Please Keep This Information for Future Reference

**Please keep this information for future reference.

1Dear Parents, Welcome to Kindergarten. You and your child are about to begin an exciting journey of learning. My name is Alysia Baysden and my teaching assistant is Elisa Hewitt. We are very excited to have the opportunity to share this year with you and your child. We would like to provide you with some information about what to expect in our classroom. During the first weeks of school we will be doing many activities to get acquainted and learning new classroom routines and procedures. In addition, we will be assessing the level at which your child is presently working. Beginning reading is a very large part of instruction. We will be doing several reading activities during class time but it is crucial that students are practicing reading skills at home. We also encourage that you stress the importance of good handwriting to your child. We will be working on correct letter formation, and spacing, and consistency. Creative writing is another important part of our instruction. Students will be writing in journals and creating short narratives. Our social studies and science curriculums will be incorporated into the reading and writing activities. Our math instruction will be a hands-on approach using manipulative objects.

School Attendance Students should not be dropped at school before 8:05 am and will not be admitted to classrooms until 8:15 am. The tardy bell will ring at 8:35am. School attendance is very important but if your child is absent; please send in a note upon his/her return. Please include your child’s name, date of absence(s), reason for absence, and your signature. Car riding students will be dismissed at 3:30 from the cafeteria. Bus riders will begin loading at 3:30 as well. Please remember that students checking out before 12:00 or checking in after 12:00 are counted absent for that day. If your child is absent, please remember to send a note with the date of the absence, reason for the absence, and a parent signature.

Bus Tags For approximately the first ten days of school all students will have a transportation tag attached to their backpack. This tag allows us to ensure that your child gets where they need to be morning and afternoon. Please make sure that you leave it on the backpack so that it comes back to school each day.

Afternoon Pick-Up or Bus Changes If for some reason your child’s afternoon bus or pick-up schedule changes, please send in a note so that we can be sure to get your child to the right place. If you are unable to send a note that morning or in the case of an emergency, send a fax to the school office at the following number: (910) 324-7801. We will not be able to accept e-mail or phone call changes.

Folders/Homework Each day you should find a folder in your child’s backpack. We use this folder to transport papers that must be sent home daily as well as for homework assignments. In the front pocket of the folder you will find school communications papers. Some of these will need to be returned to school, so please look over these carefully. In addition, you will find several paper protectors including your child’s daily behavior chart, monthly homework assignments, and other helpful references for the completion of homework. Your child will have homework each night Monday- Thursday. It will consist of a reading assignment, letter or word activity, and a math activity. Please place completed homework in the back pocket of the folder to be turned in each day. Also, if you need to send money or notes, we ask that you place those items in the front pocket of the folder because we check it daily. It is very important that the folder comes back to school each day.

Lunch We would appreciate it if you would send lunch money for the week on the first day of school for that week. This enables us to credit your child’s lunch account and lessen the possibility of losing money when transporting it each day. Our lunch period each day is 10:30-10:55 except for C days. Please feel free to come and eat with your child when it is convenient for you. (We do ask that you wait approximately one month before coming to give us time to get our routine down. Thanks!)

Student Prices: Breakfast Lunch Full Price $1.25 Full Price $2.25 Reduced Price -- Reduced Price $.40 Milk $.50 Milk $.50

***Adults pay for items individually.***

Snacks In an effort to make snack time more fair and convenient, we would like for each student to take a turn being responsible for snack for the class. The monthly calendar which will come later will have your child’s name on the day he/she will be responsible for snack. (This will be about once a month.) If you do not wish to participate, your child will need to bring a snack from home each day.

Parties and Birthday Celebrations According to policies adopted by Onslow County Board of Education, students in grades K- 2 are only permitted to have two parties per year. We will have a Christmas party and an Easter party. We want you to feel free to celebrate your child’s birthday with us. We invite you to bring items for our afternoon snack time on his or her special day. Just let me know ahead of time and I will work out the details with you. ***Please remember that all food and drink items must be store purchased. No homemade items are allowed to be shared with students.

Email I love email and will do my best to respond to you quickly. My email address is: [email protected].

Remind.com Texts Our school has a great texting app to keep you informed. In addition, I have one for our classroom, too. To receive messages from Mrs. Baysden via text, text @mrsbaysd to 81010. To receive messages from RPS via text, text @rpsparent to 81010.

School Website You can find our school website at the following address: http://richlands.nc.ocp.schoolinsites.com/ To find our classroom page, click on RPS School Staff and find Alysia Baysden.

Supply List

• 1 large backpack (no wheels) • 1 inch 3 ring binder (white, hard cover with sleeve on top cover) • 1 small pack of sheet protectors • 4 wide-ruled spiral notebooks (blue, green, red and yellow) • 4 pocket folders with prongs (blue, green, red and yellow) • 10+ glue sticks • 4 boxes of Crayola 24 count crayons • 4 pink erasers • 24 pencils (not mechanical) • 2 zippered pencil pouches • primary handwriting tablet • 1 set of ear buds (available at Dollar Store) ***We do not need scissors. If you have already purchased them, please keep them for use at home.***

Donations

We could use the following items in our classroom if you would like to donate:

Magic Erasers Baby Wipes Clorox and Lysol Wipes (to prevent sicknesses!!!) Tissues Dry Erase Markers Clear sheet protectors Treats for our treat jars Post-It notes

We hope that this information is helpful to you. Please feel free to contact us with any questions that you may have. We are excited to have the opportunity to work with you and your child this year.

Sincerely, Alysia Baysden Elisa Hewitt

If you have not yet paid school fees they are as follows:

Instructional Fee- $5.00 Art Fee- $1.00 Insurance $13.00 (optional)