Today’s the day! We hope to see you all at the Pumpkin Patch this afternoon! We want to send some special appreciation to the amazing Carpinito Brothers, for not only making an amazing pumpkin patch that we love to visit in October every year, but for also choosing The Children’s Garden to be their preschool community. We’ve had 7 Carpinito kids attending our preschool so far, and two of the Carpinito parents serve on the Board, both serving as presidents! 

The Ladybugs and Honeybees had lovely check-ins last week with all our parents and we are looking forward to checking in with our Cricket parents next week.

We had a great board meeting Tuesday night, with our fabulous board members. Did you know that our board members are a great representative of all three classes, so that every single member of our community has a connection to the board, in their class, in their year, and someone who is going through the same things that you are. We are so appreciative of our board. Let a staff member know if you are interested in being more involved, or working on a committee. We would love to have you and your point of view.  

We celebrated Belleamie’s birthday this week, and for a little mouse who is almost 50, she looks just as sweet as always! Thank you so much for all of your participation in our fall fundraiser. Aren’t those puzzles adorable? Our Garden community is absolutely the best in the west! You people are so good and kind and generous, just like our little mouse, Belleamie. Thank you! 

Another fun thing that we had in our community this past week was a gathering of our recent Garden graduates, current Kindergarten Moms! Our friend, Claudia, hosted a lovely evening for our current K- Mums to reunite and talk about how things are going and to reunite and share fun stories of memories and accomplishments! So lovely! Thanks Claudia, and viva la Garden! We love keeping the community going! 

Our focus moved from the life cycle of the salmon to the life cycle of the pumpkin in our classes. We learned pumpkin songs, made pumpkin books and had lots of pumpkin art, science experiments and pumpkin discussions. 

Next week is Halloween at The Garden. We typically downplay the spookiness and eeriness of Halloween, but invite those that are interested to wear a costume to school, and we take turns trying to get an apple ring off of a witch’s broom at circle time, and we have fun painting our own faces in front of the movement room mirror. We ask that all costumes be easy to use the potty, all accessories and parts be labeled, and we don’t have any weapons or sharp objects as part of the costumes. We are excited to celebrate Halloween with you all. 

A fun week! Read on for class news.

Ladybug

Wow! It was so fun to check-in with all of our Bug parents last Friday. It was great to really feel the collaboration and “team” work to help our Bugs have a great first year of preschool and really develop a love of school and a love of learning. 

You guys have such great questions! We loved talking about our littlest littles and giggling about their sweet personalities that are coming out at school. Together, we found some things that we will be working toward and we also look forward to collaborating with you all on helping the Bugs move from Parallel play to playing with a classmate, inviting someone to play with them, or inviting themselves into play with their peers. 

Several of you mentioned that you were setting up play dates, and many of you talked about how you were having so much fun discovering your community amongst your fellow Ladybug parents. We love that! Plan some couples nights out, some moms nights out, and some dads nights out, or a big ol’ barbecue with all the kiddos, too. Invite the teachers too! We love to hang with our parents outside the gazebo. 

Last week, we wrote about how we were almost through the separation anxiety, and we feel that once we are done with that, we can start learning our classmates names, sitting at circle and having discussions about our monthly themes and learning new songs and dances. We are there, people! We are excited to start the name games and friendship games and circle talks. 

We had a great week of starting another peek a boo book with your Ladybugs, and we had fun celebrating Dominic’s third trip around the sun. Dominic’s birthday circle is the first one of this Ladybug year and we love introducing this tradition to you all. Our birthday puppet, Parsley Flakes, comes to circle to share that they have made a crown for the birthday student, and then the student walks around the sun to bang on the drum for every year that they have been on the earth! We sing songs and we watch them make a birthday wish and send it up to the wish fairy. Our unicorn puppet came by its’ name in a fun way, as it was introduced almost 50 years ago as a unicorn named “Percival”. There was a student in the class who couldn’t quite remember the unicorn’s name, and would ask each day, “Is Parsley Flakes coming out today?” The name stuck, and we all look forward to the birthday visits of our favorite whispering unicorn puppet. 

The fabulous Freya helped us out in the Ladybug class this week, as Donna continues her medical leave to help with her husband’s recovery. He’s doing very well and walking in the beautiful weather outside each day. 

Belleamie’s Birthday Gifts was a fun circle and we so appreciate all those that participated in our fall fundraiser. 

We look forward to seeing you all at the Pumpkin Patch on Friday. We’d love to take a tumble with you in the corn pit, and scoot our rubber ducks up the water flume with you. 

Cricket

It was “f” for Fabulous this week in the Cricket class! What a great sound basket sharing we had on Monday, and we then practiced making “F” with firetrucks along a dotted black road. We made rainbow “F”s and practiced “where do we start our letters? At the top!” song. We are practicing a great pencil grip. Some of our kiddos have it already, but others are just learning and that is all developmentally appropriate. 

We had Dottie’s mum, Heidi, read us a story on Wednesday, and it was adorable! We love our Wednesday guest readers and the kids sure do as well. How fun it is to have our Crickets introduce their special guests to their peers. 

We loved celebrating our sweet friend, Belleamie, for her birthday all this week. Thank you so much for all who participated. We look forward to our Zoom Check-ins next Friday. Check-ins are a 15 minute chat with the teachers about what we are seeing at school and what you are seeing at home. It’s a great tool to make sure we are all on the same page and working collaboratively with you on your child’s team.  

Forest Friday was fabulous, and then we gathered at Carpinito Brothers’ Pumpkin patch! 

Have a great weekend, everyone! 

Honeybee

We sure had wonderful check-ins with you all last week. It was great to chat with you all about your favorite pre-k kids! Everyone had such awesome questions and comments about our program, and we sure loved getting to know you all a little bit better as we set our goals for each of the kiddos this year. 

It was lovely to have Cara and Cari in our class this past week as Emily has the opportunity to have an amazing adventure with her family. We’re anxious for her to return so that we can hear all about it! 

We had fun reciting our “Whisky Frisky” poem, and delving deeper into our discussions about courage and bravery. We talked more with Captain Whisky Frisky about being brave and we actually mailed letters to our friend to talk about times when we were brave or times when we wish we could be braver. We read some wonderful books about being brave, Go Away Big Green Monster and The Little Old Lady who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything. 

We played a dice game to help us grasp some number concepts and our letter of the week this week, was T and “Th”. These kiddos are just soaking up their pre-k skills like little sponges!

We dissected a pumpkin and found the seeds inside to plant and see if we can grow some more pumpkins! We did some lovely autumnal artwork with leaves, noting the veins and edges and stems of the leaves, and we practiced using a hammer and golf tees to make some holes in a big pumpkin. 

‘Belleamie’s birthday gifts’ was a fun circle and we so appreciate everyone’s participation in this fall fundraiser.