Hello PreKPals Parents!

We hope you have had a happy weekend! Don’t forget to get the nap mats ready and the snacks packed to send to school tomorrow. We are really getting into a great routine and for most of last week we had NO tears! (The tears always stop shortly after you drop them off, but it was nice to not have sad faces!)

We are anticipating up to three new friends very soon, bringing our total to 18. We will never go over 18 students, as our ratio is always 1 adult to 9 children.

On Tuesday night at 6 pm our first PTA meeting and Open House will be held. We will not have a meeting in our classroom since we already had Orientation (This is the night the other grades will be having orientation.) You are welcome to drop by the classroom to say Hello, or attend the sessions for your older students, or you are free to leave after the PTA meeting and not feel obligated to come to the classroom. Please do let me know via Dojo if you attended the meeting. You will get parent volunteer points for attending.

Don’t forget the Flu Shot forms. Sign and return if you want to take advantage of this at school. If not, toss the form.

This week we will continue to learn about the differences in letters and numbers. We are going to focus on learning the letters in our names and in holding our pencils, crayons and markers correctly. I will send a handout home with tips to help you with correct grip with writing tools. Look for it in the Bear Binder.

We hope you liked the Green/Red choices handout we sent last week. You may also hear your child say “You are dipping my bucket!” This is a phrase from the book How Full Is Your Bucket? For Kids by Tom Rath. We are learning that red choices dip our buckets and green choices fill our buckets. The bucket dipping question is one we get a lot from parents at the beginning of the year. We are also working to earn Bucket Fillers as a class. Exceptional helpfulness, compliments from other adults and many other things make us feel great (and fill our bucket). When we (as a class) get 10 Bucket Fillers, we will have a special activity or other fun thing that we will decide on together. We are learning to work together for a common goal.

Don’t forget to check/clean out the binder daily. If you have changes in dismissal for this week, please let us know.

Labor Day Holiday is Monday, September 3. No school!

You can find us on our closed Facebook at RQ PreKPals#1 – just ask to join.

Have a great week! Alicia

Happy First Blog Post PreKPals Parents!

Thank you all so much for joining Class Dojo! Mrs. Minifield and I can keep you up to date and share pictures with you through this app. If you need to send a message, you can do it through Dojo or email. Remember- if you don’t get an email or dojo reply, then we didn’t get your message and you will need to call the office regarding dismissal changes.

If your child is always extended day or always a car rider, then we do not need a weekly note each week. We only need a note or an email if your child’s normal means of transportation changes. If you have different transportation for every day of the week, you can send a weekly schedule with the dates and the modes of transportation listed.

Please remember to send snack daily. Snacks should not be packed with lunches. Some of you send snacks (only) in the lunchbox (because your child gets a tray in the cafeteria) and that is fine. Snacks should be quick and simple and we use our water cups to drink. We refill water cups all day long, so don’t worry about them running out. Make sure your child’s cup has a valve and is not a “free pour” cup. We do not drink juice at snack because of spills and sticky messes that invite ants.

You may want to send a light jacket or sweater that your child can leave in their cubby. Sometimes it is cold in our classroom and our thermostat has a mind of its own. The best jackets and sweaters are those that zip or button in the front and do not need to be put on over the head like a sweatshirt.

Please make sure to send your child to school in the shoes they need for PE. We don’t have time to change shoes before PE.

For morning drop off, please bring your child to the Multipurpose Room. We are the last classes to leave so if you see bigger children walking down the hallway, come to the MP room to find us. We will walk down as a class. Parents are not allowed to walk children to the classrooms. Smooch and go from the MP room and our day will go a lot smoother. When your child is upset and you linger or keep coming back in to check on them it makes it harder on both you and the child. We have had some criers, but everyone has settled in nicely and we think that next week will run like clockwork!

We have had a great 8 days of learning together! This week, we will start classroom jobs. Eventually everyone will have a weekly job to do. It is a big part of our classroom community. We will be using Conscious Discipline in our classroom to make everyone feel safe and valued. We look forward to sharing more about this method with you and hope you will find it valuable at home as well. Look for a handout in the Bear Binder this week about some things you can try at home.

We are having a great time learning class procedures and how to be a PreKPal. We expect to have a few more friends added in the next few weeks bringing our total to 18.

This week we will begin our weekly science experiments, have our first Let’s Find Out Newspaper, make our Birthday Graph and learn how to go to the library! We will also start focusing on letters and sounds. Our first anchor chart will be about the letter M!

You can find us on our closed Facebook at RQ PreKPals#1 – just ask to join.

Thanks for sharing your children with us! Have an awesome week! Alicia