Procedures for Parents

Newsletters: On most Fridays, I will send home a letter telling a little about the past week’s activities and giving information for the next week. These letters will always be on the same color paper with familiar looking clip-art for easy identification.

Book Bags: Each student receives a book bag at South Prairie School. This book bag stays with them from year to year. In kindergarten, it is important that their book bag stays in their backpack when it is not being used, and travels to and from school each day. Book bags are used to transport borrowed books for reading homework.

Monthly Reading Log: Parents will need to keep a record of each book read to students on the monthly reading log. This can be a book borrowed from our classroom, or books you already have at home. Rewards will be given to all children who read 25 (or more) books each month. I will be keeping a running total of books reported on the reading logs, and these totals will be recorded on your child’s report card. Students will receive a certificate at the end of the year telling the total number of books read. Will your child be in the 200 club, the 300 club, the 400 club or more?

Borrowed Books: There are several tubs of books in our classroom to borrow for reading homework. I encourage each child to borrow and return one or two books each day from this collection of read-aloud books. Later in the year, your child will be bringing home ‘leveled books,’ which he/she will be able to read independently. I’ll be sending more information about that after the winter holidays.

Parent Helpers: In order to work with the children in smaller groups, I need one parent volunteer to join us at school each day. A parent helper would not be expected to handle student misbehavior. Possible duties of a parent helper:--help individual children finish up incomplete work. --supervise a group of seven or eight children as they play a game or complete a project during “stations.”--help set out and clean up after snack.--help with additional jobs to make our day run more smoothly. Please let me know if you can commit to one day a week, or share a day with another parent and come every other week.

Snacks:

Birthdays: We will be asking parents to send cookies for your child’s birthday celebration. These will need to be store bought, in keeping with district policy. Please don’t send candy, cupcakes or ice cream. We will have these treats on other occasions. I will send more information about this at a later time. If your child’s birthday is coming up soon and you haven’t heard from me, please give me a call.

Contact Information: Work phone: 842-8401. I do not answer the phone during class time while I am teaching. However, you may feel free to leave a message and I will respond as quickly as I am able. Always inform the office of transportation changes. I will not listen to the messages until after the students are on the buses. E-mail: sherilyh@tillamook.k12.or.us (Yes, my name is not spelled correctly for this address) E-mail is an effective way to make a quick contact.