Week of 9/30

Our extended days begin on Monday! Our schedule for the remainder of the year will be:

• Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays: 8:15 to 1:40
• Wednesdays and modified days during conference weeks: 8:15 to 1:15. **Please plan accordingly on these days as the rest of the school releases at this time, so parking will not be available on the street in front of our classroom.

We are looking forward to the additional time with your children. Centers will now move to 12:25 until 1:30-- thank you parent helpers. I have now added dates to the helper calendar through the end of 2019. Please sign up here. 

Lunch will be from 11:30 to 12:15. If you haven't let me know whether or not your child will be buying hot lunch in the next two weeks, please do so here. I see about 2-3 children buying hot lunch each day this week, and those are the only children I will send to the hot lunch line. Please help us reduce confusion for your child during the upcoming weeks by letting me know your plans for hot lunch. Thank you for your help during this transition.

**Please continue signing up for parent-teacher conferences.

Walkathon
Alta Vista's Walkathon is coming right up, and I hope to see everyone out there! The Grasshopper Team continues to get more and more members. Go Grasshoppers! Continue registering at this link. Please mark your calendars for Saturday, October 19th, and plan to come out for this great community-building day-- your child won't want to miss it!

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, and this week, we will begin meeting with the teacher for guided reading lessons. Your child will be receiving lessons targeted for his/her ability level in a small group instruction setting. It is a very hands-on program, and we have been pleased with the results.

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 am. The sight words we've introduced so far are: I, a, at, me, the to and am. 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.

Our stories this week will be the various versions of Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems. We will have a SeeSaw activity posted this Friday that is a response to this story.

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.

STEAM:
We will be going to the Makerspace this Wednesday to do an activity around the poem, Jack be Nimble. Children will be launching "Jack" over the candlestick. We visit the Alta Vista Makerspace approximately every other week.

**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. Children will need to come into the classroom on Wednesday after music (music goes right until the end of our day) to collect their blue bags & backpacks.

This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: Return Blue Bags, Daily 5, Centers (Gomathi & Patty H.)
Tuesday: Daily 5, Centers (Claire & Lisa)
Wednesday: Rhythm & Moves P.E., Music with Mrs. Threet, Blue Bags go home
Thursday: Daily 5, Centers (Hema & Carole)
Friday: Daily 5, STEAM Centers (Hema & Carlene)

Upcoming Events:
Friday 10/11: YSI Field Trip "Animal Adaptations"
Saturday 10/19: Alta Vista Walkathon
Thursday 10/31: Halloween Parade & Party@ 8:30
Nov. 4th-14th: Parent-Teacher Conferences & Early Dismissal
Friday 11/22: Friendship Feast at 10:00
Thursday 12/19: Nutcracker Performance at 10:00

Week of 9/23

We had a great first week of centers! Thanks so much to all our center helpers. I appreciate your diligence in coming on time, working with the children, and finding substitutes when you are unable to come. Everything went so smoothly last week!

**Remember to send in your child's Blue Bag on Monday, with the book, reference folder, and its contents inside. Just leave that in there all year long. You will receive a new book again on Wednesday.

**In this week's Wednesday envelope will be a permission slip for the upcoming field trip to YSI Vasona on October 11th. I can take 3 chaperones on this field trip. Please email me if you are interested in joining-- we will leave at 9:00 and return by 11:00. It is against school district policy to have younger siblings on a field trip, so chaperones would need to be solo.

**I am also sending home your child's school pictures in this week's Wednesday envelope. If you'd like them sooner than Wednesday, please come by and pick them up. 

Walkathon
Alta Vista's Walkathon is coming right up, and I hope to see everyone out there! The students had a kickoff assembly last Wednesday, and registration opened that night. I see the Grasshopper Team already has many participants! Go Grasshoppers! Continue registering at this link. Please mark your calendars for Saturday, October 19th, and plan to come out for this great community-building day-- your child won't want to miss it!

Language Arts
We have been introducing the sight words (also called high-frequency words) for several weeks now. So far, we have introduced a, I, at, me and the. This week, we will introduce to. Sight words are words that the children should know instantly, by sight, when the words are shown to them. Many of these words cannot be sounded out. We have also been sending home a list of sentences for your child to read to you that have the sight words. Please listen to your child read these sentences each week when they come home. There are about 50 words that we will be covering this year. I will be assessing the children on these words each trimester for report card information, and they continue using the sight words in first grade (their list has 100 words), so these are important words to master.

We will be introducing the writing center in our "Daily 5" reading program this week. At the writing center, children have many choices for writing activities, from labeling pictures to writing short stories. Next week, I will begin meeting with students daily for targeted reading lessons during this time, and they will receive differentiated lessons depending on their ability as we continue with this program.

This week's letters are Kk and Ll. We continue to use Heidisongs Singalong Songs for Letters to introduce/review the letters and sounds. If you'd like to offer further reinforcement at home, information on this DVD (it can also be streamed on Vimeo and US Screen) can be found here.

Our stories this week will center around Johnny Appleseed (his birthday is Thursday) and apples.

Math
We are still working our way through Module 1 in Eureka Math, "Numbers to 10." We are in the section "Numerals to 5 in Different Configurations." You can find a link for helping your children at home here.

STEAM
This week's STEAM centers will be apple-themed, and we have some exciting investigations lined up. We will be seeing how many apples we can balance, dissecting apples, weighing & measuring apples, and seeing how far apples roll! Thank you to the Jaskierny-Wintrup family for their donation of a large box of apples from their tree for our apple projects this week.

**There are still a few open spots on the helper calendar, which can be found here.

**Please note that the dates and times have been set below for both the Friendship Feast & The Nutcracker. Mark your calendars-- you won't want to miss these events!

This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: Return Blue Bags, Daily 5, Centers (Daniel, Papa Dan & Kerby)
Tuesday: Daily 5, Centers (Gomathi & Tiffany H.)
Wednesday: Rhythm & Moves P.E., Blue Bags go home
Thursday: Daily 5, Centers (Hema & Carole)
Friday: Daily 5, Apple STEAM Centers (Gomathi, Zoe, and John)

Upcoming Events:
Friday 10/11: YSI Field Trip "Animal Adaptations"
Saturday 10/19: Alta Vista Walkathon
Thursday 10/31: Halloween Parade & Party@ 8:30
Nov. 4th-14th: Parent-Teacher Conferences & Early Dismissal
Friday 11/22: Friendship Feast at 10:00
Thursday 12/19: Nutcracker Performance at 10:00

Week of 9/16

We are excited to have parent helpers start in the classroom this week for centers! As a reminder to center helpers, for the next two weeks, centers run from about 10:30 to the end of the day (basically). When you arrive, please go to the office to sign in & get a visitor's sticker (the gates will be locked, and this is how you must enter the campus during the school day). Then just come straight to the classroom-- enter through the front door (it's propped open partially) & you will catch my explanation of the center to the children so that you know what the expectation is. If there is clean-up involved at the end of centers, if you could stay for a bit afterwards to help with that so that, I'd appreciate it. Thank you so much-- the schedule for centers each week will always be posted below, in addition to the link on the right, "Helper Schedule."

We begin our unit on apples this week. I have heard from a couple of you that you have apple trees. If you could please send in apples that you don't plan on eating any time this week (most of our apple activities will be next week) we'd appreciate it. We'll use those for apple stamping, apple rolling, and apple dissecting. The other apples that we plan on tasting will be purchased with your generous CCP donations. Thank you!

**Remember to send in your child's Blue Bag on Monday, with the book, reference folder, and its contents inside. Just leave that in there all year long. You will receive a new book again on Wednesday.

Language Arts:
Our "Daily Phonemic Awareness" activities have been focusing on many different skills. We've been breaking apart compound words and putting them back together. We've been deleting parts of words and stating what is left. We have also been identifying beginning and ending sounds, and working on rhyming.

This week's letters are Ii and Jj, and our sight word is the. Keep reading & reviewing the sight word sentences as they come home each week in the Wednesday envelope. Our books this week will be about apples, both fiction and non-fiction.

Math:
We will be looking at numbers to 5 and begin decomposing numbers. We will play some fun math games while we will look at combinations that make up a number.  For example, 5 can be 1 & 4, 2 & 3, 5 & 0.  Obviously, this sets them up for pre-addition skills. Parent tips for this unit can be found here.

Science
We will begin reading and learning about apples and apple trees.

STEAM/Dot Day (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Math)
We will have our first STEAM centers on Friday. Coincidentally, Friday also follows "Dot Day." Dot Day is named in honor of the book The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds. It is a day "celebrating all that creativity inspires and invites." In one of our STEAM centers Friday, children will be designing their own dot and then viewing it using the augmented reality app Quiver. I will post their images from that project on SeeSaw, which you should've hopefully already joined. We posted another item in SeeSaw last Friday, where children designed a sneaker for Pete the Cat.

In addition to that, children will also be programming a Bee-Bot. We will be using a number grid to build our familiarity with numbers while we program the Bee-Bot to go to different numbers on the grid.

We are incorporating STEAM centers into our program once a week, and we look forward to much collaboration, innovation, trial & error, and excitement in the process! For more information on STEM/STEAM (used interchangeably) in the primary classroom, read this article.

**This is the final week of assessments! Thank you for bringing your children for this-- it is a huge help to me. The link is here to confirm your time.

**There are still a few open spots on the helper calendar, which can be found here.


This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: Return Blue Bags, Daily 5, Centers (Gomathi & Tiffany H.)
Tuesday: Daily 5, Centers (Claire & Marylu)
Wednesday: Rhythm & Moves P.E., Visit to the Makerspace, Blue Bags go home
Thursday: Daily 5, Centers (Doreen & Lauren)
Friday: Daily 5, STEAM Centers (Gomathi & Hema)

Upcoming Events:
Week of 9/16: Classroom Centers Begin
Friday 10/11: YSI Field Trip "Animal Adaptations"
Saturday 10/19: Alta Vista Walkathon
Thursday 10/31: Halloween Parade & Party@ 8:30

Week of 9/9

I hope all who attended Movie Night had a great time at their first Alta Vista outing with your kindergartner! Next up, the Walk-a-thon on October 19th-- you won't want to miss it!

This week, we will send home our first blue bag on Wednesday. Blue bags go home on Wednesdays and are due back on Monday (in case you need the weekend to get in a few good readings of the book). However, the Wednesday envelope, which will now be inside the blue bag, is still due back (empty) on Thursdays, if possible. If you forget, it's ok to send it in on Friday or with the blue bag on Monday.

Thank you for volunteering for classroom centers, which begin next Monday the 16th. There are still some spots to fill, especially on Monday the 23rd. If you are able to help, please sign up here. Thank you also for bringing your children in for the afternoon assessments-- I really appreciate it. If you need to confirm your child's time, please check here.

MATH

We will continue with our math topic on 2D and 3D shapes, wrapping it up at the end of this week. The 3D shapes that we have been focusing on are: cube, cylinder, cone, and sphere. Children need to not only identify the shape, but describe it by discussing the number of sides, vertices, and surfaces. I am also reinforcing the formation of numbers in handwriting. Some of these numbers are quite tricky to make, so watch that your child is starting at the top and going in the correct direction.

LANGUAGE ARTS
Our stories this week will be from the "Pete the Cat" series by Eric Litwin. We will be reading and doing activities around Pete the Cat, who is a favorite literary character. We will also introduce letters Gg & Hh. We will introduce the sight word, me.  You should have received your child's sentence sheet for the words I and a in last week's Wednesday envelope. Please have your child read those to you at home. No need to send them back-- those are for you to keep. We will also continue working on name writing. We really want to ensure that children are forming the letters in their names correctly, and using only one capital letter. The sooner they break any bad habits, the better. Any reinforcement you can provide at home with this is appreciated.

WRITING
On Monday, we will be launching "Writer's Workshop" in our classroom with a visit from some guest teachers who have been trained in the Writer's Workshop method at the Teacher's College in New York. Here is a bit about this program from their website: The mission of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project is to help young people become avid and skilled readers, writers, and inquirers. We accomplish this goal through research, curriculum development, and through working shoulder-to-shoulder with students, teachers, and school leaders. The organization has developed state-of-the-art tools and methods for teaching reading and writing, for using performance assessments and learning progressions to accelerate progress, and for literacy-rich content-area instruction. The guest teachers will be presenting a lesson to your students, and I will be observing the lesson with the other kindergarten teachers at Alta Vista so that we can all learn together and perfect our techniques in teaching using the Writer's Workshop method. I am looking forward to an exciting morning on Monday!

Upcoming Events:
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
Thursday 10/31: Halloween Parade & Party