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