First Week of September

Upcoming Dates:
* Sunday, September 17th: Cupertino Jubilee Chicken Dance @ 12:20pm
There is a yellow paper in today’s Friday Folder. Please fill out the bottom portion to let me know if your child will or will not participate.
* Friday, September 29th: NO SCHOOL – Staff Learning Day
* Friday, October 6th: Eaton’s Walk-a-Thon and Carnival! Save the Date!

September 8, 2006
Dear Families,

Thank you to those of you who were able to attend Back-to-School Night on Wednesday! I hope you found my website informational and helpful to learn about our classroom. Remember to turn in the following items as soon as possible: $125 classroom donation, library permission slip, website permission slip, and volunteer form. Thank you to Mrs. Komoto, Mrs. Na, and Mrs. Kim for generously offering to volunteer every Friday afternoon. I am hoping to find one more parent to help out during the Friday (or Thursday if there is no school on Friday) afternoon time slot (2:00-3:00pm). Thank you!
Here are some highlights from the week:
Poem of the Week: Manners
Song of the Week: Clap Your Name
Kindness is … saying thank you when somebody helps me.
Word Wall Words: Names of classmates
• Language Arts: We have worked on the alphabet letters up to G. We practice the sounds of each letter and brainstorm words for our Dictionaries. We also started learning about School Words in the vocabulary center.
• Reading: We continued to review the meaning of important words from Rosie’s Walk such as: across, around, over, under, past, and through. We created our own stories called Pete the Pencil to show our understanding of these words. Please read the story they made with your children to help them master the vocabulary.
• Library: We had our first library visit with Mrs. Glass. We went over the rules and expectations of library time. Each Friday, we will listen to a story read-aloud by Mrs. Glass, and then we can check out one book to take home. Please remember to bring back library books every Friday or else your child cannot check out another book.
• Assembly: We had our first assembly today with Gary Lapow. Gary is a songwriter and musician who sings fun songs on his guitar. It was lots of fun!
• Writing: This week we learned the five important parts that make up a friendly letter when we wrote the Back-to-School letters. We will be writing more letters throughout the year. Remember to keep checking the “Classwork” section in our website to read about our Prince and Princesses.
• Kindness Journal: We started our first entry in our Kindness Journal. This is a new project with the students to help them learn (hopefully) to do nice things for others and to have manners. Our first entry was about saying “Thank You.” Please also help to teach your kids to say thank you to you regularly at home. You can say thank you to them also if they help you.
• Math: This week we used cubes to help us with our addition facts. We learned the rule that numbers can be “turned around” in addition. For example: 1+2 = 2+1 because 1+2=3 and 2+1=3. This week I am sending home our first completed math packet. Please remember to review the problems your child missed. Also, word problems are the green/aqua colored pages and we usually do these as a whole class. Please try and have your child practice similar problems at home to see if they can solve the problems by themselves.

Next week, homework packets and sharing will begin. Please have your child ready to be tested in vocabulary and spelling by Thursday, and turn in homework packets on Friday. I am excited to hear your children’s sharing and please remember your child must be prepared with at least 4 complete sentences and have an object or picture to show.

Also on Monday, we will start our Weekend News journals. These journals are to encourage children to write freely without worrying about spelling or grammatical mistakes. Students usually write about what they did over the weekend, however, if nothing exciting happened, they can write about anything they want. It really helps if you can talk with your child Sunday night or Monday morning to review the weekend events. For example: did you go to a special place? Did they see a friend? What did you do at home? Are they excited about an upcoming event? Etc. Thank you for your help!

Please remember your child must be sitting at the table in the mornings. Please don’t have them stand up or walking around. We always line up in order of where they sit at the table, so I’d like kids to stay in line. Thank you. See you on Monday!