This week has been such a wonderful kick off to our 2023-2024 school year! The playground and the classroom looked so lovely and fresh, thanks to the wonderful turnout and participation at our All-School Work Party! Such a great community building kick off and we continued right on to all family community building at our fabulous Apple Fest on Thursday night. It is so sweet to see our alums and returning families reunite with old friends while our new families get to meet and make new friends. We all love how this little Garden keeps growing and growing!

The staff were so happy to see all of our Ladybugs, Crickets and Honeybees! Our new students are quickly learning the routines and our returning students have grown so much! There were a few tears, (on grown ups too!), but they quickly turned to giggles and smiles as the children discovered new toys and adventures.

We will be sending our weekly Mousehole news in printed kidmail and will add a monthly recap with pictures in The Gazette.

Next week is our first full week! Read on for class news!

Ladybugs
What a lovely group of littles! It was so fun for us to have a brief time with you all on Tuesday, leading to a little bit easier goodbye on Thursday.

Don’t worry about the tears, they clear up quickly. Our Bugs made some apple stamp paintings, painted at the easel and we had fun singing some favorite songs to prepare for the Apple Fest. Next week we have a regular schedule which is really helpful for our kiddos to grow comfortable with routine.

Crickets
Last year’s Ladybugs sure grew over the summer! This year, they will work with Teachers Cara, Donna, and Brook. We had fun learning some new songs to prepare for our Apple Fest, we traced our hands to make some apple trees and we talked a lot about the letter, “A”. At the easel, we used real apples to do some stamping painting.

On Wednesday, our first day, we celebrated our friend, Claire’s 4 th trip around the sun! We celebrated Luke’s 4 th trip around the sun on Friday! A very full weeks’ worth of activities in just two days! We have a full week next week. See you Monday!

Honeybees
Oh, my goodness, can you believe these kids are Honeybees? They sure grew a lot over the summer! Everyone was excited about something on the first day as the chart in the gazebo described. We kicked off our school year by learning all about the letter “A”. The students wrote the letter several times on our magic magnet board and then on paper, along with their drawing of an apple. We learned how to keep a steady beat on our legs as we sang a song or said our new poem, “Way up High in the Apple Tree”. We repeat our poems quite a bit throughout the week in the Honeybee class, but it is great if you could help your student practice it a few times over the weekend. It is fun to involve the whole family.

Perhaps they can recite it at the dinner table, or at bedtime. On Monday and Tuesday of next week, we will ask our students to try and recite it at circle. They will stand up and say, “Hi, I’m Donna and I am going to recite the Apple Tree poem”.

The Honeybee teachers are Cara and Brook and Donna on Monday and Tuesday, and Cara and Brook and Emily on Wednesday and Thursday.

On Wednesday, we had fun reading “10 Apples Up on Top” and the children took turns stacking felt apples upon their heads, and on Thursday, Teacher Emily introduced the Bees to our Second Step (social-emotional) curriculum. We watercolor painted our apples that we drew and had fun stamping painting with real apples!

What a great first week of school for these fun Honeybees!

Have a great weekend!