Garden Gazette May 5, 2023

News, pictures and videos from the classrooms.

Oh! My! What a party! For the staff, it really feels like we have returned to our amazing auction gala events from pre-pandemic, not just because of the fun costumes and whole community participation, but we blew through our goal on Saturday night and the party just kept on rolling through our silent auction! We loved the costumes, the dancing, the decorations, the excitement, the bidding, the fun and especially, the COMMUNITY! We all felt like a fun family on Saturday night and can’t wait to party with you all again! Wow, just, WOW! It was fun to return to school on Monday and Tuesday and laugh and smile and cheer and thank our auction committee and share stories and photos from the evening. If you have some great pics you would like to share, please send a copy to Brin.

We hope you won the items you wanted, and we can’t thank you enough for the generosity of your donations of ideas and items, time and money. Please check with your Human Resources department and see if your company will match your donations. So many businesses do, and it would be great if your donation or purchase price was doubled! Check it out!

Spring weather is upon us at The Garden – rainy one day, sunny hot the next, with sometimes two or three changes in the same day! Morning students still need to dress in layers, as the sun doesn’t hit the playground until we are in the classroom. Afternoon students should dress in layers and throw in a pair of rubber boots for creek play if it seems like it will be warm at all. Water shoes are not ideal because the creek water is icy cold.

This week, our attention turned to our mothers as we began creating our Mothers’ Day gifts and to our special guests as we started to practice our songs and performances for our Butterfly Tea Party next week.

Ladybugs

We had such a fun day on Tuesday, listening to news from the kiddos and playing on our ‘train’ and ‘plane’ rows of chairs. Korzen’s mum, Jazz, helped us out in class on Tuesday, subbing for Cari.

We practiced reciting our nursery rhymes in a microphone, to prepare for our Butterfly Tea, and we started to work on our Mothers’ Day gifts. Please let us know if your ladybug has grandparents joining us for the Butterfly Tea, so that we can prepare accordingly.

Crickets

Oh boy! It was so fun hearing the cricket class news on Monday, and to hear your children’s report on your auction outfit and what they did while you were disco-ing the night away!

We practiced singing our favorite songs in a microphone, to prepare for our Butterfly Tea, and we started to work on our Mother’s Day gifts. Please let us know if your Cricket has grandparents joining us for the Butterfly Tea, so that we can prepare accordingly.

Thanks to Joell for covering for Donna on Wednesday morning – the Crickets always enjoy chasing and playing monster with our parent substitute teachers!

Honeybees

What a great time we had listening to the Bees talk about their parents’ 1977 outfits and dance moves. We hope you all had such a great time – The staff sure did. While this might be your first Garden party, we hope it is not your last! We always love to party with our alums AND our current families, and we love it when you all get together and build a wonderful community.

The Bees had a blast working on their map books this week, learning how to use the compass rose and map key or legend. We started rehearsing our poetry recitations in a microphone for our Butterfly Tea and began learning a new song for the tea. We practiced writing our names in upper and lower case, and did a gorgeous art project with Emily, based on Monet’s Water Lilies. The Honeybees are making a beautiful gift for our mothers for Mothers’ Day gifts and are having fun talking about and preparing for lots of fun special days ahead.

We have begun re-rereading folk and fairy tales to our Honeybees at snack time and talked about the difference between those and ‘tall tales’ and ‘tall’ expressions, like, “I’m so tired, I could sleep for a week!”, or “I’m so tired, I could eat a horse”, or “I was walking as slow as a snail!” We started to talk about what our cowboy name would be, and the kids had lots of giggles thinking up different ideas for their own cowboy name. We suggest that they find a fun animal from the wild west, or a descriptive word or action that starts with the same sound as their own name, like “Mustang Mike”, or “Galloping Gary”. We have fun with these ‘nicknames’ throughout the remainder of the school year.

Every week for the remainder of the school year has something fun to prepare for. Goooooo Honeybees!