I hope you are having a wonderful long weekend. We will get right
back into the swing of things on Tuesday, with another fun week ahead,
including picture day & Movie Night on Friday.
Hopefully,
you have
all had a chance to check out the link to the helper schedule and sign up for a slot or several. There are still plenty of openings for those who are interested. If you ever have
an unexpected conflict (sick kids, sick adult, etc.), please email the
class, as we have many parents who just wanted to help a few times, and
subbing at centers is a perfect opportunity for that. We are so excited
to have the helpers all join us starting on the 16th!
Thank you also for signing up on my assessment schedule. This will help me to best meet the differing needs of the students in my class during small group instruction. If you need to check the schedule, please email me.
Language Arts
In language arts, we continue introducing letters and letter sounds with letters Ee and Ff this week. We will have a great read-aloud this week called The Recess Queen, which is about bullying, and ultimately, making friendships and connections by being a good friend.
We also introduced our first sight words, I and a last
week. The children will come home with a sheet of sentences
using these sight words on Wednesday (in their envelope). These sentence sheets will come home
weekly, as we add more sight words. I would love for you to take time to
listen to your children read through these sentences each week. As they
master more and more sight words, they are very proud of all the
reading they are doing, and it is great for them to share this with
their families. This week's sight word is at. We will send home our "at" sentence sheet in next week's Wednesday envelope.
Math
In
math, we will continue with the topic: 2D and 3D Shapes. We will be moving onto 3D shapes this week. The shapes we focus on are cube, cone, cylinder, and sphere. You can find more information about this math topic here.
Science/STEAM
We had another storybook STEAM activity last Thursday that your child may have told you about. The children had to work in pairs to build a "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" tree that would support as many letters as possible. We had some great trees that held over 10 letters!
We
are about to begin a whole unit on apples. We will be reading
non-fiction apple books and having apple-themed STEAM centers in four
weeks. Does anyone have an apple tree who can bring in a bunch of apples
for us to use during this unit? They do not have to be edible, as many
of the projects just involve using the apples for crafts & experiments. Let me know if
you have an apple tree and can share some apples with us!
P.E.
We
had our second P.E. lesson with Mr. Thomas last week, and the children
all seemed to enjoy themselves. Our P.E. program is weekly on
Wednesdays. Please send your children in shoes and clothes appropriate
for fitness on Wednesdays.
I hope you continue to enjoy your weekend!
Upcoming Events:
Monday 9/2: Labor Day Holiday
Friday 9/6: Picture Day
Friday 9/6: Alta Vista Movie Night
Wednesday 9/11: First Blue Book Bag goes home
Week of 9/16: Classroom Centers Begin
Friday 10/11: YSI Field Trip "Animal Adaptations"
Saturday 10/19: Alta Vista Walkathon
Saturday, August 31, 2019
Saturday, August 24, 2019
Week of 8/26
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 currently putting together two sign-ups, which I will get out to you by Monday. The first sign-up will be for classroom centers, which will begin on 9/16. We will have just two weeks of those centers running from 10:25-11:25, before we begin our extended schedule. At that time, centers will run from 12:25-1:30. Centers will run every day except Wednesdays, when we have both P.E. and music.
The second sign-up is an assessment sign-up. During the next four weeks, while we are still on the shortened day schedule, I will be asking you to bring your child back to school for some assessments. These assessments will help me group the children for differentiated instruction. If your child attends USD Extended Care, I will be able to assess him/her without asking you to come back, as I will just walk over there and work with your child. For those students, there is no need to sign up. For those who attend other after school programs, if there are any days that you can find to bring your child back to school, I'd appreciate it. If you cannot work this out, please let me know, and I will make other arrangements for your child's assessment. Thank you for your help with this!
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 be reading and having activities around the story Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Additionally, we will introduce our first two sight words, I and a. Being able to read high frequency words without hesitation is important to your child's reading fluency, and we will be introducing sight words throughout the year. You will receive a paper in your child's Wednesday envelope each week (starting next week) with sentences that contain the sight word(s) we are studying. Please have your child read through these several times with you for additional reinforcement.
This week, we will begin introducing more activities in our "Daily 5" reading program. We are excited to continue implementing Guided Reading/Daily 5 in our classroom this year, as it is a fantastic way to address the varying literacy needs in our classroom. 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 2D shapes, moving onto 3D shapes by next week. We will also begin introducing number writing to 10. 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 use 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 kindergarten, we love getting the children up and moving through music and other brain breaks.
Once we extend our day this year, we will also be having music class with Mrs. Threet. We are very excited that kindergarten is now able to participate in formal music classes with the rest of the school.
STEAM
Hopefully, you were able to view the album I sent to you of our Fairy Tale STEAM activity last week where teams built 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! This week, we will have a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom STEAM activity, where they will build a tree that supports as many alphabet letters as possible.
Reminder: We have this Friday the 30th off school, as well as Monday the 2nd.
Upcoming Events:
Friday 8/30: Staff Development Day
Monday 9/2: Labor Day Holiday
Friday 9/6: Picture Day
Friday 9/6: Alta Vista Movie Night
Wednesday 9/11: First Blue Book Bag goes home
Week of 9/16: Classroom Centers Begin
Friday 10/11: YSI Field Trip "Animal Adaptations"
Saturday 10/19: Alta Vista Walkathon
I am currently putting together two sign-ups, which I will get out to you by Monday. The first sign-up will be for classroom centers, which will begin on 9/16. We will have just two weeks of those centers running from 10:25-11:25, before we begin our extended schedule. At that time, centers will run from 12:25-1:30. Centers will run every day except Wednesdays, when we have both P.E. and music.
The second sign-up is an assessment sign-up. During the next four weeks, while we are still on the shortened day schedule, I will be asking you to bring your child back to school for some assessments. These assessments will help me group the children for differentiated instruction. If your child attends USD Extended Care, I will be able to assess him/her without asking you to come back, as I will just walk over there and work with your child. For those students, there is no need to sign up. For those who attend other after school programs, if there are any days that you can find to bring your child back to school, I'd appreciate it. If you cannot work this out, please let me know, and I will make other arrangements for your child's assessment. Thank you for your help with this!
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 be reading and having activities around the story Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Additionally, we will introduce our first two sight words, I and a. Being able to read high frequency words without hesitation is important to your child's reading fluency, and we will be introducing sight words throughout the year. You will receive a paper in your child's Wednesday envelope each week (starting next week) with sentences that contain the sight word(s) we are studying. Please have your child read through these several times with you for additional reinforcement.
This week, we will begin introducing more activities in our "Daily 5" reading program. We are excited to continue implementing Guided Reading/Daily 5 in our classroom this year, as it is a fantastic way to address the varying literacy needs in our classroom. 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 2D shapes, moving onto 3D shapes by next week. We will also begin introducing number writing to 10. 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 use 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 kindergarten, we love getting the children up and moving through music and other brain breaks.
Once we extend our day this year, we will also be having music class with Mrs. Threet. We are very excited that kindergarten is now able to participate in formal music classes with the rest of the school.
STEAM
Hopefully, you were able to view the album I sent to you of our Fairy Tale STEAM activity last week where teams built 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! This week, we will have a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom STEAM activity, where they will build a tree that supports as many alphabet letters as possible.
Reminder: We have this Friday the 30th off school, as well as Monday the 2nd.
Upcoming Events:
Friday 8/30: Staff Development Day
Monday 9/2: Labor Day Holiday
Friday 9/6: Picture Day
Friday 9/6: Alta Vista Movie Night
Wednesday 9/11: First Blue Book Bag goes home
Week of 9/16: Classroom Centers Begin
Friday 10/11: YSI Field Trip "Animal Adaptations"
Saturday 10/19: Alta Vista Walkathon
Saturday, August 17, 2019
Week of 8/19
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 shapes.
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 "Membership Toolkit" system. You can sign up by clicking here. 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 "Membership Toolkit" 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. As we get closer to time to begin classroom centers, I will send out a Sign-Up Genius link to have you sign up for specific days that are good for you that month. 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!
Finally, I ask that you please make every effort to support our kindergarten activities by continuing to contribute to the Consolidated Classroom Payment (CCP) online via the "Membership Toolkit" account. This money goes to support your own child's portion of items like field trip entrance fees, bus fees, supplemental art supplies, parts of your child's costume for the Nutcracker performance, etc. Instead of asking you for money every time we have an event or special activity, 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.
I am looking forward to another fun week with your children!
Upcoming Events
Friday, 8/30: No School: PD Day for Staff
Monday, 9/2: No School: Labor Day
Friday, 9/6: Picture Day
Friday, 9/6: Alta Vista Movie Night
Wednesday, 9/11: Blue Bag Program begins
Saturday, 10/19: Walkathon
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 shapes.
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 "Membership Toolkit" system. You can sign up by clicking here. 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 "Membership Toolkit" 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. As we get closer to time to begin classroom centers, I will send out a Sign-Up Genius link to have you sign up for specific days that are good for you that month. 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!
Finally, I ask that you please make every effort to support our kindergarten activities by continuing to contribute to the Consolidated Classroom Payment (CCP) online via the "Membership Toolkit" account. This money goes to support your own child's portion of items like field trip entrance fees, bus fees, supplemental art supplies, parts of your child's costume for the Nutcracker performance, etc. Instead of asking you for money every time we have an event or special activity, 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.
I am looking forward to another fun week with your children!
Upcoming Events
Friday, 8/30: No School: PD Day for Staff
Monday, 9/2: No School: Labor Day
Friday, 9/6: Picture Day
Friday, 9/6: Alta Vista Movie Night
Wednesday, 9/11: Blue Bag Program begins
Saturday, 10/19: Walkathon
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Week of 8/14
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.
Through September 27th:
You have received the Alta Vista Parent Handbook electronically. If you have not had a chance to review that yet, please do and then sign the back page of the handbook. Some of you turned those in today. The District Parent's Rights Handbook will likely be received tomorrow at Back-to-School Night. Please return the final page of these booklets as soon as possible, as well as sign up for a Membership Toolkit 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.
Through September 27th:
- 8:15 to 11:35
- 8:15 to 1:40 Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays
- 8:15 to 1:15 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. I will 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. At pick-up time (11:35 and 1:40), you are permitted to park at the curb in front of the school on Blossom Valley.
- NEW THIS YEAR: The kindergarten playground gates will be locked for the duration of the school day. We will be entering AND exiting through the door on the redwood tree-side of kindergarten.
- 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.
- 5:30-6:15 PM Class Presentation in K2
- 6:15-6:45 Home & School Club Presentation in the Cafeteria
You have received the Alta Vista Parent Handbook electronically. If you have not had a chance to review that yet, please do and then sign the back page of the handbook. Some of you turned those in today. The District Parent's Rights Handbook will likely be received tomorrow at Back-to-School Night. Please return the final page of these booklets as soon as possible, as well as sign up for a Membership Toolkit account to receive communications from the Home & School Club.
I am looking forward to an exciting year!