Kindergarten Welcome Letter

Dear Kindergarten Families,
Welcome to Queen Anne Elementary. We are thrilled to have you and your students join us on our journey this year. Your child’s kindergarten experience will be full of learning, growth and excitement. We three kindergarten teachers will be working together to ensure that each student is safe, comfortable and confident so they can develop a true love of learning and school.  

We will be blogging weekly to communicate what is going on in our classrooms, but we wanted to give you some information about what to expect for the year. We will talk much more in depth about the scope of the year at our curriculum night. 

Supplies
Instead of giving lists of supplies to bring, we have decided as a school to collect $50 for each child instead. With that money we are able to buy supplies in bulk using our education discounts, thus having money left over to buy extra things for the classroom, such as magazine subscriptions, materials for art projects, etc.  We also believe it teaches students how to share with others and treat classroom supplies with respect so that they last longer. Please send your check made out to Queen Anne Elementary with your child on the first day of school. If you are financially unable, just let us know. 

Pick up/ Drop off
On the first day of school, we will be having a ribbon cutting celebration and we would love for you to come and hang out for this exciting event. After that, you are welcome to walk your child to their classroom and then do your best to say goodbye! It is usually much harder for the parents than the students!! J After the first day, you are welcome to drop your students off at the playground 15 minutes before the first bell rings. When the bell rings, your students will line up at their designated spots and their teacher will come get them to start the day. At the end of the day, your child’s teacher will walk the students out as well. You are welcome to meet your student in the hall, out on the playground or in the designated pick up spot. Before taking your student, please make sure you make eye contact with the teacher so we know they are safe.  We will walk students out to their bus lines as well.  If your child is ever to go home in a different way (bus, pick up by friend, etc.) it is really important that you write an email to let us know. Often, kindergarteners will get mixed up! 

Volunteers
We all feel very fortunate to be working in a school that has such a wonderful, involved community. However, the first couple weeks of school are also very important for your students to get adjusted and learn the routines. Therefore, for the first two weeks we would love to have parents volunteers working on things outside of the classroom.  By curriculum night we will have a parent volunteer sign up form available on our class websites.  We really do love having you in our classroom as much as possible. If you have any sort of expertise that you would like to share with our classes, we would love it. Some big jobs that we are looking for are:

- 1 room parent for each class- will help organize field trips, classroom parties, etc. 

- 1 volunteer coordinator for each class- communicate with teacher and manage the volunteers using an online site such as www.volunteerspot.com 

- 1 snack coordinator for each class - schedule family snack contributions (see guidelines below).

- 1 tech coordinator for each class - download pictures, scan & put student work online, help maintain classroom websites, blog with kids.

- 1 music teacher for each class (or 1 music teacher who would love to work in all 3 K classrooms).  

If you have any interest in taking any of this on, please let your child’s teacher know!

Snacks                 
Families will be asked to send snack 3 to 4 times throughout they year.  The snack coordinator will be responsible for scheduling and reminding families about this.  We would like healthy snacks like pretzels, cheese, fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grain crackers, etc.  Please avoid any snacks that have nuts and hydrogenated oils.

Birthdays
We are thrilled to celebrate your child’s special day at school. We will even make sure we pick a time to celebrate those students who have summertime birthdays. However, it gets to be too much when we have extravagant parties with sweets for each student. Therefore, for birthdays this year you are welcome to send in a small, healthy treat. Some examples are: fruit kabobs, fruit snacks, veggie trays, etc. If you would prefer, you are more than welcome to send in a small gift instead (such as a pencil or stickers). We will set aside 15 minutes to celebrate them and make them feel special.  Please ask if you need more guidance. As for birthday invitations, we are unable to send them out at school unless you invite all of the students in your child’s class. There are too many instances with hurt feelings otherwise. So, if you are only inviting a few kids, please contact their parents directly. We will put together a class contact list very soon. 

Homework
We will talk about this more in depth at curriculum night. However, we believe that kindergartners work very hard throughout the day and we don’t want them (or you) stressing about homework at home. Therefore, we will give families ideas of activities they can do at home to help their students- but it will be done on your own timeframe. 

Classroom websites
This will be the primary form of family communication. Please visit your students classroom website and sign up to receive e-mails about blog posts from the teachers. 

Once again, we are so excited to have you at our school. We can’t wait to get to know your beautiful children. 

Sincerely,
 The Kindergarten team 
Rachel Marks            Katie Cryan Leary        Rene Yokoyama