Well, we don’t know if you have noticed the definite up tick in the speed of the school year flying by, but the staff sure has! With Parent Teacher Conferences underway and all The Garden Leprechaun Day hijinx, most families are already making their summer travel plans and the staff is beginning to look at the dates for the next school year! It is that time of year – new season, new beginnings and lots of big events and changes on the near horizon. At this time of year we notice some big emotions in the students as well; Ladybugs are beginning to attach to a friend or two and Crickets are beginning to struggle with the idea of sharing their one true friend with others, and the Bees are hearing a lot more talk about Kindergarten, school busses and graduating from the only school that they have ever known. We have an article about the Honeybee transition to Kindergarten here and the staff is looking at hosting some sessions in early May, during class time, for parents and teachers to discuss the transition from Ladybugs to Crickets and Crickets to Bees and what to expect in the new school year. Please let Brin know if this is something of interest to you and we will schedule the sessions accordingly.

Have you noticed the courtyard decor? Our little leprechauns have been getting ready for St. Patrick’s Day and we think our students look adorable with their orange whiskers and lucky green bowler hats!

We can’t believe that the Art Show is just a little over a month away. We are looking for a volunteer or two to help us matte our students’ art pieces. Please let the staff know if you can help. We will send you home with a pile of masterpieces, a cutting board, glue strips and a stack of construction paper. It’s a fun way to get a sneak peak on some of the beautiful artwork and an easy project to do while you are binge watching your favorite show.

Next week, tickets for the Kentucky Derby…And They’re Off! go on sale. This year, we have an ‘early bird special!’ If you purchase your tickets in the first week, you receive 5 dollars off each ticket! Don’t miss out! We have some wonderful items and opportunities to bid on at our auction this year! We’ve heard of other ideas and items out there! Don’t delay! Procurement is open until March 31st! Let’s make this our most successful fundraiser ever!

Ladybugs
How wonderful to chat with you all on Tuesday about your sweet little Bugs. Aren’t they growing so fast?! When the staff met and assessed each child, we talked about how much the children have learned, how little separation anxiety we have had with each of them and how easily our newest Bugs and families have joined right in. We are so impressed and so happy that our new friends joined us for these next few months rather than wait until the fall so that they can all work on those social emotional skills together and use the Cricket class to develop even further, as a group, rather than start from scratch. The last part of February and the first part of March is a tricky time to start, with winter break, conference planning day and conferences. Throw in a couple of illnesses and it is hard to build friendships and routines, but we are so impressed with how our new parents jumped right into social events, gazebo conversations and playdates, and our new kiddos enter the classroom and get right into the mix of the play. We also appreciate how our families that have been here since September, have welcomed everyone into our Ladybug fold. Thank you for helping us explain to others why we love our job so much!

While we are on the subject of lucky, we sure had a fantastic Leprechaun Day on Thursday! What impressive tricks! What wonderful hijinx! and, oh! the gold! What memories we made! When our families are taking a tour of The Children’s Garden with Brin, they are told of the special events and community building opportunities and life long memories that are made here at the school. We hope you are all taking full advantage of these moments and treasure these ‘moments in time’. Years and years from now, your child will still remember being tossed in the air super high by you and finding gold with you, and we hope you will still have a little chuckle about doing something silly in front of the other adults who also did something silly. Donna’s daughter, Samantha, took her Leprechaun Day gold to Senegal when she was serving with the Peace Corps, and it is still on her dresser today (she’s 30) to represent one of her favorite memories.

Crickets
We had fun this past week in the Cricket class, preparing for our Leprechaun Day celebration on Monday and reading a funny old tale called “The Three Wishes”. This story has a poor woodsman and his wife helping out a forest fairy who grants them three wishes. They spend so much time talking about what they might wish for that they grow hungry and one of them wishes they had a sausage to eat! Poof! The couple argue about the wasteful wish and out of frustration, one wishes for the sausage to be on the other’s nose! Poof! After much deliberation, the couple decides to use the third wish to remove the sausage from the nose and they sit down and enjoy sausage for dinner. Cara had a lot of fun asking the Crickets what their three wishes would be. We hope you have fun reading their ideas in the news.

Brook worked with the kids on a fun spring Art Show project. We can’t wait for you to see these three and four step art pieces that they have worked on throughout the year.

We look forward to seeing you all on Monday for Leprechaun Day! Practice your tricks and wear green! The day is going to be full of rainbows and lucky gold!

Honeybees
The Honeybees had a great week hearing the last of our Favorite Pet/Stuffy reports. Emily helped the Bees translate their reports into a wonderful Art Show project that they continue to work on. Each of the Honeybee Art Show projects are three and four step masterpieces and we can’t wait for you to see them in just a little over a month. We are also beginning to learn some wonderful dances to share with you as well.

We celebrated Bella’s birthday on Wednesday. It was so fun to have the whole family. Aren’t Honeybee birthday circles so special? We have also had a few parents ask to come into the class to soak up a few minutes of the last few months of your child’s Honeybee class. We understand that our parents are going through a big transition as well in the next few months and we are happy to have you join us. We ask that you think of a project that you would like to do with the class, bake something, read a favorite story, or do your own Special Person report! Transitions are huge. We know. We feel them also. The staff is also feeling the upcoming change around The Garden with our favorite Bees and favorite parents moving on. We have an article on our Parent Portal that addresses the transition from Honeybee class to Kindergarten. You can check it out here.

The Honeybee class poetry recitations and reports culminate in our World Culture Reports. Here we are! Next week, we invite you to sign up for a date and time and country/culture that your Bee would like to present a report about. This can be a country that you have visited, a country that your family is from, or a country that your Bee is interested in because their favorite animal is from there! We are so proud of how much growth your child has done since they started at our preschool and can’t wait to see their confidence displayed right before our eyes as they present their report. Please see our World Culture Report information and sign up here. We started reading books this week about children from around the world, children from different cultures and looking at globes, maps and “Me on a Map!” Cara started working with the children on “where I live” books, starting from ‘in my body’, to ‘in my room, house, neighborhood, city, state, country, continent, planet, galaxy’ . This is a wonderful eye opening exercise to see how integral we are to our family and community, to how small we are compared to the size of our galaxy! We also repeatedly discuss that we all have similarities and differences.

This week, we started writing our names in lower case letters. We learned that our names always start with an upper case letter and then the lower case letters for the rest of the name. Donna started talking to the students about how in Kindergarten, they would be asked to learn how to write their name this way. We will continue to work on this for the remainder of the year. We have learned all of the letters and sounds and will focus for the rest of the year on word formation, sounding out words, recognizing sight words and connecting our lower case letters to upper case letters. You can help your child at home by helping them recognize their name in upper and lower case letters. Label their items, write it on the fridge with magnet letters etc.

Monday is Leprechaun Day! Make a big splash with your tricks for your child’s last Leprechaun Day! Wear green and count your lucky charms as you search for gold with your Honeybee! We are so lucky to have you all in our community!

Have a great weekend everyone!