What a fun way to kick off the new year! We loved seeing so many of you at Formula Brewery on Saturday evening! Hope you had a great time as well. The auction is officially ‘kicked off’ and the room parents are continuing to inform and plan each of the class’s roles and projects for the next few months. We are excited to hear about the projects and plans, and happy to help in any way. Let us know.

As we mentioned in last week’s Gazette, the winter/spring quarter is filled with special celebrations at The Garden, and we are excited to get things rolling. This week, we are talking about Fairness and Equality as we approach the long weekend celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. The classroom looked at “Sneetches” and other stories that show that although we might look different on the outside, we are similar on the inside. We love how the MLK holiday has become an opportunity for a ‘Day of Service’. We hope you have a meaningful weekend, sharing your views and values with your children and trying to do one act of service as a family over the next few days. It can be as easy as picking up scraps of litter on a walk, collecting socks for a shelter, sending aid to the fire-stricken Los Angeles area, donating groceries to a food bank, or doing a big recycling drive in your neighborhood. – Even having a family discussion around the dinner table about things that you are passionate about. In any way that you can, it is lovely to share your passions and ways of helping humanity with your children.

Read on for class news:

Ladybugs:

What an exciting week for our Ladybug class as we welcomed a new family to our community! Welcome Adelyn and her parents, Jenny and Benjamin! The Bugs continued our winter art show project and had fun singing songs at circle time. These littlest littles sure do love to come to school! This is where the love of learning starts!

Crickets:

The Crickets had such a fun week. We read another version of The Three Billy Goats Gruff – this one is called “The Three Billy Goats Fluff” and has a very good problem solving mother goat, who knits soft booties for her three billy goats so that they don’t make so much noise as they cross the trolls bridge and wake him up! We love to compare and contrast the different versions of the story and then make our own stamper books that we can read to the class.

In our Second Step “Social Emotional” learning curriculum, we talked about noticing our friends facial and body expressions throughout the day and ‘checking in’ with them if they look sad, angry or worried. We also discussed that if we notice these emotions on strangers, to talk to Mom or Dad about it, and not to go up and check in on a stranger without Mom or Dad or a trusted grown up with us.

On Wednesday, we celebrated Wells’ birthday and watched him take his walk around the sun. Presley brought in a wonderful sound basket full of “P” items and we reviewed with the Crickets that we always start our letters ‘at the top’, or on the top line. We checked in with our kiddos on how their pencil grip looked and helped those that ‘fist hold’ their pencils with a clothespin to grip. Ask a teacher if you want to try this at home. We also read a lovely old black and white photograph book about a new foal being born and learning about his world.

Most of our Crickets can recognize their name if they see it in print, so we are beginning to dismiss them from circle by showing them name cards. Pretty fun!

Honeybees:

The Honeybees started off the week presenting their “Special Person Reports”! Claire was a brave Bee who volunteered to go first. These kids are doing an awesome job. They are using good strong voices, looking at their peers when they talk about themselves and asking for questions and feedback. The audience is also doing a great job, learning the difference between questions and feedback and paying attention to the report and other audience members so that they don’t ask the same question as someone else. Bravo Bees!

Everyone who was present got a star on Monday for “Last Song” and we are now learning “Hold Fast to Dreams” by Langston Hughes as we delve into our MLK curriculum and discuss the dream that he had that all people are given equal opportunity and treatment. We all enjoyed writing out our own dreams and illustrating them for our portfolios.

We reviewed that we start our letters at “the top” and wrote out our ‘D’s and ‘B’s on our topline, midline and bottom line paper. Each Bee looked around the classroom and found a friend whose name started with a D or a B. These Bees are starting to read and sound out words!

We read the Dr. Seuss story called “The Sneetches” about a group of creatures who thought that having stars upon ‘thars’ bellies made them better. When a ‘fix it guy’ came through town and mixed everyone up to put stars on or stars off, the Sneetches realized that it didn’t matter what anyone looked like, we are all the same inside.

Have a lovely three day weekend!