What a wonderful week we had getting back to ‘business’ after our second winter break! The staff was excited to be back with the community again and get back to our assessments of the children for our upcoming Parent-teacher conferences. On Thursday, all 6 of us gathered around a table in the office and took turns discussing each of our 53 students. It is always eye opening to hear everyone’s different perspective on each child. One teacher might say “I see this person as kind of shy”, and Brin might add that they are talkative but soft spoken when they come out to the office, but another person might say, “Oh, they lead the play in the back room up in the climbers!” We revisit their past conference reports to see growth and change, and we look back at the family questionnaire that was filled out at the beginning of their Children’s Garden journey and summarize it all in a written report, including the information from their assessment, which we review with you during your scheduled Zoom conference time. We appreciate you giving us the opportunity to work with your children and look forward to conferencing with you.

Ladybugs
We only had one day with the Bugs this week and enjoyed discussing their ‘adventures’ over the past week or so. Some of them flew in an airplane to school, while others did not have any adventures and just went to the mountains. :0) We celebrated Rhett’s third trip around the sun and enjoyed getting to know our newest Ladybugs a little better. As we step into March next week, our focus will turn to rain, flowers and rainbows as we approach Spring and Leprechaun Day.
We learned a new song this week, sung to the tune of “Itsy Bitsy Spider’:

Took a little seed and put it in the ground
Out came the sun, big and warm and round,
Down came the rain soft and wet and slow,
Out came the flowers, grow and grow and grow.

Crickets
Oh boy! These Crickets sure love to jump and run – even in the pouring rain, as we discovered on Monday. We had a fun week with these active little ones, starting it off reading “The Little Red Hen”. The teachers loved to hear our Cricket class quickly pick up on the repeating phrases, “Not I, said the dog. Not I, said the cat.” and we were extremely surprised to witness one of the best clean up sessions we have had this year from these kiddos! It seemed like they got the message that it is not fair for one person to do all the work themselves. On Wednesday, when we read a different version of the story, we had a lot of comments like “But sharing is caring!”, “The Little Red Hen should give some of the bread to her friends!”, and we talked about how she was teaching them a lesson, and how our friends are more likely to share with us if we often share with them. Big lessons for these Crickets! We went on to start making some bread! The students took turns grinding some oats to make some flour, and then kneading the dough. At each step along the way, the teacher would ask, “Who would like to help me grind the oats?” and the chorus of “I will!” was very lovely to hear. We enjoyed sharing the bread with all those that helped.

We each made our own stamper books to tell our own version of “The Little Red Hen”. We hope you have fun reading their stories at home. You can even ask them to ‘read’ it to you!

Honeybees
It was sooooo wet on Monday when the Honeybees were playing outside, but it didn’t slow them down at all! We loved being back with our Bees and seeing how much they grew over the break. We had a wonderful sound basket from our friend, Maya, filled with stuff that started with “Z”, and we enjoyed coming up with lots of words that started with Z, had a Z in them, and we have to say, we were impressed. These kids sure are learning their letters!

As we are going through our social emotional curriculum, “Wee Thinkers”. we are learning about the group plan, and thought bubbles. Each Honeybee drew a picture of themselves and their hive mate, with a group plan drawn in a shared thought bubble. They then wrote their name and their hivemates name, with the sight word, “And” in between. “Donna and Brook are going to play on the tire swing. That is the group plan.”

We celebrated Korzen’s 5th trip around the sun on Tuesday and watched him hit the drum really excitedly loud!

We saw our last two special person reports, and we stamped our Grasshopper poem. We dotted numbers one through ten. Next week, we begin our reports on our favorite stuffy, or favorite pet, which will turn into a beautiful art show project.

Have a great weekend everyone.