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
