Wow! The year is winding up so fast! It feels like only a few weeks ago that we were getting ready for the Pumpkin Patch! We are quickly approaching our final closing circle and tying up all our loose ends and celebrating all our committees and classes and accomplishments! Mark your calendars for the final closing circle for each class. We would love to have you join us for a short video presentation of the year for each class, and a sweet final singing of “May the Long Time Sun” as we celebrate our student’s graduation to the next step in their educational journey.

Today, we are celebrating our room parents for the 2024-2025 school year and welcoming those who have volunteered to be next year’s room parents! On Tuesday, we had our final board meeting of the school year and celebrated our students’ accomplishments, our fundraising committee’s accomplishments, our staff’s accomplishments, and our Board’s accomplishments. In a few weeks, we will initiate our new board members and celebrate those that have finished their term.

No school on Monday in honor of Memorial Day – Hope you all have a wonderful long weekend, full of nice weather and fun family time!

Ladybugs –

Our little Bugs are acting like Crickets! They are jumping around, making lots of noise, and generally enjoying their ‘spring fever!’ We love to hear the kids use their classmate’s names and share and invite to play and we actually had a little Ladybug ‘check in’ on her crying classmate to ask if she was okay. That’s amazing! We love our littlest littles!

We worked on a little Peekaboo book, “Ladybug, Ladybug”, and you might notice that we changed the wording of the song a little bit to make it a little less scary!

Ladybug Ladybug Fly Away Home, Your children sure miss you whenever you roam, You sure look sweet in your red and black clothes, but it’s time to go home and rest your little toes!

Have fun reading it with them. We hope you can all join us for our final closing circle of the year on Tuesday, June 10th, at 10:30. We would love to share a little video memory of the school year with you and your little Bugs, soon to be Crickets!

Crickets –

Our little Crickets are acting like Honeybees! They are working as teams and sharing their friendships, they are loud, having fun and feel completely comfortable at The Garden, and know that it is their own space to grow and learn.

We had the sweetest birthday circle on Wednesday for our friend, Dom, who is the first Cricket in the class to turn 5! Dom’s mommy came in and shared a sweet story at circle, called, “Happy Birthday, Wombat!”, which the children so enjoyed. On Friday, we had a birthday circle for Orion! Wow! This circle of life keeps spinning, doesn’t it?

We continued our unit on insects and we started drawing our own bugs and decorating them. We hope you can all join us for our final closing circle of the year on Wednesday, June 11th at 11:00. We would love to share a little video memory of the school year with you and your little Crickets, soon to jump to their next level of education!

No school on Monday, Have a great long weekend. We will see you Wednesday!

Honeybees –

We are at the bittersweet time of the school year where it is full of exciting events and experiences, but the knowledge that it is coming to an end is also lingering in our hearts. It is such an emotional month for the students, the staff and, we know, the families. We have been having some lovely touching moments with alums who come in to be alum kid helpers for the afternoon, and then host a Q & A session at circle for the kids to ask questions about Kindergarten. Some of the questions have been:

How many kids are in your class? What is your teacher’s name? Were you nervous when you were going into Kindergarten? Do you have a playground? Do you have circle? How much time do you spend outside? What do you learn in Kindergarten?

It is sweet to have a little insight into what these 5 year olds are thinking about, and it is even more endearing to hear the responses from our wonderful alums. “At first I was a little nervous, but as soon as I met my teacher, I knew the year was going to be so fun!” “You are going to LOVE Kindergarten!” “You’re a Children’s Garden kid, you are going to do great!”

We had Jazz come into the classroom on Tuesday to teach the kids a fun game that their family plays, a dice game, called Sequoia.

In the next few weeks, we hope the weather warms up enough to get some fun creek play time in each afternoon. On sunny days, send your kiddos with a pair of rubber boots (the water is way too cold for water shoes or sandals) and pack an extra set of clothes in their backpacks in case they get wet in the creek.Label the boots, write the student’s name on the inside of the top of the boot so that we make sure the boots go with their owners at the end of the year. They are welcome to keep their boots by their hooks on the decks for the next three weeks, as they will use them for Roundup, and each sunny day.

We continue to learn about insects and are now focusing more on Honeybees! We invite you to join us for the final closing circle of the year on Wednesday, June 11th at 2:45. We will have a sweet little video presentation for you on all that we have learned about Honeybees, and the final class of these sweet Gardeners.

No school on Monday! Have a great long weekend! See you Tuesday!