We had a fabulous Opposites Week and kicked it off on Monday and Tuesday with Black and White Day. So many of our students arrived at school in amazing black and white ensembles and all three classes had fun doing some penguin art. We talked about opposites at circle each day throughout the rest of the week.

The Children’s Garden staff have a retreat every summer where we discuss themes, concepts and events throughout the year. We plan our curriculum for our first quarter that gets us through the first few weeks of January. In January, we gather for extended hours after school, stay longer on Fridays and work through our lunch hours to plan our curriculum for the next quarter of the year. Always considering our parents’ and family schedules, we choose to do it this way, rather than take a Teacher In-Service day. With today’s icy roads keeping us from school we we will be finalizing our special days for the remainder of the school year and prepping all of our materials for our projects and themes for the rest of the year this month. It’s such an exciting time for us and we are excited for you all to see what is in store for our Gardeners!

Ladybugs are sure gelling as a group and finished up working with our “Jack and Jill” nursery rhyme. Cari worked with the Bugs on a fun black and white project for our Spring Art Show. (Date to be finalized soon) Cara oversaw a fun session of painting with marbles and Donna introduced sewing and lacing to the kiddos with a blunt plastic needle and black and white cardboard. When the weather was super cold and wet outside, we went into the movement room and played with our parachute and hula hoops and hobby horses. We love having this big space where we can dance and run and play outside of the confines of the cozy classroom.

Crickets were jumping as usual and are working on a fun penguin art piece that involves a lot of cutting practice! We are saving this project for our Spring Art Show (Date to be finalized soon), and we talked a lot about opposites. We loved seeing what black and white snacks our students packed in their boxes and the kids enjoyed showing them off to their tablemates. We celebrated Ainsley’s half birthday on Wednesday and started making an opposite book, with pictures of our Crickets and their comrades showing different opposite concepts throughout the classroom and playground. Remember that there is no school on Monday in honor of Martin Luther King Day.

Honeybees had so much fun celebrating opposites this week. We started the week looking at black and white and made some cute penguins out of our names. We learned a new song, called “You are Amazing”, we continued our special person reports and every honeybee got a star for our “Animals in Winter “ poem. We learned how to count by 10’s, and we learned some new words, “I, AM, AS, A” that we used to make a book about opposite attributes that we all have inside of us, based on a book that is beloved by The Garden, “Quick as a Cricket”. The Bees each wrote and illustrated two pages for the book, (eg. I am as quick as a cricket, and I am as slow as a snail). We had a wonderful meeting on Thursday in the movement room for parents navigating the different choices for Kindergarten in the fall. Parents had the opportunity to ask alum parents their questions and points of view regarding this important transition.

Remember that there is no school on Monday in honor of Martin Luther King Day.

Have a great weekend everyone!