W E L C O M E
to
Fall Creek Elementary
and the
Wonderful World of Kindergarten!
In preparing this booklet, we want to answer some questions about Kindergarten in order to make the transition from home to school smooth and comfortable for both you and your child. The first days of kindergarten may be emotional moments for both of you. We will make every effort to make your child's experience at Fall Creek positive and exciting.
Kindergarten is the time for what teachers call "social adjustment" and for what parents hope is the beginning of an enjoyable experience in school. We hope that you will help your child look forward to school. Please talk about school in a positive way so that your child will think of it as a happy place. Discuss school activities, school friends, new experiences, and new things to be learned. Your own reactions and attitudes will go a long way toward determining how your child feels about school.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to work closely with you in providing the best education for your child during this first year in school. We look forward to sharing many new experiences.
Fall Creek Kindergarten Team
First Day of School Needs
Materials
A backpack is required for Kindergarten. Please bring a backpack that is large enough for folders and spirals.
When bringing your children’s materials to school please do not write your child’s name on materials. We encourage a community in our classroom and have “community sharing” with certain materials such as glue, scissors, and crayons, etc.
Lunch
Your child needs to bring a lunch or money to purchase lunch for the first day of school. Please place your child’s money in an envelope with his or her name written on the outside. Your child will be given a pin number that will be used to keep track of their purchases. You will be able to put money into the account once you know your child’s pin number. The website for depositing money into your child’s lunch account is: .
If you choose to have your child eat breakfast it is sold daily from 7:30-8:00.
Breakfast costs $1.30 Lunch costs $2.00 Milk costs $.50
We do ask that you wait until after September 9th to join your child for lunch. We find that this time span gives the children a chance to adjust.
Water Bottles
Water bottles are permitted in the classroom. We ask that bottles have a sport top in order to avoid spills. Liquids other than water are not permitted. Fall Creek sport bottles are sold at the school spirit store.
HUMBLE ISD GUIDELINES
Time Schedule
Full day Kindergarten hours are 8:00 a.m. to 1:50 p.m.
The school will open each morning at 7:30. The kindergarten students will report to the P.E. area in the front foyer each morning. At 7:50 the students will be dismissed to their classrooms. The tardy bell rings at 8:05 a.m. Instruction begins promptly at 8:05 a.m.
Dismissal
We will have a record of your child’s normal transportation (i.e., biker, walker, car rider). Any change in this normal transportation at dismissal must be in writing from the parent. Without parental verification, a child will not be allowed to change his/her usual routine.
Specific procedures for picking up your child in the event of inclement weather should be discussed with him/her fully at the beginning of the school year, and will be kept on file by your child’s teacher when you return the student information sheet at the beginning of the school year.
Absences
If your child is ill, please keep him/her home from school in order to prevent the spread of illnesses to other children. Each day that your child will not be in attendance, please call the Absence Hotline at (281)641-3419 to confirm your child’s absence.
On the day a student returns to school after an absence, he/she must bring a note from a parent or guardian. The note must include the following information:
reason for absence(s)
date(s) of absence(s)
signature of parent or guardian
Regular attendance is encouraged and recognized at Fall Creek, both at class and individual levels.
If for some reason your child needs to be taken out of school during the day, please send a note to the child’s teacher stating the reason, the time of departure, and the name of the person who will be picking him/her up. Attendance is taken at 10:00 a.m. If at all possible, students should not be scheduled to leave school before this time.
A STUDENT MUST BE SIGNED OUT IN THE OFFICE BEFORE BEING DISMISSED AT ANY TIME OTHER THAN HIS/HER NORMAL DISMISSAL TIME. THE OFFICE STAFF WILL PAGE FOR YOUR CHILD TO MEET YOU AT THE FRONT OFFICE WHEN YOU HAVE SIGNED HIM/HER OUT.
Conferences
If at any time during the school year we find it necessary to discuss your child with you, we will contact you. You may contact the school any time during the school year at (281)641-3400 to leave a message. Our conference time is 2:15 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. and it will be during that time that we will be available to conduct phone conferences or return phone calls. If you would like to meet with your child’s teacher during our conference period, please call to make an appointment.
281-641-3469P1
281-641-3470P2
281-641-3471P3
281-641-3472P5
281-641-3464P8
281-641-3475P9
281-641-3474P10
Report Cards
Kindergarten report cards are sent home at the end of each nine weeks beginning with the second nine-week period. An individual conference will take the place of the report card as a means of reporting progress following the first nine weeks of school. The report cards will be explained in depth at this conference. All report cards must be signed and returned within five days after they have been received.
Parties
The district allows three official parties for Kindergarten throughout the school district. They are:
Winter Holiday Valentine’s DaySpring Holiday
Homeroom mothers are requested to provide refreshments for these parties. Please try to help if your contribution is requested. Room mothers will contact parents to help at parties from the sign-up list circulated at orientation. These events are special for our Kindergartners, so please make babysitting arrangements for your younger children.
If you wish to have your child’s birthday shared at school, please notify the teacher at least three days prior to the birthday. She will be able to confirm the number of students in your child’s class as enrollment may fluctuate during the year. If you desire to bring birthday treats for your child’s class, theycan only be purchased from the cafeteria. The treats will be eaten in the cafeteria after lunch.
Cooking
Children are given the opportunity to participate in cooking activities throughout the year. These activities provide experience in several curriculum areas. Some of these include:
Language sequencing steps, writing “how to” paragraphs, following directions, experiencing practical uses of print
Science terms such as liquid, solids, boiling, etc., physical properties of matter
Math measurement, counting, classifying by attributes
Cooking & Art Fund
To help defray the cost of items used for these learning activities, we will be requesting a $35.00 contribution. Please send this money in an envelope marked with your child’s name. A check payable to Fall Creek Elementaryor you may pay cash. Check is preferable.
Cardinal Courier
The FallCreekSchool newspaper, “The Cardinal Courier” is sent home each Tuesday in your child’s folder. A calendar of upcoming school-wide events appears each week and we suggest you save it for future reference. In addition, a weekly Kindergarten column will help keep you advised of items of special interest to parents of Kindergartners such as important reminders and themes being studied.
Experiences at School
In school, your child will have many experiences, which will make his/her learning experiences an exciting adventure. There will be experiences such as the following:
Language experiences – storytelling, discussing, planning, vocabulary building, show and tell activities, and book making.
Experiences with pictures – picture charts, pictures grouped around certain ideas, storybook with pictures, and illustrated nursery rhymes.
Listening experiences – listening to sounds and words, looking for differences and similarities in objects and stories, rhythmic activities associated with poems and nursery rhymes, and exercises for building concepts of color, left and right, and spatial relationships such as top and bottom.
Preliminary reading experiences – discovering that ideas can be recorded on charts, learning own name and simple labels around the classroom, and learning to use readiness books.
Math activities with concrete objects – activities such as counting keys and books, graphing favorite cookies, and reproducing patterns with concrete objects make math activities more meaningful.
Opportunities to increase math vocabulary – learning new terms such as first, second, less than, more than, greater than, taller, shorter, none, few, many, half, whole, equal, etc.
Artistic expressions – using music, storytelling, and art activities.
Physical education – playing new outdoor games and participating in rhythms, singing games and other indoor games.
Group experiences – planning and participating in group activities, assembly programs, displays, and class trips.
The Learning Process Through the Use of Centers
Learning is an essential part of every child’s life. Play and exploration are natural parts of a child’s need to learn and satisfy his/her curiosity about the world around him. Through the use of centers, children are able to develop such skills as making decisions, interacting socially, taking pride in their work as well as the work of their peers, solving problems, and working together.
What are Learning Centers?
Learning centers are areas within a classroom that contain a collection of activities and materials related by subject, purpose, etc.
Learning center activities and materials may be used independently by the child or with direction by the teacher to introduce, reinforce, and/or enrich one or more skills or concepts.
Learning centers are an excellent way to individualize curriculum to meet each child’s varying needs
Learning centers provide stimulating activities, choice, and decision-making opportunities.
Learning centers are one effective way for teachers to make learning more enjoyable.
Why Use Learning Centers?
To individualize instruction.
To meet the needs, abilities, and interests of all students.
To teach, reinforce, or enrich a skill or concept.
To provide students with opportunities to make and follow through on their decisions.
To help students learn to manage their own time.
To incorporate multi-level activities in the curriculum.
To motivate students to participate in learning.
Language Arts
The Kindergarten program places a great deal of emphasis on oral language development. Wherever children are, they are surrounded by language. Success in dealing with language contributes to a child’s intellectual, social, and emotional development. This program gives each individual child the language foundation he/she needs to achieve success. Oral language development contributes to the child’s ability to seek out and process information. It indicates what the child knows and is able to do. It helps to build a positive concept and aids in social interaction.
Oral language development is integrated into all of the daily activities rather than taught as a separate part of the curriculum. Children are involved in oral language development during reading readiness, mathematics, science, social studies, music, art, and centers. Throughout the program, the children are encouraged to compose and write, as well as to listen and read.
The reading readiness program has several major priorities:
to foster the child’s problem solving skills
to develop the child’s perception of learning to read as a problem-solving task that requires his/her active participation
to enable the child to acquire knowledge of letter sounds and to build a sight vocabulary
**See Reading Strategies sheet in back
Math Readiness
The district stresses a hands-on, manipulative approach to learning math. Through the use of various materials and programs, the child will be able to master skills ranging from the exploration level all the way to problem solving. Students are provided many concrete experiences to develop mathematical concepts with a systematic transition to symbols and abstract thinking.
Humble ISD has five goals that we reach for through our program called Investigations. We model, explore, question, understand, and share with the students encouraging them to develop and understand deeper thinking that will lead to algebraic reasoning.
The Five Goals of Investigations
- Support students to make sense of mathematics and learn that they can be mathematical thinkers.
- Focus on computational fluency with whole numbers as a major goal of the elementary grades.
- Provide substantive work in important areas of mathematics-rational numbers, geometry, measurement, data, and early algebra and connections among them.
- Emphasize reasoning about mathematical ideas.
- Engage the range of learners in understanding mathematics.
Important Upcoming Dates
1
August
22 – First Day of School!
26 – Early Release 11:30
September
5 – Labor Day Holiday
20 – Individual Pictures
22 – Early Release 11:30
23 – Grandparent’s Day
October
10 – School Holiday
15 – FCE Carnival 11:00-2:00
26- 28 Early Release 11:30
(Parent Conferences)
November
10– Early Release 11:30
16 – Thanksgiving Feast
18 – Turkey Trot
21 – 25 Thanksgiving Holiday
December
16 – Winter Party 10:00
Early Release 11:30
19 – 30 Winter Break
January
2 – Staff Development – No School
16 – Martin Luther King Holiday
19 – Math/Science Night
26 - Early Release 11:30
February
10 – Valentine’s Party
20 – Staff Development – No School
21 – Group Pictures
March
8 – Open House
12 – 16 Spring Break
April
9 – School Holiday
May
3 – Super Kid’s Day
17 - Early Release 11:30
28 – Memorial Day Holiday
June
1 – Kindergarten Program 8:45
Early Release 11:30
Last Day of School!
1
Good Readers…
LOOKat the picture / S K I P
Then go back
READ SKIP READ
Get your
ready
to make the first sound /
REREAD
Go back and read again
CHUNK IT
by LOOKING
for a part you know /
1