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:
- Please send in a card for each child. There are 24 total students in our class: 15 boys and 9 girls.
- 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!
- 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.
