Garden Gazette January 27, 2023

News, pictures and videos from the classrooms.

Wow! What a fun kickoff last Saturday, to our Spring Auction! We are going to Party like it’s 1977! Start planning your auction outfit now – book your sitter and get ready for the most fun Garden night out of the year! April 29^th at the Pickering Barn! We had such a wonderful turnout and a gripping poetry show down to determine the winner in our trivia contest! Awesome job Jasmine and Brook on our trivia game and emcee job! We are so excited to watch our community come together, bond and have fun as we work towards our biggest fundraiser of the year! We’ve already heard of some fun group events planned and amazing items donated! This is such a fun season at The Garden. The more that you put into the program =  the more that you get out of the program. Get involved, join a committee, have fun! Find a friend to do a project together – either an art project, a themed basket, or put on a themed event – beer tasting, backyard family BBQ, Thai cooking lesson and dinner, one dessert a month delivered to winner’s home, holiday gift wrapping service, needlepoint pillow, etc. We had a procurement chair a few years ago that said, “Basically, I thought about what I would like to buy, and I went out and asked for it or made it or asked people who know how to make it to work with me!” Any questions, please ask a staff member or an auction committee member.

I have been a parent, a board member, art show chair, apple fest coordinator, an auction committee member, and auction chair, – I’ve worked at the school as a substitute teacher, an office administrator, and a classroom teacher. For each of these connections, my favorite take away from The Children’s Garden, by far, is the community that I made while I was a parent here at the school. I know my daughter received an amazing foundation and a love of school, but I feel like I brought away an equally strong ‘village’. I was a single parent when my daughter was attending The Garden, and I so love the friends that are still so close to me, 20 plus years later. I remember one mother had hip surgery while we were in the Cricket class and the other parents started a meal train. One mother had in-laws visiting, and another parent offered to have a play date so that she could run errands to prep the visit. The gazebo is an amazing place to learn about each other, find out where everyone lives, know of possible carpool possibilities if you are unable to get your kiddo to school one day, or to vent about your child’s sleep schedule and gather different ideas of working through them. Working together on an auction project is such a fun way to learn about each other and have so much fun while doing so. Not only can you find out each other’s interests, but you can have fun working and planning together, and perhaps have a few evenings out with significant others to develop the project further! Perhaps you can begin to plan on bidding on a weekend getaway or a dinner party together. Full Circle. Have so much fun.

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Happy Lunar New Year and welcome to the year of the Rabbit! What a great kickoff to our week with dragon parades, chopsticks and lucky colors! We ended the week celebrating Italian Carnevale in the Cricket class! It’s so fun to have festivities to celebrate during these dark and rainy late winter months of the year.

We are getting a little pile of odd gloves and mittens down in the gazebo, along with snack container lids, water bottles etc. Please check the items in the gazebo and see if you know where they live! Also, check your student’s backpack occasionally, to make sure that they don’t have someone else’s gloves or rain pants in there, as well as checking to make sure they don’t have something wet and musty in there that needs to be laundered.

Honeybee Dad, Jeremy Torres, struck again! After he watched some kids use the cool pulley system that he installed a few weeks ago, he thought of some improvements to make it stronger and easier to use. The Honeybees were so excited to watch him weld some metal pieces together and to see all the bright sparks and Jeremy’s cool welder’s mask!

We are just at the beginning of a bunch of ‘rapid fire’ special days and holiday celebrations at The Garden – Groundhog Day, Black and White (Opposite) Day, Valentine’s Day, Pajama Day, etc. Please check the school calendar to make sure you are not missing out! Next week, we will send home information about our Valentine celebrations and class pictures and names to “address” your student’s valentine greetings. We ask that our students make their valentines, if possible. Start checking out Pinterest and Tik Tok for ideas and you can begin to craft them! Bugs and Crickets typically put a classmate’s photo on their valentine to ‘address’ them, and Bees write their classmates’ names. You might want to write one or two each night so they don’t get burnt out. Similarly, if you are doing a craft, you might want to divvy out the project so that it is not too overwhelming to do all in one day.

Read on for Class News:

Ladybugs   

Oh! Wasn’t that the most adorable Dragon parade to celebrate the Lunar New Year?! We loved watching our little Ladybugs use their chopsticks to eat rice noodles and mandarin oranges. We also enjoyed opening fortune cookies and read that everyone was having a lucky day! The Ladybugs painted their lucky dragon faces and marched with them while ringing their jingle bells.

We started learning a new nursery rhyme, Hey Diddle Diddle, and had fun tea parties with our stuffies and sang some fun songs at circle. Ask your kiddos to sing to you “Open Shut Them, Open Shut Them” and “Two Little Blackbirds Sitting on a Hill!”

Next week, we will begin acting out Hey Diddle Diddle and a new art piece, based on Eric Carle’s “Very Hungry Caterpillar”  for our Spring Art Show.

We want to make sure that our parents know that they are welcome to come in to the classroom with your Ladybug, walk through the school and watch them get ‘settled’ in and then exit out the back room door and wave at them through our ‘waving window.’ It’s been a few years since we have been able to do this, so we are loving to see the return of ‘grown ups’ in our school again! Please join us, if you have time – it’s a great way to chat and get to know the other parents in your child’s class – a great way to set you all up for play dates as the children get older, and a lovely way to develop your ‘community’.

Crickets

Wow! Wasn’t that a fun dragon parade? Our Crickets loved learning about the celebrations surrounding the Lunar New Year and we had a great time talking about the Year of the Rabbit!

Tillson brought in a fun sound basket for the letter “Q”, and we practiced writing our names. We acted out Henny Penny or Chicken Little one more time, as everyone wanted a turn to be the title character. We finally got everyone caught up and finished our Elmer Art Show Pieces.

On Friday, we had a fun celebration of Carnevale! Ada’s mum and sister came into class to help us make masks, flower confetti, and teach us about this celebration in Italy! We also celebrated our friend Charlotte’s birthday! Birthday circles are so much fun! Happy birthday Charlotte!

We also had Tillson’s big sister, Madison, on Friday, as a big kid helper. We love when our alums return to The Garden! It is so fun to catch up with our former students, hear about their teachers and have them share at circle their favorite memories of their time at our school. They love to help, they know the routine and we so enjoy hearing our alums reminding our current students of the ‘rules’ and helping them to navigate sharing. :0)

Our children so love having their family members come into the classroom to work with their peers. If you have a special tradition or holiday that you celebrate, or if you can play a musical instrument, have a special crafting skill, or want to do a fun science experiment or show us your pet’s best tricks, talk to a staff member! We’d love to schedule you to share!

Honeybees

Wasn’t it so fun to have the Auction Kickoff Trivia contest come down to a tie breaker of parents reciting Honeybee Poems?!? The teachers are so proud! Congratulations to Joy Lewis, who carried her Trivia team to victory, by knowing all the words to “I am a Salmon” and “1,2,3,4,5 – Once I Caught a Fish Alive!” We also apologize if those poem/songs are stuck in your head again.  :0)

The Bees sure were wonderful parade participants! Didn’t they look awesome in their lucky colors with their dragon hats? They sure had fun making them. Thank you to Ava and her family for the lucky red envelopes and showing us the beautiful and special clothes that are worn for the special celebration.

The Honeybees are having fun doing a ‘directed’ drawing of dragons. The teacher will say, draw a triangle for the head, give it two circles for eyes, etc. We’re waiting to see how spectacular these turn out to decide if it is an art show piece or will we send it home when they are all complete. You can ask your Bee what colors they used to draw their dragon.

Porter brought in a fun “Q” sound basket! What a difficult letter, but it didn’t phase Porter one bit! She drew a quarrel and someone enjoying “Quiet” along with a quill and other fun items. Awesome job, Porter!

It was a big birthday circle this week also, with Arlo’s birthday on Monday, Foster’s on Tuesday and Elliot’s 5 and a half birthday circle on Thursday. It was so nice to have Elliot’s sister, Margot, join us on Thursday as a big kid helper. We love when our alums return so that we can get all caught up on their school stories and interests. Margot read on of her favorite books to the class.

We so appreciate all of our parents helping our Bees memorize their poems each weekend. Each week, we will have two smaller circles where we will check in with each student on their poems. We did that twice this week. We still have a full class circle for our closing circle as well as for our report and birthday circles. This week, in each of our Bee’s Poetry books, you will see a little post it notes with a list of poems that your child has yet to recite at circle. These poems should all be in your child’s folder for you to practice with.

We’ve loved hearing our Community Helper reports. Our Helpers have ranged from Garbage Collector to Firefighters, Policemen to Doctors, Dolly Parton to Grandparents. The teachers are so impressed with the increased comfort level and confidence of our students to stand in front of a circle of their peers and to share what they have learned. Between the poetry recitations each week and our hive mate reports, we’ve watched these 4.5 and 5 year olds develop their presentation skills. We are also impressed with our students and their ‘audience’ skills – respect for the speaker, eyes watching, ears listening, mouth quiet and body still. We will have another themed report or two before we begin our curriculum unit that culminates in our World Culture Report.

Hope everyone enjoys a wonderful weekend!