Parent Letter

Dear Parents,

I'd like to congratulate two of our students in the Wed/Fri class for earning their Alphabet Crowns. Great job! And a Happy Birthday to London!

My teaching plan for February will include a variety of Valentine's Day crafts and learning projects, but the big news will be learning digraphs. (You may have called these consonant clusters while in school.) There are several high frequency digraphs that the students will encounter this month: th, ch, sh, ck, and wh will be our featured digraphs. I have small diamond shaped boxes that I will be awarding to each child as they learn these common digraphs and can read them in short vowel words. I call it the Digraph Diamond. Many a student has asked me "when do I get the diamond?" This month my friends!

Several of our students are progressing rapidly with their take home readers will be coming home over the next few weeks with their Blending Buttons.

I see many awards given out this month to encourage students to learn and to enjoy learning.

After Valentine's Day we will begin our Dinosaur Unit.

A note about Valentine's Day parties. We will be holding Valentine's Day Parties before Valentine's Day. Thursday the 10th and Friday the 11th.

T/Th Class List*
Emily
Kourtney
Bella
Christian
London

W/F Class List*
Ethan
Adam
Kate
Avery

*Noah has a Valentine for each student, he's practically the class pet. : ) Your student is welcome to bring one for Noah, but it's not expected.

There will not be school on Tuesday, Feb 15th. Tuesday students are welcome to attend Wednesday or Friday to make up the day. I apologize for the inconvenience. Noah has an outpatient procedure scheduled that day I will need to be with him at the hospital. Again, I am sorry for the schedule change but I cannot avoid it.

Looking forward to seeing you all this week!
Megan Millington

Parent Letter

Dear Moms and Dads,

I thought I'd share some super cute pictures of our little astronauts who explored our low gravity class room this week.

Aren't they just super cute? My oldest drew the NASA badges on these outfits.

I served them all freeze dried ice cream from the Kennedy Space Center, so if they came home talking about astronaut food, you know what they mean. We also have played heavily with rockets, a space buggy, the command nodule and the Lunar Lander in addition to watching film footage from the landing on the moon "before your parents were born." --

We continue to play the crater game, add, read and more. We've been working on writing and they are all much improved. Watch for their Space Journals to come home next week.

Next class we'll shoot balloon rockets!

Thank you all,
Megan Millington

Parent Letter

Dear Parents,

I hope your student is enjoying our journey through space. We have explored the idea of orbit: that the Moon orbits Earth and that there are planets and comets and space rocks that orbit the Sun. We made craters with balls of different densities and traveling from different trajectories and speeds of impact. It was messy fun! (Flour can be quite dusty.) We’ve talked about phases of the moon and learned about gravity.

We conducted an alien hunt with sight word craters. We took turns seeing if our little Martian was hiding in the “the” crater or “on” craters. We will continue this game throughout the month. I am sending home a paper today with all the sight words we’ll practice sounding out and becoming familiar with over the next few months. If you’d like to practice at home, great. Please just have fun with the page and encourage your student to color it.

I’m also sending home a fantastic, fun way to encourage your little one to look up at night. I saved this theme and activity in particular for January as it gets dark so early that I hope this will not affect bedtimes. : )

We will begin learning about Astronauts, NASA and constellations this week.

Thank you!

Megan Millington

Parent Letter

Dear Moms and Dads,

I hope you have enjoyed your Christmas vacation.

I wanted to remind you that we are returning to school this upcoming week. Our focus in January will be Stars, Planets and Astronauts. We'll learn about NASA, constellations, learn the names of planets in our Solar System and more. I hope your child will be as excited to discover as much as I am to teach it.

Tuesday/Thursday students will begin on Tuesday January 4th.
Wednesday/Friday students will begin on Wednesday January 5th.

Thank you and I look forward to seeing you and your student.

Megan Millington

Christmas Tip

Dear Parents,

I am writing to share with you a fun and free Christmas item you may be interested in doing for your family members. I discovered this last year and my children were thrilled to watch these customized videos from Santa Claus. At Thanksgiving this year they started wondering when they'd hear from Santa again and whether or not Daddy would be on the naughty list again. (We have a spunky sense of humor in our house.)

I'm attaching the video I created for Jocelyn to this email if you'd like to see an example of a finished product before you spend time making one of your own. If you find it something that fits your family, enjoy. I can just imagine the delight on your children's faces.

Megan Millington

Jocelyn's Santa Letter/Video

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

Parent Letter

Dear Parents,

This week we have begun learning about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is such a wonderful holiday for spellers! In class we’ve sounded out words like turkey, pilgrim and pumpkins as the children identify the sounds we make with our mouths and then decide which letter of the alphabet makes those sounds. We continue to count, draw and read.

At the request of several parents, I’ve made a copy of some of the songs we sing at school for your child to sing at home. I hope you enjoy them. The first few songs are extremely helpful for understanding the hows and whys of early reading. I know they aren’t the best copies, but when I purchased the school kit from Challenger years ago, the audio wasn’t the best. My apologies, but the kids don’t seem to mind.

I’ve also added a touch of homework for our little ones in the form of short vowel and consonant letter cards.

For example: ed The student should say eh as in egg and then add the duh sound for the d, blending them together to say “ed”

This is not only great practice for reading short vowel words, but it also gives them a chance to practice the sounds of the alphabet letters with some variety thrown in. I will change out each vowel group when you send them back to me, eventually exposing the students to each short vowel sound and most of the consonants.

Each child progresses at their own pace. I hope these flash cards help keep your student excited about the learning process. Please practice a time or two each day, but let’s not press him or her. She is learning, even if she may not choose to “perform” in front of you or may not do so for me sometimes. Learning is fun!