Garden Gazette April 21, 2023

News, pictures and videos from the classrooms.

Was that not the best event ever?!! Oh! How the Garden Staff loves the Art Show! We take such pride in showing off the progression of skills from September to now, the dance move development from Winter Celebration to Spring. The children take such pride in their artwork. We love to guide them to create such masterpieces and then have them stand back and look at their work as a whole. Their eyes pop! The same goes for their dance moves. Remember when we wouldn’t let go of hands with our Ladybugs at Winter Celebration? Last night they were disco dancing and showing us their moves! Please hang their art in a place of honor in your home. We teach the children to ‘frame’ their art because it deserves to be framed as a finished piece of art. My home still has Garden art framed and hanging throughout the house, and my Garden Grad is 29 years old. Check out our curriculum page to read about frequently asked questions about The Children’s Garden art pieces.

Learn  more about how the artwork is made and the role it plays in our curriculum on our Curriculum page.

Our spring break was such a lovely reset time with no daily schedule! The auction committee was very busy preparing the catalog and meeting with the auctioneer to finalize details. Brin worked with the auction committee photographing the items for the catalog and making the adorable disco kids hanging in the gazebo. Even when we are on our break, we are all still thinking about our fabulous community and how appreciative we are of all of your support, and your amazing children.

On Tuesday evening, we had our monthly board meeting, where the staff and our trustees discuss all things Garden, what’s going on this month, what needs attention and how can we improve! We so appreciate the staff and board relationship and all that we all do together to keep the Garden going and growing!

Speaking of growing, Happy Earth Day! The spring weather allowed me to get a lot of yard work done and it made me think of our school, “The Children’s Garden”. Did you know that The Children’s Garden is a translation of “kindergarten”, the German word for preschool? We are a ‘garden’ for growing the minds of children. Many families have asked us in the past if we do any gardening here at the school. We do! We annually scatter wildflower seeds along the creek bed (this year, our friend Ava gifted us wildflower seed packets as her birthday treat!), we plant daffodil and tulip bulbs along the driveway for spring color, and we often harvest our native crop of nettles and berries for delicious treats during class time. We have garden gloves for our students (Thank you Stephanie Cryer) to help us weed the courtyard and ‘save our trees’ by pulling ivy from the trunks. Because we are in the shadow of Tiger Mountain, we never get a full day of sun, and we have not had much luck in our several attempts at making a vegetable garden. Any vegetables that we would plant would be ripe to pick in the summer when there are no students here – so we continue to do what we can to help beautify our planet and that includes, as always, growing the minds of our sweet children. We have loved putting out our circle discussion notes each day in the gazebo about what we love about our amazing planet Earth and how we can help to keep it beautiful. We hope you enjoyed reading them at pick up.

Next weekend, Garden Community! It’s time to Boogie on down! We can’t wait to celebrate with you all at our annual dinner and auction, and Party like it’s 1977! Hope you all have your tickets, your sitters and your 1977 outfits! The staff had fun promoting our Staff Dinner auction item. On July 19^th or 20^th, 2023, Brin, Brook, Cari, Cara and Donna will create and serve a delicious Mediterranean Dinner to 8 guests at Donna’s home. Gather your teams, designate a bidder and get your tastebuds ready for a delicious feast, wonderful wines and cocktails and a delightful night out.

Read on for Class News:

Ladybugs

Oh! How sweet to have our Ladybugs back at The Children’s Garden. They are sharing, they are caring, and they are having so much fun together! We started learning about our planet earth in preparation for Earth Day this weekend, and our first question was “What is Earth?” Our answers ranged from ‘blue and green’ to ‘animals’. We started a pretty Earth Day art project and put some finishing touches on our Art Show dance and our visual art projects. Wasn’t their dancing fun to watch last night? And, how about their beautiful art pieces? We hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating your child and please hang their artwork in a place of honor in your home.

Crickets

Whew! These Crickets have spring fever! The noise level was high, the emotions were deep, and the energy was off the charts! :0) We LOVE our Crickets! We enjoyed hearing about all of the fun adventures over the break, even the kiddos that said “I didn’t do anything. I stayed home and did NOTHING!’ Parents, we hear you. Of course, you had some fun times and some great things happening, but those quiet, stay at home, don’t get out of your pajamas at all days, are soooooo refreshing and so needed. We hope you all had a great Spring Break.

We read a great book about our amazing planet and talked about different names that we have for the Earth – the world, the earth, the globe, the home planet, the big blue marble etc. and we brainstormed things that we love and appreciate about our home and ways that we can help to keep our home beautiful. Happy Earth Day everyone!

Wasn’t their dancing fun to watch last night? And, how about their beautiful art pieces? We hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating your child and please hang their artwork in a place of honor in your home.

We ended our week on a high note with the celebration of Cricket Adrian as he went around the sun four times!

Honeybees

How fun to celebrate our friend Cassie turning 5 on her exact birthday! Monday was a great day to return to The Garden and catch up with all of our friends. With just 28 school days left in our Honeybee school year, we are loving every minute that we get to spend with our classmates. On Monday, we finished up our art show projects and started working on a pretty take-home piece of art to celebrate Earth Day. We hope you enjoyed it. We read a fabulous book about our planet and talked about things that we really appreciate about the Earth and ways that we can help to keep it beautiful. Happy Earth Day everyone!

Wow! Our Honeybees are amazing dancers! The staff were constantly smiling when we watched them prepare for the Art Show and we also smiled just remembering their dancing when we were each in our own homes later in the evening. If you guys are looking for some great moves for the auction next weekend, ask your Bees to give you some suggestions!

On Tuesday, we put the finishing touches on our self portraits and our Biography Board bodies, and we weathered the rapidly changing Playground weather – from sunny warm to almost freezing cold, to pouring rain, cycling through a few times for each group.

Foster and his parents gifted the school with some beautiful shiny wheelbarrows. The Bees had a great time shuttling sand, animals, and kitchen pots and pans all around the playground. It was fun to watch them having so much fun on another day of wacky weather, cycling again through rain, cold, blue skies and warm sun.

Wasn’t their dancing fun to watch last night? And, how about their beautiful art pieces? We hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating your child and please hang their artwork in a place of honor in your home.