STEAM Night
Alta Vista will be hosting STEAM Night in the Makerspace this Tuesday, October 2nd, from 5:30 to 7:00. A flyer for this event can be viewed here. The whole family is invited to come to the Makerspace for an evening of STEAM fun! I really encourage you to come out for this exciting and educational evening full of hands-on STEAM activities.
Walkathon
Please continue signing your children up for the walkathon on October 13th, which is only two weeks away! Go to: http://www.altavistawalkathon.org to register or solicit sponsors for your children. 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 during the walkathon event.
Language Arts:
We have now launched all of our Daily 5 activities, including meeting with the teacher for a guided reading lesson. Your child will be receiving lessons targeted for his/her ability level in a small group instruction setting. Our Daily 5 aides will begin this week, working with the children in the literacy centers while we are giving guided reading lessons to small groups. It is a very hands-on program, and we are very pleased with the results from last year.
In class this week, we will be focusing on the letters Mm and Nn. Our plan is to have all letters introduced by the end of the first trimester, which is coming up in early November. If you are noticing that your child is having difficulty recognizing letters and knowing letter sounds, especially those that we've introduced already (A-L), please provide additional reinforcement at home. As the kindergarten year continues, it becomes very difficult to keep up with the pace of the curriculum if your child is still not mastering letter recognition and sounds. Good reinforcement is available by watching Leap Frog's The Letter Factory, which is available on Netflix streaming or on YouTube. There is also a website & app called starfall.com which is excellent. Finally the video series we are using in class, called HeidiSongs, is available here, and streams on Vimeo.
In class this week, we will be focusing on the letters Mm and Nn. Our plan is to have all letters introduced by the end of the first trimester, which is coming up in early November. If you are noticing that your child is having difficulty recognizing letters and knowing letter sounds, especially those that we've introduced already (A-L), please provide additional reinforcement at home. As the kindergarten year continues, it becomes very difficult to keep up with the pace of the curriculum if your child is still not mastering letter recognition and sounds. Good reinforcement is available by watching Leap Frog's The Letter Factory, which is available on Netflix streaming or on YouTube. There is also a website & app called starfall.com which is excellent. Finally the video series we are using in class, called HeidiSongs, is available here, and streams on Vimeo.
Our sight word this week
is go. The sight words we've introduced so far are: I, see, my, like, can, and the. Please
also continue reinforcing these words at home and listening to your
child read the sight word sentences that come home weekly. These are in your child's Wednesday envelope each week.
Math:
In
math, we continue our topic on numbers to 10. Children will continue
counting objects and writing numbers to 10. Most of our math involves
hands-on activities in small-group centers. That is why you often don't
see math papers in the Wednesday envelopes, but we do have daily math
activities and lessons in class. Additionally, students have a math journal in class. We pose a weekly problem and solve it in the math journal. On Friday, we reviewed our work so far on numbers to 10 using an iPad app called Quizziz. The children were very motivated and excited to participate in this gamified review of math concepts.Science/STEAM:
We will be taking a closer look at spiders this week. We will be reading both fiction and non-fiction books about spiders. Children will be creating their own spider webs and spiders as a craft this week. We will also visit the Makerspace on Wednesday to work with Ozobots, which are programmable robots that follow along lines drawn by the students. We will be creating a story map for the story, The Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything, for the Ozobot to follow along.
**Please send in your child's Blue Bag tomorrow, and your child's envelope if you haven't already. They will go home as usual this week on Wednesday.
This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: Return Blue Bags (Yvonne), Daily 5, Centers (Nisha & Jenny)
Tuesday: Daily 5, Centers (Kassie & Yvonne)
Wednesday: Recess 101, Makerspace, Blue Bags go home
Thursday: Daily 5, Centers (Brandie & Ellen)
Friday: Daily 5, STEAM Centers (Mary & Claire), Story time with Grandma Gail
Upcoming Events:
Tuesday 10/2: Alta Vista STEAM Night
Tuesday 10/9: PM Class attends "Elephant & Piggie" Play
Saturday 10/13: Alta Vista Walkathon
Friday 10/19: No School: Professional Development Day
Wednesday 10/31: Halloween Parade & Party
11/5-11/15: Parent-Teacher Conferences
Monday 11/12: No School: Veteran's Day
Friday 11/16: Friendship Feast
11/19-11/23: Thanksgiving Break
Thursday 12/20: Nutcracker Performance
12/21-01/04: Winter Break
