Week of 2/2

It was great hearing about all the kind acts of our Grasshoppers during Kindness Week last week. I was so impressed with the things students were doing to be kind! It was wonderful emphasizing kind acts in the classroom, as well as at home. I hope you benefitted from plenty of kind acts in your home last week! I told the kids that I'm going to keep the kindness chain going this upcoming week as well. Keep encouraging your children to tell me about their kind acts at home.

Language Arts

Last week, we finished our "Cat Book" in Fundations, and I sent it home with your children. We have now instructed the formation of all lower & upper case letters! We will begin Unit 3 of Fundations this week. Blending sounds to read and spell words is now the main focus in our reading curriculum. There are some great resources in the Unit 3 Fundations Home Support letter. Our sight words this week are you and or.

This week, we will return to the snow theme with our literature, reading a few snowy classics, Sneezy the Snowman and Snowmen at Night. We will do some writing activities with crafts to go with each of these stories. 

Math

We will wrap up Topic B of Module 4 this week. There will be some new vocabulary for those of you who do not have older students who have done the Eureka math program. Of particular importance are the words "compose" (finding numbers that add up to a given number-- like 3 & 2 compose 5) "decompose" (take apart a number-- like 5 can be 4 & 1 OR 3  & 2) and number bonds (a model to show mathematical thinking). Family Math ideas can be found here. (Please note that this is the same as last week, since this was a longer topic).

Art Vistas

We have an Art Vista lesson on Friday at 12:30. This time, we will be looking at houses and designing our own "dream house." Thank you to Eva, Kay, Nadia, Anda, and Fatemeh for your help with Art Vistas.

Upcoming Events

Valentines Day: We will exchange cards in class on February 14th, but this is not a "party." We have a fun celebration of friendship, exchange valentines, and take them home to show our families. So that you can prepare for this event, I wanted to share some information:

1. Please send in a card for each child. There are 24 total students in our class.
2. Please ONLY sign the card & put nothing in the TO box. It is challenging enough for kindergartners to pass out valentines to all their classmates. Having the "to" part filled out makes this extremely challenging and it takes far too long. Thank you for your help with this!
3. Please try to purchase valentines that do not have candy attached. I know those can sometimes be hard to find, but there are good choices with stickers, play tattoos, and other non-food goodies.

Spring Conferences: Spring parent-teacher conferences are coming up on March 12 through March 20. These are optional conferences, but are available to anyone who would like an update on their child's progress. However, if your child had several areas marked with a "B," I would like to meet with you to ensure that your child is making good progress toward year-end standards. 

**Library is every Wednesday. Please return your child's library book by Tuesday each week.

**School spirit days are every Wednesday. Wear your Grasshopper t-shirt or Alta Vista gear to show your school pride!

This Week's Helpers & Activities
Monday: Centers @ 12:20 (Karen & Anda)
Tuesday: Centers @ 12:20  (Eva & Mary)
Wednesday: Library @ 9:10 (Reader: Kay, Checkout: Mary), Dismissal @ 1:15

Thursday: Music with Mr. Jason

Friday: Art Vistas @ 12:30 (Eva, Anda, Kay, Nadia, Fatemeh)

Upcoming Events

Wednesday, 2/11: Ice Cream Sales after school

Friday, 2/13: Valentines exchange in class

2/16-2/20: No School: President's Week

Monday, 3/9: No School: Professional Development Day

3/12-3/20: Parent-Teacher Conferences 

Week of 1/26

We have a couple of events going on at school this week: The Great Kindness Challenge, and 100 Day. We are looking forward to celebrating the number 100 all week with our center activities and favorite stories around the number 100.

Great Kindness Challenge

Union School District participates annually in a weeklong event called "The Great Kindness Challenge." This is an opportunity to really focus as a family on how our kind acts can help make everyone's day a little better. In kindergarten, we will be keeping track of kind acts with a "kindness chain." Children can come in each morning and tell me about a kind act they did at home, and we will also celebrate kind acts done at school. When children tell me about a kind act, they will receive a loop for our kindness chain. They write their name on the loop, and we will add it to our classroom chain. We are hoping that by the end of the week, our chain gets all the way across the classroom! You can support children at home by reminding them to tell me about a kind act you saw them do and brainstorming ways that they can be kind & helpful, both at home and at school. You can find a list of some simple ideas here. 

Conferences

Spring parent-teacher conferences are coming up on March 12 through March 20. These are optional conferences, but are available to anyone who would like an update on their child's progress. However, if your child had several areas marked with a "B," I would like to meet with you. 

100 Day

This Wednesday is 100 Day! This is a fun celebration of the number 100 and being at school together for 100 days. 

Language Arts

We have many fun stories to read and center activities to do in honor of 100 Day- it will be an all week celebration. Our sight words this week are with and said. This is the last week of Unit 2 in Fundations. We will finish upper case letter instruction, covering letters Qq through Zz this week.

A big emphasis right now is using our knowledge of letter sounds, word families, and sight words to write simple sentences. Children need to be able to put together a readable sentence on their own by the end of kindergarten. Encourage your children to write and spell phonetically as often as possible to build their abilities as independent writers. Try to resist the temptation to spell words for them if they ask, rather, encourage them to "stretch the word out" and put down all the sounds they hear themselves. They can write notes to you, grocery lists, cards for family members, etc. 

Math

We will continue with Topic B in Module 4 this week. Topic B provides space for students to decompose shapes and numbers in more than one way. Students record their decompositions and analyze them to answer questions such as, How can the same total be made of different parts? Which numbers can be part of 5? Which numbers cannot be part of 5? There will be some new vocabulary for those of you who do not have older students who have done the Eureka math program. Of particular importance are the words "compose" (finding numbers that add up to a given number-- like 3 & 2 compose 5) "decompose" (take apart a number-- like 5 can be 4 & 1 OR 3  & 2) and number bonds (a model to show mathematical thinking). 

We will also have lots of number & counting fun this week in celebration of 100 Day.

Upcoming Events

Valentines Day: I know that valentines are now available in most stores, and children will be asking about our celebration. We will exchange cards in class on February 14th, but this is not a "party." We have a fun celebration of friendship, exchange valentines, and take them home to show our families. So that you can prepare for this event, I wanted to share some information:

1. Please send in a card for each child. There are 24 total students in our class: 15 boys and 9 girls.
2. Please ONLY sign the card & put nothing in the TO box. It is challenging enough for kindergartners to pass out valentines to all their classmates. Having the "to" part filled out makes this extremely challenging and it takes far too long. Thank you for your help with this!
3. Please try to purchase valentines that do not have candy attached. I know those can sometimes be hard to find, but there are good choices with stickers, play tattoos, and other non-food goodies.

**Library is every Wednesday. Please return your child's library book by Tuesday each week.

**School spirit days are every Wednesday. Wear your Alta Vista t-shirts or your Grasshopper t-shirts to show your school pride.

 

This Week's Helpers & Activities
Monday: Centers @ 12:20 (Brian & Mary)
Tuesday: Centers @ 12:20  (Anda & Eva)
Wednesday: 100 Day! Library @ 9:10 (Reader: Mary, Checkout: Louise), Dismissal @ 1:15

Thursday: Music with Mr. Jason

Upcoming Events

Wednesday, 1/28: 100 Day

Friday, 2/13: Valentines exchange in class

2/16-2/20: No School: President's Week

Monday, 3/9: No School: Professional Development Day

3/12-3/20: Parent-Teacher Conferences 

Week of 1/20

I hope you are all enjoying the long weekend. Remember that on Tuesday the 20th, we will have Snow Day. Children should wear any snow gear they have (hats, scarves, jackets, gloves/mittens, etc.) and we will do our best to pretend it is a snowy day in Los Gatos! Please bring an extra bag for all the gear as kids take it off, as it is supposed to be quite warm on Tuesday. If their items fit in their backpack, that's fine too. We will enjoy snow-themed centers on that day and have a pretend snowball fight with the other kindergarten classes.

Language Arts

Going along with our snow day, we will read snow-themed stories this week. Our sight words this week are me and we. 

Our emphasis in Fundations will continue to be blending sounds to read and write words with fluency. We also continue to work on the formation of upper case letters, covering two letters per day. This week, we will cover letters Kk through Pp. As I said last week, the Fundations Parent Letter has a lot of great tips on ways to encourage blending, as well as guides to correct formation of the upper case letters.

Math

We will begin Module 4 this week: Composition and Decomposition. In this module, students explore part-total relationships as they compose and decompose shapes and numbers in more than one way. They represent the quantities and relationships in story problems with objects, fingers, drawings, and number bonds. This week, we will begin Topic A, where we will be decomposing shapes. For example, we will see that a hexagon can be made of 6 triangles or two rhombuses. This one is worth taking a look at for those of you who are new to Common Core math, as it defines a few of the terms you'll be seeing throughout your child's years in elementary school and beyond. 

Vision Screening

The district's vision screening has been moved from Thursday to Tuesday the 20th. If your child wears glasses, please ensure they are wearing them on Tuesday for the screening. In addition to vision screening, boys will also be tested for color blindness (much more common in boys than girls).

Multitudes

Multitudes Reading Difficulty Screener will be administered this Wednesday the 21st. More information about it can be found by watching this video. 

Upcoming Events

100 Day: We will be celebrating our 100th day of school on January 28th. Next week, our center activities will be around the number 100. The 100th day celebration is just a fun way to celebrate 100 days of school after we've been counting up to this day during calendar time. 

Valentines Day: I know that valentines are now available in most stores, and children will be asking about our celebration. We will exchange cards in class on February 13th, but this is not a "party." We have a fun celebration of friendship, exchange valentines, and take them home to show our families. So that you can prepare for this event, I wanted to share some information:

1. Please send in a card for each child. There are 24 total students in our class: 15 boys and 9 girls.
2. Please ONLY sign the card & put nothing in the TO box. It is challenging enough for kindergartners to pass out valentines to all their classmates. Having the "to" part filled out makes this extremely challenging and it takes far too long. Thank you for your help with this!
3. Please try to purchase valentines that do not have candy attached. I know those can sometimes be hard to find, but there are good choices with stickers, play tattoos, and other non-food goodies.

**Library is every Wednesday. Please return your child's library book by Tuesday each week.

**School spirit days are every Wednesday. Wear your Alta Vista t-shirts or your Grasshopper t-shirts to show your school pride. 

Week of 1/12

We had a fun first week back, easing into the school year with several collaborative art projects and other activities. The students have hit that magical part of kindergarten where their growth is really showing, both academically and socially. This week, we will hit the half-way mark (90th school day) in our kindergarten year. This is where the kindergarten curriculum really takes off, and your continued support with the curriculum will be especially important at this time. Reading to your children and asking them questions about what they are reading, helping them blend and read/write short vowel words (eg: hop, can, rat, etc.) and reinforcing math facts and sight words are all things you can do to help enhance what they are learning in the classroom. 

Language Arts

This week, we will delve deeper into our study of owls. We will complete some informational writing about owls and do a few owl crafts. Our sight words this week are he and she. Our emphasis in Fundations will continue to be blending sounds to read and write words with fluency. This week, we will also begin instruction on the formation of upper case letters, covering two letters per day. As I said last week, the Fundations Parent Letter has a lot of great tips on ways to encourage blending, as well as guides to correct formation of the upper case letters.

Math

We are in our final topic of Module 3, Topic D, Compare Numbers Within 10. In this topic, your child is continuing comparison work with a focus on numerals. Students use terms such as greater, less, and equal to compare numbers. 

Upcoming Event: Snow Day

Next Tuesday, January 20th, we will have a "Snow Day" in kindergarten. Coincidentally, this is also a schoolwide Spirit Day-- dress in your snow gear. The kids can dress in their snow gear (whatever you have is fine-- hats, scarves, mittens, goggles, etc.) and we will have an all-kindergarten "snowball fight." Children should bring a separate bag for their snow gear for taking on and off, as it gets too warm wearing some of those items all day. They also tend to get lost if we don't have a place to put them. If they fit in your child's backpack, that is fine too. Our centers on the 20th will all be snow-themed. It is always lots of fun. 

Toys in the Classroom

There has been a recent uptick in toys/jewelry being brought into the classroom from home. Watches that frequently beep, small stuffies, key chains, etc. are all providing a distraction from the focus of all students. Per Mr. Barbara's reminder in the Vista Views this week, Toys, and other personal items from home, not related to school, are not permitted at school unless it is a specially designated day. Please remind your student not to bring personal items like toys or sporting equipment unless otherwise arranged with their teacher. We cannot guarantee the safety of every item brought to campus and often these items lead to avoidable conflict and distractions that negatively affect the learning environment. Thank you for your help in creating a distraction-free classroom. 

**Library is every Wednesday. Please return your child's library book by Tuesday each week.

**School spirit days are every Wednesday. Wear your Alta Vista t-shirts or your Grasshopper t-shirts to show your school pride.

 

This Week's Helpers & Activities
Monday: Centers @ 12:20 (Kaela & Fatemeh)
Tuesday: Centers @ 12:20  (Eva & Anda)
Wednesday: Library @ 9:10 (Reader: Tiffany, Checkout: Mary), Dismissal @ 1:15

Thursday: Activity w/ 5th grade buddies, Music with Mr. Jason

Upcoming Events

Monday, 1/19: No School: MLK Holiday

Tuesday, 1/20: "Snow Day" (dress in snow gear & have special snow-themed centers)

Wednesday, 1/21: Dyslexia Screener Assessments for all kindergartners

Thursday, 1/22: Vision testing in kindergarten (please make sure your child is wearing their glasses, if applicable)

Wednesday, 1/28: 100 Day

2/16-2/20: No School: President's Week 

Week of 1/5

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful break & are rested and ready to get back into the swing of things on Monday! I wanted to thank you all so much for the generous gifts I received before break. I shopped, ate meals out, and had some delicious treats thanks to the Grasshopper families!

Smart Re-Start

We will ease into our first few days back with some hands-on activities and classroom fun. On Monday and Tuesday, we will make some playdough, and do a collaborative art project. We have a few directed drawings in store as well. Later in the week, we will start learning about owls. 

Language Arts
We will begin Unit 2 of the Fundations program. The main focus of this unit is blending sounds to read words. We start with CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) three-letter words. We encourage the children to "tap" or "chop" these words into their individual sounds (see the parent letter for explicit directions on how to reinforce this), and then blend those sounds together to both read and spell the words. In this unit, we will also be reviewing the formation of several upper case letters each week. There is only one parent letter for all of Unit 2, which can be found here. There are many valuable resources and ideas for supporting the reading of CVC words in the Unit 2 parent letter, and I encourage you to check it out. 

In 2026, we will also begin focusing more on sentence and story writing. This week, your children will begin using their Fundations Journals, where we will write each week to various prompts. You will be quite amazed at their writing development when you look back at this journal in June and see all their writing from January onward. 

We will be reading some New Year-themed books, as well as begin reading non-fiction books about owls in preparation for our owl unit next week.

Math

We will continue with Module 3 on measurement. For the next two weeks, the focus will be on comparisons: comparing both sets and numbers. Parent tips for this topic can be found here. 

**Library is every Wednesday. Please return your child's library book by Tuesday each week (most of you returned your library books before we left for winter break, but if you didn't you received an email).

**School spirit days are every Wednesday. Wear your Alta Vista t-shirts or your Grasshopper t-shirts to show your school pride 

 

This Week's Helpers & Activities
Monday: Smart Restart
Tuesday: Smart Restart
Wednesday: Library @ 9:10 (Reader: Brian; Checkout:Mary),  Dismissal @ 1:15

Thursday: Music @ 12:50

Upcoming Events

Monday, 1/5: Welcome Back to School!

Monday, 1/19: No School: MLK Holiday

Tuesday, 1/20: "Snow Day" (dress in snow gear & have special snow-themed centers)

Wednesday, 1/28: 100 Day

2/16-2/20: No School: President's Week