Bulletin Board
Events, opportunities and resources for our Garden community.
Lunar New Year
It’s the year of the dragon and we will be celebrating Lunar New Year next week in all of our classes.
Children are invited to wear lucky colors red and yellow for the year of the dragon. We’ll sample food, do crafts, dance and Ladybug Peyton’s mom, Shelly, will share a story and family traditions in all three classes. Thank you Shelly!
Dietary Note: In addition to their regularly packed snack, children can try their chopsticks skills with rice noodles cooked in vegetable broth. We will also have fortune cookies and mandarin oranges. Please let us know if you prefer your child not eat any of these items or if you will be providing a substitute.
Valentines Day
Valentines is special here at The Garden!
Children decorate envelopes during school and “mail homemade valentines to their classmates.
Ladybugs: Tuesday, February 13
Crickets: Wednesday, February 14
Honeybees: Wednesday, February 14
Visit our Valentines page for more information and class lists.
Auction Kick Off
We look forward to seeing everyone at the Auction Kick Off tomorrow. If you haven’t let us know you are coming yet, visit our Auction Kick Off page to RSVP.
Honeybee World Culture Reports
In the next few weeks we will be embarking on World Culture Studies in class. Each student will have the opportunity to choose a country, research information and give an oral presentation to the class.
Late February/Early March
Children will choose their country and prepare for travel (Passports, Visa, and Packing Bags), and sign up for a date to present on the sheet inside the door
March 11 – Oral Presentations begin
April 1 – World Culture Fair. Families arrive for pick up 15 minutes early to view World Culture Report boards and ask students questions.
See World Culture Report Details and Samples on our Curriculum page.
The Mousehole
Happy Groundhog Day! It’s February! How did that happen?
This weekend is our Auction Kick-Off! We expect at least one adult from each family to attend this fun event where we announce the theme of our Spring Fundraiser, meet the auction team, play some fun games, and answer all of your questions, and most importantly, find a spot for each of you to pitch in and help. The auction is our main fundraiser of the year and the financial support that allows us to continue our work at The Children’s Garden. See you tomorrow at Mirrormont Clubhouse at Noon!
The Ladybugs had a fun January, as we returned from Winter break, with a lot less separation anxiety, and some fun little friendships developing. The Bugs had so much joy with music and movement as we danced and sang while we played with our parachute and our beautiful new scarves and ribbons. What a wonderful gift to have these beautiful props always at the ready, to grab when we are at circle or bring out when it is too cold to go outside! We had a few of those days with our sub-freezing temperatures and our little snow blast. Black and White Day was a sweet way to look at opposites. We tried our hands at sewing and lacing with some black and white circles. We learned some new nursery rhymes and had fun making art with different tools – marbles, yarn, hot wheels, and enjoyed practicing using glue and scissors. This past week, we celebrated Lily’s birthday circle. Over the month of February, we will be doing student assessments and self portraits in preparation for our spring parent teacher conferences.
The Crickets had a few less days in January than normal, due to our MLK day observation and 2 snow days. Those days were a great example of the weather forecasters being correct in their prediction of sub-zero temperatures and the possibility of snow. For almost two weeks, the staff was up at 5:30 am, texting and talking back and forth amongst ourselves, deciding if it was safe for each of us to get out of our driveways and neighborhoods, while taking the local school district’s advice in to account as well. We so appreciate our Board President and Cricket Mom, Ali Lapinsky, hopping on our texts with us at the early hours.
The Crickets had a fun month, painting with lots of different materials – marbles, yarn, stampers, glue, and some fun with buttons! We did a unit on ‘The Mitten” and we know that they enjoyed sewing their elf hats so much, that we did some lacing of mittens. We also did a stamper book, based on The Mitten, and the teachers enjoyed watching where they went with the stamps that we provided. We looked around the room to find different shapes and we went through some magazines to cut out shapes and graph how many of each shape we found. The most popular shape that was found was rectangles, with squares coming in a close second. We did stamping of shapes throughout January and have a lovely collage of 4 different shapes that will come home in their portfolios before our parent teacher conferences.
One game that we love to play whenever our kiddos are showing a little too much energy, (noise!) is our “Orchard Game” board game. This is such an easy game for the kids to play and is non-competitive – instead they are working as a team and racing against a crow who is trying to get to the orchard before they get all of the fruit picked!
January is a big month at The Garden for birthday circles as we typically celebrate all of the summer birthdays as half birthdays as well as the regular January birthdays. This week, we celebrated Tatum’s and Julius’ half birthday. Black and White Day was a fun special day for us to kick off our opposite’s week. We also read a fun new story book that Teacher Cara found, called The Littlest Yak. The kids enjoyed it and the moral of the story is that even though littles always want to be big, there are lots of benefits to being little. It’s also written in a rhyming pattern, a la Dr. Seuss, and the illustrations are adorable. Over the month of February, we will be doing student assessments and self-portraits in preparation for our spring parent teacher conferences.
Honeybees! Oh! How we love our Honeybees! They came back from Winter Break with about 2 inches of growth on each of them, and such fun reunions of best friends. We’ve had a great January, learning how to count by 2’s, by 10’s and knowing if a number is odd or even. We had some sweet and meaningful poems that we learned and recited this month. These kids are doing such a good job, getting a little stronger each day, with their recitations and their reports. We continued our special person reports and our World Changer Reports throughout the month. Wow! The teachers learned so much also! This week, we learned about Steve Irwin – the crocodile hunter, Jesus, Sonora Carver, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Mary Anning.
January is a big month at The Garden for birthday circles as we typically celebrate all of the summer birthdays as half birthdays as well as the regular January birthdays. This week, we celebrated Liam and Maverick’s half birthday, as they both have July birthdays. Parsley made our biggest crowns, with 6 candles, and we loved having the opportunity to celebrate each of these Bees. We learned how to “Cheer” out the spelling of important words in our life. We cheered out “L-O-V-E” and then had fun writing “I love” sentences, reviewing using a finger space between words and a period at the end of our ideas. Over the month of February, we will be doing student assessments and self-portraits in preparation for our spring parent teacher conferences.
See you tomorrow at Kickoff and Have a great weekend!
Gratitude Corner
Thank you to our parents who cover for our teachers when we can’t be in class! We love that you are open to the idea, we love that you get to see The Garden magic at work, and we love that your kiddo gets to share their experience in class with you…but most of all, we love how willing you are to help us out. Thank you so much.
~ Office Notes~
Name Tag Label Recommendation
The staff love when the children’s clothes and items are labeled. Thank you to the LaBarge family for recommending cute custom waterproof name stickers for clothing, water bottles and lunch boxes.
Year End Tax Statements
Donations made to The Children’s Garden
We are so appreciative of everyone for giving and helping support The Children’s Garden. Year end tax statements for donations were sent out this week. Please call or email the office if you did not receive yours.
Tuition paid to The Children’s Garden
This year, Brightwheel will be providing a direct link to your year-end tax statement.
If you need your year-end payment summary now, visit our tax reports page for video tutorial and printable instructions.
Garden Directory
Stop by the office to get your 2023-2024 Garden Directory!
Calendar
Please mark your calendar with these important dates.
February
February 3: Auction Kick-Off
February 8: Lunar New Year celebration for Ladybugs and Honeybees
February 9: Lunar New Year celebration for Crickets
February 13: Valentine’s Day for Ladybugs
February 14: Valentine’s Day for Crickets and Honeybees
February 19-23: 2nd Winter Break
February 28: Conference Planning, no school for students.
Save the Date
March 23: Spring Egg Hunt
April 26: Art Show
May 4: Auction
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
~ Poems~
School Poems
Part of our daily routine at The Garden is singing or saying a few of our traditional poems.
Find a printable version to our Closing Circle Song, and the poem “We Light This Candle” at the following links.