Parent Letter

Dear Parents,

Wow. One major holiday down and suddenly, another one's at the door. I cannot believe it's Christmas time already. Christmas is my favorite holiday. Your little ones are super excited and I have crammed our shortened school month with a lot of learning crafts and fun activities with the Christmas theme.

A few items we've been studying:
1. The concept that some animals hibernate while others stay awake all winter.
2. Counting syllables in words. We say a word or name and clap for each syllable.
3. We're still playing a lot of sequencing games, Alphabet Bingo, Memory (with North American Animals, with Blues Clues, etc.) and we practice adding.

The beginning of December found another reason to celebrate: two students from the Tuesday/Thursday class and another one from our Wednesday/Friday class have earned their Alphabet Crowns. I loved getting to give them a big hug and lead our class Hip Hip Hooray's for them. Your children are so kind, so sweet and so enthusiastic for each others successes.

Now that the majority of our students are sounding out short vowels and consonants, I plan on beginning to add sight words. Each week I'll feature two words such as the and and in addition to practicing our early reader skills. As your student moves from flash cards to early readers (books), you'll notice that fluency will increase and they will start remembering high frequency words. We work on these in class, but the take home allows them additional practice with an older sibling or with Mom and Dad. As they gain confidence and practice, the next Reading Bling item they will earn will be their Blending Button.

A quick note for the Wednesday/Friday class. Class will be Monday, Wednesday and Friday this coming week (6th-10th) to make up my sick day on Wednesday. Thank you for understanding.

A look ahead:
Christmas Parties will be on the 16th and the 17th--which are the last days of school to coincide with Alpine School District's winter break.

Thank you for your support.
Megan Millington