Tuesday Tip - Yum! Yum! Kindergarten Lunch!

Kindergarten students can choose either to buy a school lunch or bring a lunch from home. We strongly suggest a lunch from home in the first few months because the children have more time to eat if they are not standing in the line buying. However, a hot meal is available each day and the monthly menu can be found on the CISD Portal. A vegetarian option is always available, too!

Your child will be given an account in the cafeteria. On the days he/she buys a lunch, the amount will be subtracted from the account. You may send checks to school in your child's red Lakeside folder, personally take a check to the cafeteria before school or pay on-line. Make checks payable to: Lakeside Nutrition.

Parents, after the first three weeks of school, you are welcome to come eat lunch with your child if you think he/she can handle an extra goodbye in the day. We have a separate family table set up for you and your child to use. We ask that younger siblings be left in the care of a loved one while you eat lunch with your kindergartner.

Go! GO NOW!

If you haven't ordered your child's school supplies yet, GO NOW to the Lakeside PTO site and start shopping! Remember, ordering school supplies on-line helps you (no need to run all over town), your child (everything is packaged and delivered to the classroom) and your teacher! Sale ends on July 31st.

(Here's the link: http://www.lakesidepto.com/shop.aspx?Store=2)

Summer Top 5

As the warm days of summer are upon us, we want to enjoy the season with our children and engage them in activities that bring family members together and stimulate the mind. Check out our Top 5 Pick’s for the summer!

Book: ‘The Read-Aloud Handbook’ by Jim Trelease is a parent and teacher must-read! It offers insight on the process of learning to read, developing language skills, and strategies for helping your child foster a life-long love of reading. The second half of the book contains a priceless collection of book and poetry recommendations. It includes different genres, age suggestions and a synopsis of each book. Buy your own copy or borrow it from your local library!

Game: After an energetic day at the pool, you crave a game that can bring the entire family together; one that stimulates the mind while relaxing your sun-kissed and tired bodies. Try a game of dominoes! (Make sure you purchase double-nine dominoes.) This classic tile game gives children the opportunity to practice cooperation, good sportsmanship and matching quantities. Most important, when children play with these dot formations, number values become engrained in the mind. Children begin to recognize the patterns in our numeric system. (The 5 is simply 4 with 1 in the middle!) Ask family members to verbalize each domino they play and differentiate for the ages of your children. A toddler will say the colors he is matching, while a pre-schooler will say the number quantity of each side of a domino (nine and two). A school-age child can make a domino into an addition sentence (nine and two makes eleven), while an upper-elementary child will create a multiplication sentence (the nine is three rows of three).

Car Game: Mind Reader is a game modeled after ‘20 questions’, but challenges your child’s scientific thinking and language-building skills. A parent will say “I’m thinking of something that starts with mmmmmmm”. (Always say the beginning letter sound, instead of the letter name. This aids in the phonological development needed for learning to read.) Children will ask questions that can only be answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Teach your child to begin with bigger questions (“Is the thing you’re thinking of living?” “Is it found in a house?” “Does it breathe underwater?”), then move on to guessing specifics. Most likely you will need to model this line of thinking for the first few games, but this thinking process (big ideas to small, asking questions to illuminate possibilities and matching guesses to the beginning sound) is exactly what your child needs to become successful in the areas of science, reading and creative problem-solving!

Website: StorylineOnline.net has a collection of books read by actors from The Screen Actor’s Guild. Hollywood’s Finest bring the stories to life and viewers can read along or just listen. You’ll see an excitement percolate when your children see the same books in the library and want to read the stories again and again!

Conversation: Your children have great ideas waiting to be unearthed and depend on you to stimulate their thinking and communication skills. During your summertime adventures, ask your children open-ended questions about your surroundings. This gives you insight into their thinking, which can drive further questioning and reasoning. Start with “What do you notice?” Take note of their observations and focus their attention to details that create new learning opportunities. Afterwards, ask “What does it make you think of/remind you of?” This elevates your child’s thinking to a higher-level and allows the brain to make connections with prior knowledge.

Wherever your summer plans take your family, powerful and practical activities are always at your fingertips!

Tuesday Tip - What Your Child Will Need

Here are a few things your child will need on the first day of kindergarten!

· Backpack - Please send a backpack to school everyday to help carry important kindergarten “stuff.” Please make sure these backpacks are not the long, roller type (since they do not fit in our cubbies).

· Red Lakeside Folder – This folder should come to school everyday in your child’s backpack. If you have a note for your child’s teacher, place it in the folder and your child’s teacher will do the same. CHECK IT DAILY!

· Change of Clothes - Please send a change of clothes in a baggie just in case to keep at school. Please make sure it is labeled with your child’s name. Trade these out as seasons and sizes change! Even if your child is not having accidents, there are sometimes spills and messes that deserve a change of clothes.

· Resting Towel - We rest most days. Your child will need a labeled resting towel.

· Supplies - Kindergarten supplies can be purchased on-line from our PTO. These school supplies are shared among the class. Please bring all supplies on Meet the Teacher Night.

· Toys – A stuffed animal friend may come to school with your child the first week of school. After that, no toys are allowed at school.

· Medications – If your child has medications, please take them to our school nurse, Mrs. Black.

· Transportation – Please notify your teacher in writing (or via email before 10:00 a.m.) if there is a change in after school transportation for your child.

Tuesday Tip - Hello and Goodbye

Students will have an opportunity to meet their new teacher a few days before the school year begins (in August - check the school website for date/time). This will allow your child to become accustomed to his/her classroom and teacher. On the first day of school, parents are welcome to bring their child to the classroom. (It is a huge moment!) For the rest of the week, please say your good-byes in the gym before school. Students are to be in the gym by 7:45. The gym is supervised in the morning and your child’s teacher will pick up her class from the gym at 7:45. Please do not send your child directly to class. After the first week, please help us begin to foster your child’s independence by saying goodbye in the parent loop and allowing him/her to walk in independently.

Here are the general things you'll need to know about our arrival and dismissal procedures:

Morning Arrival

- Morning drop-off time: 7:30-7:49

- All parent loops and inside waiting areas are supervised and your kindergartner will not have to walk in or wait alone in the morning.

Afternoon Dismissal

- Afternoon pick-up: 3:05

- All parent loops and inside waiting areas are supervised and your kindergartner will not have to walk out or wait alone in the afternoon.

- Children riding a bus or daycare van will be escorted outside and to their bus in the afternoon.

- Children that have a siblings in K–2nd grade (or no siblings), will be picked up from the front office loop. All students with an older sibling in grades 3rd-5th grade, will wait for his/her sibling in the hall (by the office) and be dismissed to the cafeteria loop.

- If you are driving through the parent loop to pick up your child, please be sure to have the yellow sign in your dashboard and pull all the way up the curb. DO NOT get out of your car. (This yellow sign will be given to you at the beginning of the school year).

- Walkers, please respect our safety system and use the crosswalks (from the parent parking lot). Please wait outside for your child and wait away from the doors so the sidewalks are left un-crowded.

• Both dismissal loops are supervised by adults who are available for help!

News! News! News!

Each Friday the Kindergarten teachers will send home a weekly newsletter via email or post it on her webpage. It will be in a PDF format and will inform you of events of the class and school. Be sure to read each week about the happenings and upcoming events!

Grandparents and Special Friends Day

Grandparents and Special Friends Day is a school-wide event. Students can invite their Grandparents or a special friend (Aunt, neighbor, or parent, etc.) to join them in the classroom for a small tour of their classroom and school work. Grandparents and Special Friends Day is usually for a portion of the school day, during a fall school day. Check the weekly newsletter for a specific date and time. If you have a grandparent that is unable to attend, your child may send a postcard or letter requesting that grandparent send a letter to your child at school. Your child’s teacher can read the letter to your child and the entire class, and then find where on the map the grand parent is living. This is a way everyone can see how much your child is loved by his/her grandparent.

The day’s festivities will begin when the teachers invite everyone into the classroom. The children will greet their grandparents or special friend and show them the many activities of his/her kindergarten classroom. Half-way through the celebration, an announcement will be made to indicate the time and grandparents/special friends may move on to another classroom to spend the last half of their time with a sibling.

Unfortunately, each year we have one or two students who do not have a Grandparent or Special Friend available to visit. As you can imagine, this can make a young child very upset to see “everyone has a visitor except me”. Please ask the Grandparent or Special Friend you send to include any children that are alone. Thank you!

Tuesday Tip - What Good Little Boys and Girls!

We have so many ways to reward all the amazing behavior and effort our students show us! Here are a few you may hear about:

Red Tickets - A child may receive a red ticket as a reward for great effort, wonderful behavior or when found exemplifying one of our citizenship qualities (see below). This child writes his/her name on the back of the ticket and returns it to the teacher. At the end of the week, the teachers takes all the red tickets and draws one red ticket. Whoever that red ticket belonged to becomes our Longhorn of the Week.

Longhorn of the Week - When you have been selected as the Longhorn of the Week, your name is announced on Friday’s morning announcements, your picture is taken and hung on the school bulletin board and you receive a Lakeside pencil and a Longhorn of the Week ribbon to wear. Our school’s parent-volunteer photographer also submits all the Longhorn of the Week photos to our local newspaper.

Citizen of the Month - The CISD Citizenship Program highlights a different quality each month district-wide. These qualities are integrity, respect, responsibility, cooperation, caring, self-control, patriotism, honesty, effort and patience. The focus of the elementary program is to introduce the concepts, model the behavior to demonstrate the concepts and identify the behavior in ourselves and others.

At the end of each month, a student is chosen to be recognized at the Citizen of the Month for his/her class. The student’s name is called during a spirit assembly, a sentence is read by our principal showing why the student was chosen and the student receives a ribbon that says ‘Citizen of the Month’ and has his/her picture taken for the school’s bulletin board.

The above are district and school-wide recognition programs. Your child’s kindergarten teacher will also have ways to reinforce positive behavior and reward gallant efforts. Here are a few examples:

Marble Jar - Each time the class works as a team to accomplish a common goal, a marble may be added to a class jar. When the jar is full, a team reward will be given. (Example: spend 15 minutes at the end of a day, playing on the ‘big kid’ playground).

Table Points - If a group of students that sit at one table are doing a remarkable job at following directions or working through a problem as a team, a table point can be earned. At the end of the week, a reward for the table with the most points will be given. (Example: On Friday, everyone at the blue table may take off his/her shoes when working at their table).

Smellies - A smelly is a flavored Chap-Stick. When a reward needs to be given, a child will hear the teacher say, “Susie, you may have a Smelly!” The child will then get a swipe of a delicious smelling stick on the back of her hand to smell and enjoy! (These Chap-Sticks never touch anyone’s lips!)

These are just a few examples of how we reinforce positive behavior in kindergarten. You will hear more from your child’s will teacher when the year begins.

Meet the K4 Teacher

Hello and welcome to Kindergarten!  My name is Robin Travis and I was born and raised in Texas.  I graduated from Texas Woman’s University with a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies (elementary education).  I also hold my English as a Second Language (ESL) certification.

This is my first year with Lakeside and I am so excited to join the Longhorn family!  This is also my first year to teach Kindergarten and I just couldn’t be more thrilled!  I come from a long line of teachers at both the elementary and collegiate levels.  I live in Plano with my sweet 6 year-old yellow Lab, Emma, and we love to go for walks, chase tennis balls, and watch the Texas Rangers!  I love traveling, reading, cooking, going to the movies, and spending as much time as I can with my family and friends.

I look forward to sharing this amazing time with you and your child and welcome any questions you might have.  It’s going to be a great year of growing, discovering, and learning together! 

Tuesday Tip - Nursery Rhymes

Did you know reciting and singing nursery rhymes is a great way to help your child become a better reader? Hearing the rhythm of our language and identifying rhyming words helps your child become a more fluent and successful reader!

So dust off those nursery rhyme books and start reading!

(Here's a link if you'd like some free sing-a-long.)