Wow! What a fun week we had at The Garden! With sun breaks, rain storms and snow, we experienced a typical late winter/early spring week, following our Spring Forward Daylight Savings Time. 

Is everyone aware that British Columbia has also switched to Daylight Savings Time, but will not fall back again. They are permanently in Daylight Savings Time, which means that until Congress approves the bill that has been passed by the State of Washington to stay in DST permanently, that BC will be an hour different time zone from us for 6 months of the year! Crazy! 

The Honeybees have started their World Culture Unit, the Crickets have started their build up to their “All About Me” reports, and the Ladybugs have had their Spring Parent Teacher Conferences! We are definitely in the beginning of Spring.

Auction tickets are on sale, (Get yours before Monday for a discounted price!) Leprechaun Day is planned and set to go next Monday and Tuesday (Does everyone have their tricks planned and practiced?) and we are already beginning to plan our end of year celebrations for each class.What?!?

Hey Parents and Grandparents! We want to send a reminder out that our school participates in the Ridwell Recycling program to help our earth! Bring in your bubble wrap, padded envelopes, batteries, clear plastic bags (clean), styrofoam…etc. All the stuff you feel guilty about putting in the landfill. Bring your items to Brin’s office and find the correct pouch to put your items in. One battery or bread bag clip at a time, we love helping the earth, as we say in our opening circle poem, because it is our home. 

We are looking for a group of volunteers to start and build a “Grounds Maintenance” Committee. These people will answer the staff and/or Board’s call to plant spring primroses before the Egg Hunt, trim the hydrangeas to allow new growth, collect bids for a new tree deck on the playground, arrange work parties to clean the ivy off of the trees, paint the lines on the parking lot, and weed, rake and pretty up the courtyard, tend to the garden below the road sign, or pull a weed or two out of the flower bed along the movement room wall. Most of these are jobs that can be done if you arrive a half hour early for pick up, or stay a half hour later after drop off. If you see some weeds popping up in the courtyard, we would love it if you pack some garden gloves and help us pretty it up. We are putting a new tree deck down as a ‘fund a need’ item for the auction this year. Does any one have an idea of where or who to contact to get a bid for this? We need to replace the deck with fresh wood, fresh framework and some spiffy paint. We don’t want anyone to feel overtaxed or overworked, but would love to have a list of community members who are willing to answer the call to tackle some of these jobs as they come up..Please put your name on the list here to let us know that if you are available, you’d love to help. If there is someone who thinks they would like to lead this committee, we’d love to hear from you as well. Think of it as a Garden Gardener Gang of Good Greenthumbs! (and general site maintenance, but that didn’t start with a ‘G’)

Read on for class news.  

Ladybugs

Ladybug families had our Spring Parent Teacher Conferences on Tuesday. It was great to meet with everyone and share our thoughts on our adorable littles. As always, if you have questions or concerns, at any time, we can always be reached. We so loved conferencing with you all. After the conferences, the teachers all texted each other, saying how much we enjoyed our conferences, and how wonderful and helpful the parents are with ideas on going forward. Thank you Ladybug Parents. 

We also found out during our Tuesday conferences that Beau’s mum was getting induced on Wednesday! We celebrated Beau becoming a big brother on Thursday. Devon and Andrew, we can’t wait to meet your new baby girl. 

On Thursday, we enjoyed a fun Rainbow Party! The students enjoyed wearing rainbows of color to celebrate the fact that we have spent a day learning each color of the rainbow. 

Crickets

On Monday, we celebrated our friend, Lochlan’s birthday! We love the special birthday circles that happen on the ACTUAL day! Happy birthday Lochlan, and Happy Mamaversary and Papaversary to Alyssa and Stevin! It’s amazing how fast 4 years go by. We often tell the parents that we know that the days are long, but the years are short!

We had fun on Monday, doing news and working on our shamrock window art. For the rest of the week, we completed our assessments for our conferences next week and name writing, and some Spring Art Show finishing details. We are guiding the Crickets each morning, to find their name on the hearth and bring it over to a table to trace the letters. Once they finish tracing it, they spell their name to a teacher and get a stamp. You should get three of these in the Friday mail each week. This is an easy practice to do at home as well. As the remainder of the school year plays out, we will slowly remove letters to be traced and help them to write their name on their own. A few of our students are already there. 

Snow Day today! Hope you all had some fun snow play time and cozy recovery time inside. It sure is beautiful. 

Next Monday is our Leprechaun Day Celebration! Can’t wait to see the children perform their ‘tricks’ with their special guests. 

Honeybees

The Bees are excited to start our World Culture Unit. We started making our passports and took the first steps in talking about where we live…first, we live in our body….next, in our house, then our neighborhood, etc. This is such a fun unit and the staff always loves kicking it off. 

Several of the students had not finished their “in” books and are working on those, and Elli brought in a wonderful “L” sound basket, with Luigi, lemons, lips, etc. The Bees are getting so good at putting sounds together to make words. 

Emily has been working with the Bees to draw and paint their favorite animals from their animal reports. These are absolutely beautiful and will be a featured piece at the Spring Art Show. Can’t wait for you to see all of their beautiful art work!

The teachers are beginning their assessments with the Bees, to prepare for conferences on Tuesday the 24th. We have noticed some roller coaster emotions with a few of our students, as we always do at this time of year. There is more talk about Kindergarten next year, bus rides, visiting their new schools etc. and understandably, the children are realizing that they will not be with this class much longer. The parents are also getting emotional about their kids finishing preschool and making the big jump to elementary school. We understand. We are familiar. Please reach out if you have concerns or need support. 

We had a fun project this week of making our Leprechaun hats to wear on Tuesday next week, for Leprechaun Day. We hope our special guests have their tricks practiced and ready to demonstrate. Leprechaun Day is always one of our favorite special days.