Holy Moly! You guys showed up! What an amazing auction! From the fundraising committee organization of the event to those who came and helped set up, to those of you who attended and built community Saturday night, (to those who continued the party at H & H Saloon! And then to those who continued the party further to the Rolling Log!) to everyone who donated so generously and to those of you who played hard and fast with the bidding on all of our wonderful items, live, silent and online! Yee Haw! We surpassed our fundraising goal and cannot believe how blessed we are at The Children’s Garden to have each and every one of you in our community.

We spent the week in the classroom marveling at our tadpoles and caterpillars, all of which are thrilling us with their metamorphosis into beautiful butterflies and frogs. The caterpillars arrived Friday and are beginning to form their chrysalis, and Tillson’s family donated the tadpoles a few weeks ago and we love watching them grow legs and shrink their tails. It’s another exciting week at The Garden!  (Looking back through every mousehole this year, it seems as if every week is an exciting week at The Garden, and that is absolutely a fact!)  

How wonderfully lucky are we Garden Staff members to have such a warm and loving community! Your words at the auction, your comments at drop off and in the gazebo at pick up and your overall appreciation of the program – we absolutely LOVE our jobs! We love working with your children, we love building community with our parents, and we love and strongly believe in our program! Thank you so much for your words and tokens of appreciation this past week and always. Lunch on Tuesday was delicious, and your kindness and generosity, as always, is amazing! Thank you!

On a very sad note, we wanted to share some news about a very special Garden Alum Dad. Some of you may have met Bartender Joe Dizon, a lovely bright smiling and twinkly eyed alum dad, who worked several years as bartender at JAK’s and then as manager at El42 on Front Street. Every time that you went into one of these establishments, Joe would greet you and ask you how you were doing. Joe’s daughter, Lily, was a Garden Grad of 2012, and he provided so many beautiful works of art for auction items, art shows and other events. Joe passed away suddenly last week, and we are so sad to lose this loving and warm member of our Garden Community. Just a reminder to cherish each moment, hug a little harder and live each day to its fullest.

This week, we continue to look at caterpillars and tadpoles, and we are turning our focus to the study of the insects that our classes are named after. We love learning about the way that adults in each species care for their young.

We absolutely love the way that our Garden mothers care for our Gardeners, and we can’t believe how strong, capable, and wise you all are. We hope you have a wonderful Mother’s Day this weekend and absolutely feel as celebrated as you all should be! Happy Mother’s Day to our Garden Moms and all the special women in our lives!

Read on for class news.

Ladybugs – These Ladybugs knock our socks off with how much they have grown since September. They are sharing, inviting others to play and finding ways to invite themselves into others’ play. We still have moments of children grabbing toys and crying out if a toy is taken, but all of our students are so willing and open to talking to a teacher and working out a problem-solving solution to help everyone be happy. We love to see the growth!

We worked very hard on our Mother’s Day gifts and gift wrap and beautiful sketches of our mothers. The staff enjoyed learning all about our Ladybug Moms and their Gardener’s favorite thing about their moms.

On Thursday, we were treated to something special and full circle, here at The Garden. Donna was travelling to Toronto to spend Mother’s Day with her oldest child, and we made a connection with a Garden grad to be her substitute teacher. Hayden Halvorson was one of Donna’s first students at The Garden and is now attending school to be an early childhood educator. We were thrilled to provide Hayden with some experience and hours towards her goal. As parents, you will completely understand the joy of Hayden’s parents, as they arrived at The Garden at 7:45 to be here at 8:00 am when Hayden arrived so that they could take her picture with her former teacher in the gazebo, on her first day of subbing at her preschool. Such a sweet circle. With the staff having some big life moments going on in the next month and a half, we have Hayden lined up to sub for us for a few more days as well.

Crickets  – We cannot believe how much the Crickets have grown, just since January! They are checking in with each other, sharing with each other and welcoming new friends into their play groups.

At this time of year, we often see some emotional regressions of our students, tearing up as they are saying goodbye to Mom or Dad, and having hurt feelings during play time at school. This is not a sign of immaturity, but rather a show of growing pains. We see it every year as they progress from having one best friend to accepting that there can be more than one friend in their group. They are learning to share their best friend and build friendship groups, rather than just partnerships. This is hard for a 4-year-old to grasp, and so often their response is to cling on to adults to feel comfort. Can you imagine going through all of the growth that they are going through?

On Monday, we were treated to something special and full circle, here at The Garden. Cara was travelling home from a family wedding on a plane, and we made a connection with a Garden grad to be her substitute teacher. Hayden Halvorson was one of Donna’s first students at The Garden and is now attending school to be an early childhood educator. We were thrilled to provide Hayden with some experience and hours towards her goal. As parents, you will completely understand the joy of Hayden’s parents, as they arrived at The Garden at 7:45 to be here at 8:00 am when Hayden arrived so that they could take her picture with her former teacher in the gazebo, on her first day of subbing at her preschool. Such a sweet circle. With the staff having some big life moments going on in the next month and a half, we have Hayden lined up to sub for us for a few more days as well.

Honeybees – As we watch our caterpillars build their chrysalis, we begin our study of insects. We love to contrast the metamorphosis of caterpillars this year with the growth of our tadpoles that Tillson’s family gifted the class! We love our insects here at The Garden and are happy to move into our final study of the year of HONEYBEES! We can’t believe that we are at this stage of our school year and are excited to prepare our kiddos for all of our end of year events.

We worked on a fun project of ‘symmetry’ with our hive mates. Each honeybee pair sat down together to draw or create a design on the wing of a butterfly drawing. At 30 seconds, they exchanged their butterfly drawings and their hivemate was tasked with copying the drawing on the other wing to make the butterfly symmetrical. How fun! Those drawings will be in their end of year portfolios. It was a great exercise to help the students focus in on tiny details – rather than just copying an orange flower with an orange scribble, each bee was encouraged to look deeper and find exactly what type of shape they were supposed to make.

On Monday, we were treated to something special and full circle, here at The Garden. Cara was travelling home from a family wedding on a plane, and we made a connection with a Garden grad to be her substitute teacher. Hayden Halvorson was one of Donna’s first students at The Garden and is now attending school to be an early childhood educator. We were thrilled to provide Hayden with some experience and hours towards her goal. As parents, you will completely understand the joy of Hayden’s parents, as they arrived at The Garden at 7:45 to be here at 8:00 am when Hayden arrived so that they could take her picture with her former teacher in the gazebo, on her first day of subbing at her preschool. Such a sweet circle. With the staff having some big life moments going on in the next month and a half, we have Hayden lined up to sub for us for a few more days as well.

Yet another fabulous week at The Garden! Have a wonderful weekend, Happy Mother’s Day and we’ll see you all next week! Oh, my goodness! Just one month of school left!