Garden Gazette May 12, 2023

News, pictures and videos from the classrooms.

Oh! What an amazing week we’ve had! You parents are the best of the best! Thank you so much for the cards, the banners, the flowers, the gifts, the charcuterie and wine, the treats! We love you! When we pulled in Monday morning to see the signs on the gazebo, “Thanks for all you do”, “We love our Garden Teachers” and “We so appreciate all you do”, we all said to each other that we could easily send all of that appreciation back at you parents! “Thanks for all you do!”, “We love our Garden Parents” and “We so appreciate all you do!” Thank you, thank you, thank you! We love our special one on one time that we have with each of our Gardeners, and we love our relationship with our parents, our team members, as we work to get these kiddos ready for elementary school and beyond. Bravo, team members! Thanks for your appreciation and we send it right back to you!

The weather was amazing this week, and we spent as much as we could outside on the playground and up in the forest. And, what a lovely week for our Butterfly Tea! Are you guys just brimming with pride for your students? They have grown so much confidence in their short time at The Garden and we are so proud of each and every one of them – even those that had the confidence to say, in front of a group of parents and grandparents, “nope, not going to happen.”

Our Butterfly Tea is steeped (see what I did there?) in traditions. We use Brook’s Grandmother’s silver service which her mother, Bonnie, polishes each year for our tea party, and the silver trays are from Cara and Brin’s family. The teacups are mostly from Donna’s mum’s collection, but a few of them are from alum families who have gifted us through the years. The sugar cookies are made from a recipe that has been handed down from a grandma of a 42-year-old alum! They are so special and delicious that we serve them again at Honeybee graduation and give the recipe to the graduating class parents.

We now turn our focus to our last four weeks of school, talking at circle about transitions, having alum big kid helpers return to talk to our Honeybees about Kindergarten, working on our countdowns to our celebratory last days of classes, and preparing for our beloved Honeybee Graduation.

Ladybugs

We loved our Tuesday with our youngest friends. We completed our Mother’s Day gifts and continued to practice and prepare for our tea party. These Bugs have really turned into Crickets before our eyes, playing in friend groups, using their voices to express their emotions and knowing all of their classmates’ names.

Wasn’t their Butterfly Tea Party adorable? We were thrilled with how many kiddos stepped up to the mic! We promise that they rehearsed all different nursery rhymes and songs, but Twinkle Twinkle was the definite hit on Thursday.

We so love and appreciate our mommies and hope you all have a wonderful Mother’s Day!

Crickets

On Monday, Liam showed us how he learned to tie his own shoes! He learned from his Mum’s phone! He is so proud and he explained it clearly to his classmates.

Wednesday was our beautiful tea and we loved celebrating our special guests and our courageous and comical Crickets. We were sad to have a few of our friends miss the tea due to illness. We’ve got a few nasty bugs going through all three classes. We were so thrilled that so many of our students stepped up to the microphone! Didn’t they do a great job?

We so love and appreciate our mommies, and we hope you all have a wonderful Mother’s Day!

Honeybees

With a small class on Monday, (5 absent), we combined our small groups and had a picnic lunch outside, practiced our presentations for the Butterfly Tea, and worked on our Mothers’ Day gifts. We did the same on Tuesday, and Wednesday with 8 absent! We are staying outside as much as we can to keep us breathing clean and fresh air.

Our low attendance stayed the whole week, and our Thursday Tea Parties were missing a lot of our friends. We are so proud of all of our Bees – they worked hard practicing, they loved the dancing and so many of them stepped up to the microphone to recite their poems. Aren’t our kiddos just the ‘bees knees’?!

We so love and appreciate our mommies, and we hope you all have a wonderful Mother’s Day!