And just like that, we are in November! This year is speeding by for the staff, as we are sure it is for you families as well. We tell our preschool parents that the days go slow, but the years fly by. The Halloween costumes have lost their main stage and we now turn our attention to Thankfulness. 

As we enter this season of shorter days and longer nights, there are many lovely celebrations of light that happen around the world. One of the first is coming up this weekend, the celebration of Diwali. To those that celebrate Diwali, we wish you and your family a bright, happy and prosperous Diwali! If you are celebrating DIwali, or any other festivals of light, we would love to have you come into your child’s classroom and share a few of your traditions with us.

Brin was able to take make-up pictures and captured the last few students who missed the first round, and, just as an aside, are we not so fortunate to have this talented human on our staff? Need to print a t-shirt? Brin can do that! Need a QR code? Brin can do that! Need a school photographer? Brin can do that! Need ANYTHING? BRIN CAN DO THAT! We love you, Brin, and so appreciate you. We are thrilled with the school pictures this year and happy that we have a beautiful headshot of all our students. 

We had a fundraising zoom meeting on Tuesday night, where we reviewed the lovely success of Belleamie’s birthday gifts fundraising drive, and started to talk about some fun ideas for the auction theme this year. If you have some ideas or interest in joining in on all the fun, come on! We’d love to hear them! Talk to a staff member about how you can join our committee! 

In the Cricket and Ladybug kid mail this week, we hope you received your ‘Coat Homework’ to help your kiddo become self confident in getting dressed for outside play time. Teaching them simple steps like learning how to fix an inside out sleeve, to how to start a zipper, even to learning how to use a loop or a hood to hang a coat up on a hook, are all skills that cannot be assumed, and simple steps to avoid frustration melt downs. We also strongly encourage you to send your child with mittens until they are comfortable putting gloves on themselves. When we are getting ready to send 19 kiddos outside to the playground at the same time, you can imagine the struggle. It would be a great help to kiddos and adults and a wonderful independence that will empower our students.  

Another item in your kid mail this week, is a list of chores that each age group is capable of doing. It is so empowering for a little to have a ‘job’, or to have a ‘role’ in the daily routine at home. Setting the table, organizing the silverware out of the dishwasher, helping to fold towels, or matching socks out of the dryer. 

We have completed all of our class’s fall check-ins and enjoyed chatting with you all to get to know a little bit more about how we can all collaborate together to help your child the best. The staff are all commenting on how much we love these check-ins, how much we enjoy chatting with our families, and how fortunate we are to have such caring families that want to work with us to instill a love of learning in our students. 

A few of the staff are planning on going to see “Come From Away” at The Village Theater on Sunday, November 22nd. Why don’t you join us? We’d love to chat with you at intermission or grab a drink or dessert before or after! Let us know if we should look for you! 

We have started working on our Holiday Family gifts and talking about our dances and performances for the Winter Celebration on December 8th. The Winter Celebration is a wonderful evening of preschool performances that we hold off campus at a local school. Father Christmas usually shows up and hands out candy canes, and grandparents, parents, friends and relatives are all invited to enjoy this sweet celebration of the season. 

We have no school next Wednesday, November 11 in honor of Veteran’s Day. We know we have many veterans in our Garden community and we thank you all for your service. 

Ladybugs

What a great week in the Ladybug’s class! We had all 16 little bugs present on Tuesday and Brin was able to get the last few school pictures taken! We finished our little ‘bat’ window art, and started working on our Holiday Family Gifts. We know you are going to love them. 

Now that our little Ladybugs are having Tear free days, we are able to have some great discussions at circle and learning new songs and dances. We did some fun dancing about our clothes and then we did an all class circle dance. We are so impressed with how well the kids followed the steps and how much they enjoyed the process. We are getting ready to learn some new dances that we will perform at the Winter Celebration on December 8th. We will continue to work on our dances throughout November. 

With November being the month that we practice ‘gratitude’ and ‘thankfulness’, we are modeling gratitude for our littlest littles. We will say thank you, we will tell them “I am so happy you are in the Ladybug class!”, or “I bet Billy is so thankful and happy that you shared that toy with them!” Gratitude is a hard concept to learn instantly, so their first lessons are through modeling. We will begin asking them “What are you happy to have in your life?” “Who does nice things for you? How does that make you feel?” etc. 

We had Sloane in our class on Thursday morning as an alum big kid helper. We loved watching the Ladybugs react to having this ‘big kid’ in class with them who used to be as small as them! Sloane was a hit, as she loved pushing the tire swing and sitting and looking at books in the reading corner with all the little Ladybugs. We also had Freya in class on Thursday and the children loved playing with her on the rug. 

Have a great weekend, everyone! 

Crickets

The Crickets had a full class on Monday, with no absences, to celebrate Calvin’s 4th trip around the sun and to also celebrate Dia de los Muertos with Leo and his mum, Cynthia. Cynthia and Leo taught us how their family celebrates the holiday, and brought sugar skulls and marigold headdresses for each child to take home at the end of class. Thank you so much Leo for sharing your family traditions with the Cricket class! We love learning about special days for our families! 

We made some adorable bats hanging upside down for our window decorations, and we learned about the letter “H”. Easton’s Grandma, Terry, was our Wednesday reader, and she shared “The Leaf Thief”. The children loved it. 

On Wednesday we also had two Big Kid Alum helpers join us in the class. We had Phi’s brother, Quentin and Calvin’s brother, Maverick, working with us in the classroom and really helping us out on the playground, with their amazing tire swing pushes and lovely participation in chase games and soccer. 

Reminder that we have no school next Wednesday in honor of Veteran’s Day. 

Honeybees

Emily is back! We had so much fun having Cari and Cara help us out in the Honeybee class, but Oh! How we love our Emily! The children nearly knocked her over with their welcoming hugs and Emily laughed and said that it was a great reminder to share the “Boundary Song”!  

Our Poem this week is NOvember. This is such a fun poem to recite and a favorite of the staff, as we get to observe the children’s amazement that they can READ! Each line in the poem starts with the word “NO” and we learned how to sound out this word, and then read the poem in front of the class with the pointer. 

Freya brought in and shared her family “ofrenda” which is Spanish for “offering”on Monday. Hers is a home altar built to honor and welcome back the spirits of deceased loved ones during Dia de los Muertos, which we celebrated on Sunday and Monday. Freya’s ofrenda included photos of her departed family members, marigolds, candles, and the favorite foods and drinks of her departed family members. 

We continued to study the human skeleton and learn the names of different bones. We wake up our bodies by waking up our patellas, ribs and femurs! We drew self portraits of ourselves on our skeletons, and loved seeing our Honeybee faces on the skulls of the skeletons. We also looked at the bones of a whale spine, a cow skull, a bison leg, and other amazing bones to study with a magnifying glass, touching, or comparing the weight of two bones. So interesting! 

Bennett brought in the sound basket for “N” this week, and introduced us to a fun book called “Not a Box”. 

We had big kid alum helpers this week with Owen’s sister  Maya joining us on Wednesday and Riley’s sister Harper and Canyon’s brother Caven on Thursday afternoon, We loved catching up with them on how their elementary school has been going since their time at The Garden.

We celebrated Isla’s birthday on Wednesday and Addy’s birthday on Thursday.

A very fun week, and we want to remind you that we have no school on Wednesday next week in honor of Veteran’s Day. 

Have a great weekend!