Kindergarten Newsletter September 2015 From the desk of: Mrs. Bomann Welcome to Kindergarten at Classical School! Welcome to Classical and to the 2015-2016 school year. My name is Mrs. Bomann and I will be your child s homeroom teacher this year. This is my fourth year at Classical School as a kindergarten teacher. I have three children and they have all been students at Classical. Also, my husband is Mr. Bomann, a second grade teacher at Classical! Please read each section of this letter, then sign and return the September Newsletter Daily dismissal at 2:49 (half days are 11:17 a.m.) Acknowledgement. Save this letter for future reference. --- The kindergarteners are school age now, but the first weeks of school can be overwhelming and confusing for the little ones. Please be at the main entrance for student pick up at 2:45 (or 11:15 on half days). My class is lined up and ready to leave at the bell in order for us to beat the rush of the older children. Please be one time. This means coming early enough to park and walk a few blocks to the doors. If you child is in aftercare, please let me know With all the construction and movement this will be the least confusing for these very young children and this will also be the safest way please be on time or a bit early. Daily Take-Home Folders (or go-to-school folders ) Each child has a daily take-home folder. Look in this folder every school day. Some pages will be homework (math and reading only in kindergarten). Particularly in the beginning of the year I try to star or stamp everything that is not homework, so you know it can stay home. Students usually have a math page and a reading page for homework. Other papers can stay home with a few exceptions: Sometimes there are papers for you to fill out and return; an example might be a field trip form or a note from the lunch program. Sometimes student papers can be mixed up in the folders, if this happens, simply send the wayward paper back to school in your child s folder on the bring back side and we will get it to the correct child. Homework Expect homework each evening, check for papers in the Take-Home folder as mentioned above. Corrected papers will have a star, sticker or positive note when you see this, they can be kept at home. If a teacher writes Fix & Return, (math or reading) errors need to be corrected by child (with parent help usually at this age) & paper needs to be sent back to school in the folder. In kindergarten, children are required to correct
a paper until it is at an acceptable level of mastery. **Please help your child with this. By the end of the first two weeks you will be familiar with the format of the papers. There is study time each day at school so later in the year many children will get most of their homework completed during this special work time. Homework is expected to be returned back to school the day after it was assigned; giving you a chance to look it over and keep tabs on your child s progress, even if they finished it during homework time. The children need parent involvement with homework in kindergarten, please go over the page each night. Let me know if your child continuously has homework that takes more than 20 minutes. Please stay abreast of reading and math by watching for the math/reading emails or notes sent home from your child s teacher. Reading and Math Groups Your student has Mrs. Bomann for homeroom (recess, lunch, the Core Knowledge subjects & handwriting). Your child may have Mrs. Hernandez-Nagreen or Mrs. Bomann for reading and/or math. Horizons is the name of the reading program, Saxon is the name of the math program. Handwriting Attached is a sample of the letter-printing we use at Classical please read the helpful notes. Encourage your child to hold the pencil with thumb and pointer, resting on middle finger and to form letters as the arrows indicate. Lunch The lunch routine will be practiced and the children will know it will after the first week. I will assist the class in lunch routine for the first week to ensure all goes smoothly for your child. Each day your child must know if they have a lunch from home or lunch or a school lunch, so remind them as you drop them off each morning (this helps them a lot). Information about the hot lunch program was in the packets that were sent home in the summer or spring. Prepayment into the lunch account is recommended. If eating school lunch, milk in included. Children eating cold lunch (AKA: lunch from home) can purchase milk. Tape milk money into their lunch box, please do not send the money in the child s pocket because it will likely be lost. Remind your child about the milk money and where it is. Snack Time Each day we have in-class morning snack time. Many of you sent snacks because of the school supply list, for the entire class; which is 26 students. We will use these for our daily snack time. Special Snack guidelines (birthdays, start of the week or half birthdays): If sending in a snack, it needs to be prepared for 26 individuals. Let me know if your child has allergies, special dietary needs infinite campus is showing some, but it s good to mention or send an additional email to your child s teacher.
Bring easy-to-serve snacks. Individuals with special diets usually have special snack sent in by parents. If sending a personal water bottle please have your student s name on it. One type of snack is served each day. If students do not like the snack that is offered, they are taught to say, No thank you. Exceptions for individual snack are only made for cases of documented food allergies. Star of the Week Each week we have a spotlight on one child the star of the week. See the schedule sheet at Meet and Greet time and take a page with activity descriptions. Contact me with any individual needs. If you did not sign up at Meet and Greet, I enter remaining students into the schedule and email out a final list in about a week. Show and Share Generally we do not have show and share (show and tell). Here are the exceptions: During Star of the Week, a student may show and share an item. Items related to the curriculum may be brought in during the month of that curriculum. Email me to let me know about this. It is a school rule that toys should stay at home or in the car. Discipline Plan Classical uses a school-wide card flip system. When a rule is broken a child s card is turned from green to yellow and 5 minutes of playtime is missed. If another rule infraction occurs 10 minutes is missed (red card). Third time, 15 minutes is missed and a letter is sent home (blue card). Certain behavior like hitting, pinching or spitting is never tolerated and a card flip to blue will automatically be given by any adult in the school. For more minor infractions, usually a warning is given before a card flip at this age. We work together to form a happy, calm and predictable classroom environment and we want everyone to feel safe and cared for each day. Prize bucket is offered occasionally for children who have stayed on green card all day. Prize bucket has small trinkets and treats. We take prize bucket donations. Birthdays Classical recognizes birthdays for students with birthdays during the school year and half birthdays for summer birthdays. Special treats are allowed, but please do not bring something that is really messy & it should be prepared to easily pass out to 26 students. Check with me about allergies be email. Please let me know if you have individual concerns about this process. Sending birthday cards & invitations via school not allowed (a school policy).
Volunteering Volunteering is welcome. Usually I schedule volunteers from 2 or 2:15 to the end of the day; but know I am flexible with this so please let me know if you have a special time request. There are many opportunities to help out Classical School, such as during our annual Fall fest or during our spring fund raiser called Knowledge A Thon (KAT). Curriculum Besides our daily math and reading we will be covering many topics in September including butterflies, human body care, nursery rhymes and safety. Field Trips We have a few field trips (amount various depending on annual local offers). Watch for our traditional fall field trip to Mulberry Farms. There will be forms coming home and chaperone opportunities. (October 8, 2015) School Library Visits Email After we settle into school; our class will make weekly trips to the school library in our building. Children at this age often do not know the status of their library books. To help streamline this problem, each student will be given a large plastic storage bag with their name on it. This bag is used to keep the library book protected as the book travels. When the student returns the book into our library return box in our class, he/she drops the book, still in its bag, into to box. Our library helpers remove the books from the bags and return the books to our library. The bags are kept in our classroom. The next time we go to library, every student that is given their empty bag is allowed to check out a new library book. If there is not a bag for a child, this indicates they did not return the library book they had checked out the week prior. So, try to keep track of the bag and use it for its intended purpose. I will try to use email for certain announcements and reminders this year. For example, I do try to send libraryday reminders and Star of the Week reminders. I also use email for my reading and math groups; especially for notes about a day s lesson that might be unusual or helpful tips or notes to parents about the homework. By default I will take email from Infinite Campus for your family, however, if you have a different email for receiving important kindergarten notes, please let me know byway of an email to Bomanngwendoly@aasd.k12.wi.us. Please direct questions to BOMANNGWENDOLY@aasd.k12.wi.us and you can also use this email to notify me of concerns/setting up a time to talk on phone or in person. Sometimes I am so busy during the day email is put aside until later; so if there is a time-sensitive message (i.e. I need to see the message within a matter of hours), please also relay the message byway of a call to the main office Three cheers to the beginning of the school year! We will work together to make your child s first year at Classical School a success!
When helping you child, please follow these samples for forming letters show on the back of this paper. See examples of sitting position, pencil position and paper position. Most letters (with some exceptions) are formed with the least amount of picking up the pencil as possible. A pencil is only lifted off the paper when there is an additional number indicated. An arrow without a number indicates a continuation of movement, not picking up the pencil. An arrow shows continuous movement.
Student Name: September Newsletter Acknowledgement Return this to school in your Kindergarten s folder. (Due September 4th) By returning this signed paper, I acknowledge that I read the September Newsletter from Mrs. Bomann and I understand the content regarding homework, snacks, discipline plan, show and share, daily take-home folders, birthdays, handwriting, star of the week and lunch. Parent/Guardian Signature: Date: Thank you! I appreciate that you ve taken time to read over my letter and look forward to knowing you and your family this year.