
~ Bulletin Board ~
Events, opportunities and resources for our Garden community.

Butterfly Tea
Look for an invitation from your child to join us on this special “you and me” day. We invite a parent or caregiver to join their student for a special day of tea, cookies and fun!
We have a long tradition of including and honoring our older relatives on this day. If you have an older family member you’d like to include, please invite them to join you and your student.
Cricket Butterfly Tea
Wednesday, May 10,
from 10:15 am to 11:15 am
Ladybug Butterfly Tea
Thursday, May 11,
from 9:45 am to 10:45 am
Honeybee Butterfly Teas
In an effort to ensure all students in our Honeybee class have time to recite a poem, we will be hosting two one hour Honeybee Butterfly Teas. Please find your tea time on your invitation.
Swallowtail Butterfly Tea
Thursday, May 11,
from 12:15 pm to 1:15 pm
Monarch Butterfly Tea
Thursday, May 11,
from 2:15 pm to 3:15 pm
*Children are invited to wear special occasion clothes.


Live Auction: Saturday, April 29
It’s the last day before we Party Like It’s 1977! Saturday, April 29, 2023 at 5 pm we’ll eat, drink and get groovy, including bidding on our amazing Live Auction items with one or two surprise silent auction items that will be in person and close that night.
Silent Auction: Sunday-Tuesday, April 29-May 2
Everyone will have 3 days to bid online in our Silent Auction that opens 8 am on Sunday, April 30 and closes at 9 pm, Tuesday May 2.
Auction Catalog
Check out our Auction Catalog Preview to view all of our Live and Silent Items.
Register
Don’t miss a minute and be sure to register for the virtual silent auction! All bidding requires an account.

Rescue Cats at The Garden
We would like to introduce you to the newest residence at The Children’s Garden: Bell & Chat-o! Although it is unlikely you will see them, these two beautiful kitties joined our community as part of a feral cat rehoming program (
These cats have only lived outdoors, and are not socialized, and now have a safe home in our garage, with food, water and lots of space to adventure.
~ Mousehole ~
News, pictures and videos from the classrooms.
The staff is still basking in the glow of our Spring Art Show. You know how much you enjoyed it? Multiply that 10 times for each staff member and you have how proud we all are – We hope you all understand that this is such a favorite event (and you can see why) and we have not been able to do an all-school Art Show for 4 years! The tears were flowing! We hope you have found a place of honor to hang your child’s artwork. We’ve heard from the kids that some of their art is already framed!
The Spring weather has really heated up this week! So has spring fever with our students! Lots of high energy! High volume, high speed and high emotions! This is typical of this time of year, and the teachers go into high strategy mode, keeping kids occupied, interested, busy, and in smaller groups.
We hope you stole a few disco moves from your kiddos for our amazing auction party tomorrow night! We are ready to party like it’s 1977! We hope you have all witnessed the wonderful growth that happens here at The Garden and can appreciate the skills that your child develops in our program. Our annual auction is the main fundraiser each year to provide the necessary funds to continue our important curriculum.
As each of our families signs up for an observation of The Children’s Garden school, they meet with Brin, they tour the campus and ask questions of the teachers. When parents decide that our community is the one that they would like to be a part of, they each sign an enrollment agreement that commits them to participating in all that it takes to help our Garden grow. This includes our fall Annual Giving campaign and our Annual Spring Auction. Thank you all for your commitment to The Children’s Garden, and if your attendance at tomorrow’s auction is not possible, we hope you will participate in our silent auction and our ‘raise the paddle’ fundraiser. Keep an eye out for information about all the ways that you can fulfill your fundraising commitment to support our school.
Teacher Emily took some personal days this past week and we were lucky enough to have Teacher Cari sub for us. The children were so excited to see Cari and are looking forward to welcoming Emily back to class next week.
Ladybugs
We had lots of emotions on Tuesday! This is typical for this time of year, after spring break and an exciting event where parents are present with our students while they are with teachers and other students, along with growth spurts and general spring fever.
Our Bugs are taking turns standing at circle and reciting a nursery rhyme. We are so proud. Almost everyone has stood up to sing “Twinkle Twinkle” and other students have stepped up to do nursery rhymes. Such an amazing self-confidence builder. We guide them to say, “Hi, I am ____, and I am going to say, or sing _____”. Afterwards, they are invited to bow or curtsy, as their peers clap and cheer enthusiastically.
We celebrated Oliver’s 3rd trip around the sun on Thursday! How fun to give each of our little bugs their moment in the ‘sun’! We are continuing to celebrate our Earth following Earth Day and are working on an art project to welcome in the flowers of May.
Our next big celebration is our Butterfly Tea and our children are practicing reciting nursery rhymes and creating beautiful invitations for their special guests! See the calendar of events below to make sure you don’t miss our Ladybug Butterfly Tea.
Crickets
On Monday, we had a full house at school with no one absent! On Wednesday, we celebrated Dylan’s 4 and a half trips around the sun, and enjoyed playing ‘Doggie Doggie, who’s got your bone’.
We practiced writing our names in upper case and introduced our Crickets to upper- and lower-case name writing as well. We continued working on our Butterfly Tea invitations. We hope you enjoy them as much as the children enjoyed making them.
Oh! We had so much fun in the sun this week! As a result, we spent as much of our class out of doors as we could, enjoying picnic snack time and some fun time exploring the creek!
With our Butterfly Tea invitations complete, our attention now turns to May Day Flowers and Mothers’ Day gifts.
Honeybees
What a nice week we had with our accomplished disco dancers! We so love this Honeybee class! Cannot believe that we only have 23 Honeybee class days left. At this time of year, we begin to see lots of emotions amongst our graduating class. They are beginning to realize that they have a limited time here at The Garden, their first comfortable space outside of their home. Our school projects and our circle discussions begin to be more focused on our graduation ceremony, kindergarten readiness, etc. and this often brings up strong feelings about transitions. These can be sad, angry, frustrated, etc. We had one student last week who had a few meltdowns, out of the ordinary for this child. We talked to the parent of our emotional Bee and they shared with us that their child mistakenly thought that our Spring Art Show was the last day of their time at The Garden!
My 34-year-old son had strong feelings every school year from Pre-K through 12th grade. He seemed almost depressed, and I would ask what was wrong and his answer was that he was sad. He knew that he would see his friends again, but they would never be all together, in that same combination with that same teacher, again. We have an article on our curriculum page about these transitions and the feelings that go with them. Check it out here.
We began working with the Bees on matching lower-case letters to upper case letters. We discussed how their names would always start with upper case letters, whereas the rest of the letters in their name would typically be lower case letters. We had fun coloring a beautiful Earth Day poem book and enjoyed drawing beautiful butterflies for our Butterfly Tea invitations.
Our Gibson Ek intern blew our minds on Tuesday when she tried her hand at leading a circle and teaching a lesson about the water cycle. She rocked it! The kids were so interested in listening to her story, called ‘Drop’ about a drop of water that went through the water cycle over and over. The Bees then went on to make a water cycle craft. We are so proud of our intern. She decided to do this on her own and was a natural. Way to go, Lilly!
We had so much fun in the beautiful sunshine this week and spent as much time as we could enjoying ourselves outside. On Thursday, we put our rubber boots on and explored the creek! So much fun and a great way to cool off. With our Butterfly Tea invitations given out, our attention now turns to May Day flowers and Mothers’ Day gifts.
One other note, just as we do for all special events at The Garden, we have lots of wonderful memory-making traditions for our graduation ceremony that we will be working on over the next few weeks. We always call these surprises, rather than secrets. During our Body Rights Curriculum, we talk about how surprises are good things, but secrets can often be bad things. So, please bear with us as we plan our Graduation ceremony with lots of surprises!
~ Gratitude Corner ~
We love our community and are so grateful and humbled by the support and love you so generously give! Thank you!


As we approach our Live Auction event tomorrow and Silent Auction running Sunday-Tuesday we cannot give enough thanks and appreciations to everyone who contributed to our glorious selection of procured items!
The letters written, the phone calls made and the personal gifts of time and talent have provided us with homemade delicacies, evenings out, vacations, priceless experiences, and sentimental items that will be treasured for many years!
The Children’s Garden thanks you, our Auction Leadership Team thanks you and our students thank you!
~ From the Board~

The Garden Needs Your Help!
Here at the Children’s Garden we are so lucky to be a part of such a nurturing environment where our children are learning and growing every day, and our tireless teachers contribute their heart and souls. As parents and families of our students, we know that each one of you plays a vital part in weaving together the fabric of this community. We are pleased to be able to offer so many varied ways for you to join us in building these bonds together.
Today we want to announce that we are seeking a new Board Treasurer to join our Board of Directors’ leadership team in July of 2023. Every year, we have new board members join as others complete their service. This year, our dedicated Treasurer is moving on, and it is crucial that we find someone to fill this very important role for our community.
The key activities of the Treasurer include:
- Work with Brin and our bookkeeper every month (about mid-month) to produce monthly reports/analysis to the board;
- Lead the annual budgeting process between February and June;
- Provide insight and guidance to the Board throughout your term as we work through strategic assessments and decisions about program and policies.
The ideal Treasurer has bookkeeping and accounting experience, proficiency with accounting software and Excel, and is a detailed and accurate project manager. They can investigate and analyze specifics as well as link it to the bigger picture for the larger leadership team.
This is an open call to our community and we are very much looking forward to hearing from you and brainstorming or answering your questions.
Board service is so much more than the donation of your time and professional expertise; it’s an opportunity to connect and share in the Garden experience in a unique and special way. Our board terms are three years long, in order to provide as much stability and effectiveness for the program as possible.
If you are interested in joining the Board as Treasurer, or if you have any questions about the position, please do not hesitate to reach out by responding to this email or emailing our board President, Erika White, directly at helloerikawhite@gmail.com.
Thank you for your consideration of serving The Children’s Garden in this meaningful way.
~ Office Notes~

Honeybee World Culture Fair Thursday, March 30 at 3 pm
Mark your calendars Honeybee families and join us for a tour of the world as our Bees show their World Culture Report boards and answer questions.

Bring Your Eggs Next Week!
Thank you to everyone who signed up to join us at our
Spring Egg Hunt
Saturday, April 1 at 10 am
Remember to drop off one dozen hardboiled decorated eggs for each egg hunter you will be bringing on or before Friday, March 31 at 11:30 am.
~ Upcoming Events~
Please mark your calendar with these important dates.
Month at a glance
April
April 29: Let’s Party Like it’s 1977! Children’s Garden School Auction
May
May 10: Cricket Class Butterfly Tea
10:15-11:15 am
May 11: Ladybug Class Butterfly Tea
9:45-10:45 am
May 11: Honeybee Class Swallowtail Butterfly Tea
12:15-1:15 pm
May 11: Honeybee Class Monarch Butterfly Tea
2:15-3:15 pm
May 19: Room Parent Luncheon for current and incoming room parents.
May 29: No School in
Daily Class Schedule
Ladybugs
Tuesday and Thursday 8:15 – 10:45 am
Crickets
Monday, Wednesday and Friday 8:15 – 11:15 am
Honeybees
Monday-Thursday 12:15 – 3:15 pm
~ Quick Links~
Quick access to informative Garden pages.
Health and Wellness
What are the protocols for a stuffy nose?
Please view our Health and Wellness page for our health safety practices and protocols for the 2022-2023 school year.
Curriculum
Explore our Curriculum page for the foundational elements of our programming to see how we integrate social skills, literacy and math readiness, science, cultural enrichment, and the creative arts in an emergent, play-based environment in our unique natural setting.

Closure and Inclement Weather
View our Closure and Inclement Weather page for policy information and pick up a hard copy from the bulletin board.