After Back to School Night!

Upcoming Dates

* Monday, September 10th: Scholastic Book Orders Due!
Remember to write ONE check to Scholastic Books. If you haven’t already, please also turn in the Eaton and Cupertino library permission slips by Monday.

* Sunday, September 16th: Cupertino Jubilee Chicken Dance @ 1:00pm
The first graders from Eaton will perform the Chicken Dance at the Cupertino Jubilee which is held at City Hall (next to the library). Plan on coming if you are available that day! There is a green permission slip in today’s Friday Folder. Please fill out the bottom to let us know if you WILL or WILL NOT be coming.

* Monday, September 24th: Happy Hollow Field Trip
There is a blue permission slip in today’s Friday Folder. Please fill it out and return it by next Monday, September 17th. We can have parent chaperones, but we must carpool there because there is not room on the bus for parents.

* Friday, September 21st: Picture Day
Picture envelopes will be sent home the day before.

* Friday, September 28th: NO SCHOOL – Staff Learning Day

* Friday, October 5th: Lawrence Hall of Science Assembly 9:45-10:35am
We still need two parents to volunteer at this assembly for all the first graders. You will be helping the students with various science experiments and projects. Please email me or send a note if you can help!

September 7, 2007
Dear Families,

Thank you to those of you who were able to attend Back-to-School Night last night! 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: $150 classroom donation, library permission slip, website permission slip, and volunteer form. Thank you to those of you who are offering to volunteer in our class!

Here are some highlights from the week:
Poem of the Week: Manners
Song of the Week: The Eaton Song
Kindness is … making new friends
Word Wall Words: Names of classmates

• Language Arts: We have worked on the alphabet letters up to I. 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.

• 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 project to help students learn to do nice things for others and to have manners. We will be typing the journals on the computer on our Kindness website.

• 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. Please remember to look over the work that comes home each Friday and 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, the complete homework packet 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!

This week we all did a great job getting green super stars for great behavior. However, I still gave many warnings and reminders about sitting nicely on the carpet, working quietly at the desks, and following Eaton rules. Please continue reminding your children to follow these rules. Thank you. See you on Monday!