We had a great 2nd week of school & now have eight school days
under our belts! The children are doing well with learning the routines
and following the rules of kindergarten.
I am working
on the parent helper schedule, and hope to have my first draft to you
this weekend. I did want to remind you that if you signed up to help
with a school wide enrichment program (Art Vistas, Clay, Cornerstone,
Room Parent, etc.) that you need to make sure to sign up and indicate
that on MSA (MySchoolAnywhere). Those programs all have informational
meetings to get you started, and if you only signed up with me in the
classroom, you won't receive information about those meetings. To sign
up for MSA for the first time, click here: https://www.myschoolanywhere.com/new-family.a5w?fam=AltaVistaElem19550
If you already have an account and just need to sign up to volunteer, click here: https://www.myschoolanywhere.com/volunteer-new.a5w?vol=AltaVistaElem19550
Thank you in advance for signing up! I believe I have all enrichment activities covered!
Language Arts
In
language arts this year, we will be introducing two letters per week,
wrapping up our isolated letter & sound study by November. This
week, we will be covering letters Cc & Dd. We will also continue
reading familiar fairy tales and nursery rhymes. We also will be reading and having activities around the story Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Additionally, we will
introduce our first sight word, I.
This week, we will
begin introducing more activities in our "Daily 5" reading program. All
the kindergarten teachers attended a week-long training last summer in
this program. It was highly successful last year, and we are excited to continue implementing it. You can read a
little summary of it here. Last week, we began working on "read to self." This week, we will introduce some word work.
Math
In
math, we will continue studying numbers to 5. We will have some
hands-on activities in class as well as several educational YouTubes.
More information on this math module can be found here.
Music & Movement
We
also will be using a lot of music in the classroom for learning. I have
already had them up and dancing to our "Alphabet Action" tune, and we have a song and movement for each individual letter as well. We also will be learning how to spell color words through singing some
catchy tunes. We are introducing a new song each week. Last week we learned the "red" song, and this week it will be the "yellow" song. I also play the violin and break that out from
time to time, mostly to play "Happy Birthday" for birthday celebrations.
:)
Additionally, Union School District subscribes to a
great educational movement online site called "Go Noodle." We have
already used Go Noodle quite a bit for our classroom brain breaks.
Educational research has shown that when we take brain breaks, it
refreshes our thinking and helps us discover another solution to the
problem, or see a situation through a different lens. In K2, we love
getting the children up and moving through music and other brain breaks.
STEAM
Hopefully, your children shared with you our Fairy Tale STEAM activity last week where we had them building a house for the Three Pigs using KEVA Planks. Then we tested the house to see if it could withstand "huffing & puffing" (a hair dryer). As you can imagine, there was lots of excitement around this! I posted a short video of one test on my Twitter account. This week, we will continue with the Fairy Tale STEAM by building a new bridge for the Three Billy Goats. We will be using the toilet paper tubes you've been sending in for this activity. Thank you again for continuing to send those in through Wednesday.
Reminder: We have this Friday the 31st off school, as well as Monday the 3rd.
Upcoming Events:
Friday 8/31: Staff Development Day
Monday 9/3: Labor Day Holiday
Friday 9/7: Picture Day
Friday 9/7: Alta Vista Movie Night
Week of 9/10: Classroom Centers Begin
Wednesday 9/12: First Blue Book Bag goes home
Tuesday 10/2: Alta Vista STEAM Night
Tuesday 10/9: PM Class attends "Elephant & Piggie" Play
Saturday 10/17: Alta Vista Walkathon
Wednesday 10/31: Halloween Parade & Party
Saturday, August 25, 2018
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Week of 8/20
Apologies in advance for the long post, but I know that many of you
are new parents to Alta Vista, and as I mentioned, I tend
to err on the side of over-communication ;)
We had a great first week reading back-to-school themed books and alphabet books, as well as "No David" books. We did a fun art project to go along with No David. Next week, we will begin formally introducing the letters Aa and Bb. We will also begin our first math topic on numbers to five.
In the next few weeks, we will be listening to familiar tales (Three Pigs, Jack & The Beanstalk, Three Billy Goats Gruff, etc.) and nursery rhymes (Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet, Twinkle Little Star, etc) and doing some STEAM activities that go along with these stories & poems. 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 some of the students will need to work on fine motor skills, including 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 this week by tracing our names in a Rainbow Book, 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. I appreciate your help with this.
To strengthen fine motor skills, this week, we will start "Morning Tubs." These tubs will be out for the first 10 minutes of class and will have fun hands-on activities for strengthening hand-eye coordination and muscles. You will want to be on time because the children won't want to miss their turn at each tub!
Please continue to sign up to join the Home & School Club via the "My School Anywhere" system. You can sign up by clicking here. The invitation code is AltaVista (no space). This is how you will keep informed with what is going on at the school, as well as have access to contact info for other parents in the class to arrange playdates, etc. PLEASE try and sign up as soon as possible, if you haven't done so already.
Additionally, some of you have asked for more details about classroom help. You can use the "My School Anywhere" account to sign up to volunteer in our classroom for school-wide programs, as well as the Google form I had in the classroom at both the orientation and Back-to-School Night. The Google form can be found here . 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. Then, I put together a schedule, usually for an entire quarter, so that you know which days to schedule on your calendar in advance for classroom help. If you sign up to help at center time, we will begin centers the week of September 10th. 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. Even if you're only able to help once or twice, I highly recommend it! If you're schedule only allows you to help a few times in class, the best way is to probably serve as a "sub." Often, our regular helpers have conflicts or illnesses that come up and they need somebody to take their spot. They will email the class and if you are available, please sign up-- no prior experience is necessary! :)
Finally, I ask that you please make every effort to support our kindergarten activities by contributing to the Consolidated Classroom Payment (CCP) online via the "My School Anywhere" account. This money goes to support your own child's portion of items like field trip entrance fees, bus fees, your child's class t-shirt, your child's costume for the Friendship Feast, parts of your child's costume for the Nutcracker performance, etc. Instead of asking you for money every time we have an event, we ask for this money up front. We would not be able to provide many of these enrichment opportunities without your support, so please make every effort to donate to this fund, even if it is only a partial payment.
For your upcoming scheduling: There is no school on Friday, August 31st or Monday, September 3rd.
I am looking forward to another fun week with your children!
We had a great first week reading back-to-school themed books and alphabet books, as well as "No David" books. We did a fun art project to go along with No David. Next week, we will begin formally introducing the letters Aa and Bb. We will also begin our first math topic on numbers to five.
In the next few weeks, we will be listening to familiar tales (Three Pigs, Jack & The Beanstalk, Three Billy Goats Gruff, etc.) and nursery rhymes (Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet, Twinkle Little Star, etc) and doing some STEAM activities that go along with these stories & poems. 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 some of the students will need to work on fine motor skills, including 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 this week by tracing our names in a Rainbow Book, 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. I appreciate your help with this.
To strengthen fine motor skills, this week, we will start "Morning Tubs." These tubs will be out for the first 10 minutes of class and will have fun hands-on activities for strengthening hand-eye coordination and muscles. You will want to be on time because the children won't want to miss their turn at each tub!
Please continue to sign up to join the Home & School Club via the "My School Anywhere" system. You can sign up by clicking here. The invitation code is AltaVista (no space). This is how you will keep informed with what is going on at the school, as well as have access to contact info for other parents in the class to arrange playdates, etc. PLEASE try and sign up as soon as possible, if you haven't done so already.
Additionally, some of you have asked for more details about classroom help. You can use the "My School Anywhere" account to sign up to volunteer in our classroom for school-wide programs, as well as the Google form I had in the classroom at both the orientation and Back-to-School Night. The Google form can be found here . 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. Then, I put together a schedule, usually for an entire quarter, so that you know which days to schedule on your calendar in advance for classroom help. If you sign up to help at center time, we will begin centers the week of September 10th. 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. Even if you're only able to help once or twice, I highly recommend it! If you're schedule only allows you to help a few times in class, the best way is to probably serve as a "sub." Often, our regular helpers have conflicts or illnesses that come up and they need somebody to take their spot. They will email the class and if you are available, please sign up-- no prior experience is necessary! :)
Finally, I ask that you please make every effort to support our kindergarten activities by contributing to the Consolidated Classroom Payment (CCP) online via the "My School Anywhere" account. This money goes to support your own child's portion of items like field trip entrance fees, bus fees, your child's class t-shirt, your child's costume for the Friendship Feast, parts of your child's costume for the Nutcracker performance, etc. Instead of asking you for money every time we have an event, we ask for this money up front. We would not be able to provide many of these enrichment opportunities without your support, so please make every effort to donate to this fund, even if it is only a partial payment.
For your upcoming scheduling: There is no school on Friday, August 31st or Monday, September 3rd.
I am looking forward to another fun week with your children!
Tuesday, August 14, 2018
Week of 8/15
I'd like to welcome you and your children to my kindergarten class,
and I enjoyed meeting you and your child at the orientation today!
My primary form of communication is via e-mail, so hopefully, you were able to provide an e-mail address to me at the orientation. If not, please make sure to do so between now and Back-to-School Night by filling out this form. I will send a few test e-mails between now and then, too, so look for those in your inbox.
I love to have classroom helpers, and the school's enrichment programs depend on them! Please sign up to be a part of the Home & School Club and to pay the "Consolidated Classroom Payment" (a one-time fee we ask you to please try and contribute to, which allows us to offer many extras such as field trips, special class projects, etc.) You can sign up and pay here The invitation code is AltaVista. We greatly appreciate your support with this.
The pm kindergarten daily schedule on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays is:
At the orientation, I provided you with the Union School District handbook, the District Parent's Rights Handbook, and the Home & School Club information. Tomorrow night, you will be receiving more paperwork. Please look over both handbooks with your child (as appropriate). Please return the final page of these booklets as soon as possible, as well as sign up for a My School Anywhere account to receive communications from the Home & School Club.
I am looking forward to an exciting year!
My primary form of communication is via e-mail, so hopefully, you were able to provide an e-mail address to me at the orientation. If not, please make sure to do so between now and Back-to-School Night by filling out this form. I will send a few test e-mails between now and then, too, so look for those in your inbox.
I love to have classroom helpers, and the school's enrichment programs depend on them! Please sign up to be a part of the Home & School Club and to pay the "Consolidated Classroom Payment" (a one-time fee we ask you to please try and contribute to, which allows us to offer many extras such as field trips, special class projects, etc.) You can sign up and pay here The invitation code is AltaVista. We greatly appreciate your support with this.
The pm kindergarten daily schedule on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays is:
- 11:30 to 2:50 M, Tu, Th, F
- 10:00 to 1:20 (Wednesdays)
- Please arrive on time and have your child ready to enter the classroom at the start time.
- Please say goodbye to your children at the door, rather than following them into the classroom and prolonging the goodbyes. Both Mrs. Barbara & I will be there to comfort any children who need an extra hug!
- Pack a healthy snack for your child that includes a drink. If your child is attending day care either before or after kindergarten, it is a good idea to separate the snack items from the lunch items, as kindergartners often get confused and will eat all the food in one sitting!
- All supplies are provided for your children, but I do appreciate donations of baby wipes, tissues, glue sticks, and Clorox/Sanitizing Wipes.
- The kindergarten parking lot will continue to be closed this year at all pick-up times. This is due to traffic congestion problems. Please plan on walking or parking on Westchester between the hours of 2:30 to 3:15 p.m, as well as on early Wednesdays. At drop-off time (11:30 and 10:00), you are permitted to park at the curb in front of the school on Blossom Valley.
- This week in class will of course be all about procedures and getting to know the children. We will be reading many Back-to-School stories, as well as "No David" to familiarize your students with school routines.
- 6:15-6:45 Home & School Club Presentation in the Cafeteria
- 6:45-7:30 PM Class Presentation in K2
At the orientation, I provided you with the Union School District handbook, the District Parent's Rights Handbook, and the Home & School Club information. Tomorrow night, you will be receiving more paperwork. Please look over both handbooks with your child (as appropriate). Please return the final page of these booklets as soon as possible, as well as sign up for a My School Anywhere account to receive communications from the Home & School Club.
I am looking forward to an exciting year!