourselves with fact families to 10.  Parent tips for helping your child with this unit can be found here. Please continue reinforcing the concept at home using apps on iPhones & iPads or logging into their ixl.com account.  Although ixl isn't a "game," it does provide solid reinforcement of the facts & concepts covered in kindergarten.  If you need a reminder of how to log into your child's ixl account, please email me.

Art Vistas/Global Play Day
We have an Art Vista lesson this Wednesday. Thank you again to Susan, Minna, and Eden for presenting. Also on Wednesday is Global School Play Day.  If your child would like to bring a non-electronic game or toy to share on this day, please feel free to send it in. Due to Art Vistas and p.e. with Coach Sierra, we will be a little tight on time that day, so a quick game such as Uno or Spot-It, etc. would be good choices. We also have many games and toys in the classroom available, so if you'd prefer not to send a game, that's fine.

Homework

The kindergarten team is making a slight change to homework. From now on, the homework will usually only be reading the book in the blue bag and writing a response in the journal. There will no longer be worksheets in the homework folder. There may be an occasional special project; for example, in two weeks, we will have a special President's Day project. However, most weeks, the homework folder will only contain the reference sheets that are permanently in there. The reason for this change is that we want your child to really focus on writing and reading at this time. We'd rather allow them the extra time to do a quality job on their journal entry, and have more time to read-- not just their blue bag book, but books of their choosing from the public library, etc. We also want them to take advantage of opportunities and classes in the community. If your child likes further reinforcement, please take advantage of the many websites available to you (ixl, Lexia, Raz-Kids).

Upcoming Events
On Tuesday, February 14th, we will be celebrating Valentine's Day in class.  This is not a party, but we will be passing out valentines.  Just a reminder (since I know your children will be eagerly shopping for valentines soon!) in kindergarten, we have the kids sign their valentines, but we do not have them write who the valentine is "to." This makes distribution much easier.  Please send in 20 valentines so that there are enough for each child in the class. I know that many store-bought valentines come with candy attached. However, please consider candy-free valentines due to allergies in the class. Valentines with stickers or tattoos, etc., are greatly preferred and homemade cards and messages are wonderful. Thanks!

See you all tomorrow, Blue Bags in hand!

This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: Blue Bags returned (Asma), Centers (Sachie & Anna R.), Sharing
Tuesday: Centers (Claire K. & Minna), Sharing
Wednesday: Art Vistas (Susan, Minna, Eden), Global School Play Day, Recess 101, Blue Bags go home

Thursday: Centers (Chris & Susan), Sharing
Friday: STEAM Centers (Marylu), Story Time with Grandma Gail, Sharing

Upcoming Events:
Wednesday 2/1: Global Play Day/Art Vista Presentation
Thursday 2/2: 100 Day
Friday 2/10: Alta Vista Family Valentine's Dance
Tuesday 2/14: Valentine's Day celebration
2/20-2/24: President's Week Vacation
Thursday 3/2: Read Across America Day
3/9-3/17: Spring Conferences
Saturday 3/18: Alta Vista Hawaiian Luau/Auction