Garden Gazette February 17, 2023

News, pictures and videos from the classrooms.

What a fun Valentine’s! With Pajama Day and exchanging loving greetings with our friends, this special day is truly one of The Children’s Garden’s favorite celebrations. Hope you had as much fun working with your child on ‘addressing’ their greetings, as the children had opening their envelopes to read all of their greetings! Thank you from the staff for all your loving messages and sweet gifts. We truly feel loved, and we so love your children and your families!

With Second Winter Break happening next week, we are all looking forward to a ‘refresh and recreate’ with our loved ones. Some of the staff are hitting up their ‘to do’ lists of yard work and home projects, and some are travelling by road and by air to fun getaways. When we all return, our focus will turn to assessments and self portraits in preparation for our Parent Teacher conferences on March 20^th (Bees), 21^st (Bugs) and 22^nd (Crickets).

Our first days back after break are our “Opposite Days”. Children are invited to wear Black and White clothing, as they enter a classroom where chairs might be on top of tables, and we will start our day with our “Closing Circle Song”! Who knows what other opposites we might explore?!

No school on Wednesday, March 1^st, as the staff will be doing Parent Teacher Conference planning. This is a long day for the staff as we all work together around a table and discuss each of our 55 students, each staff member contributing their observations of this year and past experiences of previous years and conversations with the kids. This provides the conferencing teacher a ‘big and full picture’ of your child to bring to each individual conference. We look forward to this day every year, and look forward to our Parent Teacher Conferences with you all, on March 20, 21 and 22.

Read on for Class News:

Ladybugs

Well, the very cold snowy ground covering had us celebrating Valentine’s Day on Thursday instead of Tuesday this week, but it was worth the wait! We so enjoyed cozying up with the littlest littles with their stuffed animals, sharing news of who they love and reviewing Wee Willy Winkie! Each ladybug took a turn at being Wee Willy Winkie and ran through the town!

We had a very fun birthday circle for our friend Korzen who will complete his 3^rd trip around the sun next week during break, and had a great but short time out on the playground, exploring the snow and ice left over from our Tuesday Snow day!

When we return after break, our first day is Opposite Day! The children are invited to wear black and white clothes, and we will look at other opposites – up and down, in and out, big and small, or long and short! The teachers’ will begin to do assessments with our Ladybugs as we prepare for our Parent Teacher Conferences on March 21^st.

On Thursday, the 17^th of March, we will be celebrating Leprechaun Day at The Children’s Garden, where we search for gold, do tricks, and enjoy each Ladybug bringing a special guest to school for a part of the class. (Typically a Dad, Uncle or Grandpa) We do an art project with our guest and perform a trick with our guest (helicopter ride, run and flip, wheelbarrow, etc.) Start practicing your tricks now!

Crickets

The Crickets started off the week with a fun pajama day and a Valentines Celebration! What sweet little mementos of love everyone received from their classmates! We played a fun game called “Kokomo” where one cricket goes out of the room and another cricket hides under a blanket. The Cricket that was out of the room then tried to guess who was hiding under the blanket.

We read a few versions of “The Bremen Town musicians”, a folk tale by the Brothers Grimm.  We had fun comparing and contrasting the different telling of the tale and made stamper books of our own versions!

We celebrated Olivia’s 4^th trip around the sun on Wednesday with a very fun birthday circle. We so love honoring our students’ special days.

When we return from our break ten days from now, we will be celebrating Opposites Day, where everyone is invited to wear black and white clothes, we will start our day with the Closing Circle Song and finish our day waking up our bodies! Our focus will turn to assessments and self portraits in preparation for our Parent Teacher conferences on March 22^nd, (No School on Wednesday, March 1^st for Conference Planning) and we will begin preparing for our Leprechaun Day festivities on the 17th, when a parent or special person (typically a dad, an uncle, or a grandpa) comes to school for part of the session!

Honeybees

We started our final week before winter break with Joaquin’s mum, Janine, coming into class to read some of the Torres family’s favorite books! “The Case of the Stinky Stench” and “Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast”, both by Josh Funk. The children enjoyed hearing another voice reading stories, and Joaquin loved having his parent be our guest at circle.

We continued our Black History Month Reports with presentations about Jacob Lawrence and Langston Hughes on Monday, Mae Jamison and Martin Luther King on Tuesday, Louis Armstrong and Raven Wilkinson on Wednesday, and closing out our Black History Month Special Person Reports on Thursday with Ida B. Wells. What fun we had learning about all these amazing people!

Celebrating Valentine’s Day in the snow was fun! Seeing those envelopes overflowing with love was a beautiful sight. We hope you all had fun opening all of your greetings. Thank you for the lovely gifts and greetings for the staff as well. We feel so loved. Thank you.

We started looking at “where we live”, starting with ‘we live inside our bodies’ and then our ‘homes’ and then our neighborhood, and town or city. We will continue this over the next few weeks culminating with the ‘universe’. This is all a lead up to learn about where other people live – all around the world! The staff just loves this unit that has our Honeybees learning about the cultures from all different countries. Mara’s brother Max will come in after break to present his World Culture Report on Germany that he did a few years ago when he was a honeybee! There are also samples to watch and read about on our curriculum page below. This report is a much more ‘in depth’ report than our recent reports. Students typically use a ‘science fair’ or triple panel board to attach lots of colorful pictures and words showing clothing, housing, big cities, animals, foods, games, and schools – flags, money, etc. of the country of their choice. This can be a country where they have vacationed in, a country that Mom or Dad has travelled to, or a country that Grandma and Grandpa are from, or a country that they are excited to learn about. Choose a country and a date for your Honeybee to present after the break on the Sign Up Genius link below.

Another fun learning game that we started playing this week is “Spill the Beans”, where we go around the circle and have each Bee shake a cup of beans and spill them out. Each bean has a red side or a white side, and we write math sentences about comes out of the cup! How many red beans? 2! How many white beans? 1! How many beans are there all together? 3! So, our math sentence is 2 + 1 = 3 Our students also practice writing the sentences and their numbers. This week we practiced 3. When we return from break, we will do 4’s.  

After our break next week, we invite the kids to wear black and white clothing and study opposites on our first day back. We will start our class with the closing circle song and end our class with a wake-up circle! We have no school on Wednesday, March 1^st, as the staff will be doing Conference planning. The Honeybee Parent Teacher Conferences will be held on March 20^th.

We will also begin preparing for our Leprechaun Day on March 16^th, when a parent or special person (typically a dad, an uncle, or a grandpa) comes to school for part of the session.

Enjoy the break! Hope you have some wonderful family time!