Wow! So much has been going on this summer, that it is hard to believe that the return to the classroom is just a few weeks away! The teachers all had class retreats to celebrate and bond as a team, setting up our goals for the year, daily routines and themes, and brainstorming different strategies and projects. 

The Ladybug team, Cara, Cari, Brin and Donna, had a fun get together, planning how to best help our littlest littles feel comfortable, engaged, confident, and welcome. Our goal is for all the Ladybugs to know that they ‘belong’ at The Children’s Garden. We have some great projects, fun songs to introduce and a year full of engaging themes planned out! We’re excited to see everyone on the first day as you all begin to plant your roots at The Garden! 

The Cricket team, Brook, Cara and Donna met up at the classroom to review and revise our daily routines. We looked at what worked well, and what we might want to change up for the new school year. We plan on incorporating Luna’s Forest into our weekly routine and to have a ball, focusing on the alphabet, name writing and other fun curriculum themes. We made some changes in the physical classroom as well. The cricket year is a super social year, when the kids are jumping around, as active and as loud as crickets, and making friends left and right! We are excited to watch it all happen and allow the kiddos to feel like The Garden is their place to have fun, to play and learn, and to set their roots deeper in The Garden community. 

The Honeybee Team met up for delicious  Chinese food and then dove into literacy, art, and science planning for the year. The teaching team for this class will look different this year — Brook and Emily will be showing Freya the Honeybee “ropes”. Our hope is to spend more time in the Forest this year, as well as incorporate more process-oriented art opportunities into the classroom. We are looking forward to meeting new friends and seeing our old pals.

Next week, the entire staff comes together at Cari’s family cabin, over on the Hood Canal for a few days. We are very lucky individuals who, not only love our jobs, working with preschoolers and their families, but we are also very fortunate in that we have the opportunity to work along side, our dear friends. Our ‘all staff retreat’is a lot of fun, but also has a lot of focus. Our plan is to coordinate our ideas, themes and goals for each class and each child, and to make sure that there is a cohesiveness across all three age groups to flow and grow together. We’ll share our class focuses, assessments, projects, and discuss our overall vision for the mission of the school and how to best implement it and build it throughout the students, the staff, the alumni, and the parents, grandparents, nanny’s and greater Garden community. When we say our opening circle ‘poem of intention’ it is our hope that everyone in the Garden community uses it as their guide in the gazebo, Garden grounds and throughout our daily lives:

‘We light this candle, to remind ourselves to treat all people kindly, because they are our community, to take good care of the earth, because it is our home, and to try to live lives, filled with goodness and love, because that is how we will become the best people we can be!’

We are excited to get back in the classroom and ‘get this party started!’