Welcome! Welcome! Welcome! To the 2025-2026 school year! We are so excited to have had such a wonderful opening week of school. We know you hear this a lot…The days go by slowly, but the years fly by…It is so true! This year is going to FLY BY! Take it all in, and enjoy every drop off, pick up, newsletter, art project, event and your child’s everyday walk down the brick path. 

For most of you, this is your first ‘village’ or ‘community’ since your family or your school years. Please know that everyone is feeling the same! Take that step! Invite a parent to coffee, or to hike up Poo Poo point while the kids are in class. Suggest a meet up at Sunset Grill, or a walk around Gilman Village. Go for it! Everyone is longing for a connection! One amazing way to ‘join’ or build a village is to get involved- the more you put into our program, the more you will get out of it! Join a committee! Help us set up for an event! Apple Fest and Homecoming are coming up soon! Help us set up chairs and tables. Organize a fun play date for your students’ class! Start brainstorming ideas for a fun auction item, a dinner party, a cooking class, beer making night, a mom’s ‘crafternoon’ project. We are a fun group and everyone loves bidding on fun group activities. 

We want to remind you of our “Lending Library” on the deck between the Movement Room and the classroom. Help yourself to a book or two, and feel free to drop off a book or two. The top shelf is our Lost and Found center. Please keep an eye out for odds and ends that turn up after everyone has left for the day. If the staff find something that we know who it belongs to, we will put it in the student’s cubby. Please label water bottles, hats, coats, etc. Remember that a lot of parents will all buy the same “Head” gloves and mittens at Costco, or the cute Cat and Jack fleece from Target. We already have some jackets in lost and found with no names. Help us out! Please put your child’s name on all of their belongings. 

We often hear from parents that when they ask their students what they did in school, they don’t really get a solid answer. This is a big question for little ones, and it is also an important practice to begin with your family to have dinner table discussions about everyone’s day. Model for them by telling what your favorite thing was during the day and what was a hard thing for you. Some people refer to it as ‘a rose and a thorn’.Or, it doesn’t have to be a ‘quiz’ – maybe tell me one thing that made you laugh today. What was your favorite thing that you did today? What would you like to do exactly the same tomorrow? Did you see something that someone else had for snack that looked interesting? Do you remember a teacher’s name? A friend’s name? What do you wish you had more time to do today? Also, one suggestion is to ask at bedtime. They love to talk and stall the goodnight process! Instead of asking ‘What did you do?’, ask ‘What are you excited to get back to?’ ‘Was there something that made you sad?’ “did you get a chance to show/tell your teacher ——?” 

We ask the kids their news each week. Sometimes we have a thematic question, like, what was your favorite thing over the summer, or what is something you are grateful for, but often, we ask the children what they did for the last few days. It is so fun to read their answers and the teachers know not to put too much weight on what they say. We have had some children report in their news that they went to Disneyland every single weekend, and we have had other children report that ‘Mom never feeds me. I have to cook for my whole family.’ or ‘Dad only eats jelly beans’ – We know that these reports are ‘out of the mouths of babes’ and we offer them only as a sweet recollection of a moment in time. May we suggest that you get yourself a three hole punch and a binder and collect the news throughout each class of their preschool, as they are a sweet and nostalgic ‘yearbook’ of their first school years. 

We want to remind you that The Children’s Garden pays for the “Ridwell” service, which helps to recycle items that are not normally picked up by streetside recycling programs, like clean plastic bags, bubble wrap, strings of lights, bread tags, old clothes, used batteries, etc. and you are welcome to collect and bring these items from home to the bins in the office. See details in the “Office Notes section of this newsletter and in our Parent Portal page. 

Each Friday, this Gazette will go out to families in text and email. The Gazette is full of news and information from the previous week and details about upcoming events and activities. It’s not typically this long, but this is a start of the year – get to know the procedures and protocols of The Garden – We’re glad you’re here. 

Read on for individual class news.

Ladybugs – 

How fun to kick off the week with the parents hanging out with us in the Ladybug classroom! We hope you had a great time observing your child with their classmates, noticing what their first ‘choice’’ was of activities, and helping them learn where to hang up their coat and backpack, model for them how to introduce yourself to others, meet with the other parents and anticipate the opening school bell! We loved meeting with you all on a smaller scale and then on Thursday as a full brand spanking new class of Garden Ladybugs! 

We made some fun puppets on a stick of our favorite school mascot, Belleamie, who asks each of our students everyday, “How are you feeling?” Had some fun with some red playdough, playing with apples and cinnamon sticks to get ready for our Apple Fest next Friday and learning how to do our very first circle, dancing with friends, singing welcoming songs, and learning the names of our classmates. This is the work of the Ladybug class. You may have noticed a student or two wandering about during circle. They are exploring and learning the procedures and the rules. We don’t discipline for this. We invite them to sit with us, we place barriers up so that they will stay within our eyesight, and if they happen to be disruptive to the other kiddos, we invite them to go to Brin’s office to play and explore the toys and books that she has out there. 

On Thursday, we had a few tears, but, as usual, they didn’t last long and we got the kids out on the playground quickly, where they could explore and play, get comfortable with the teachers as we ‘went in the boat to get ice cream’, swung on the tire swing and built castles in the sand. Our friend and substitute teacher, Freya, helped us out on Thursday so that everyone could meet her and get comfortable with her. Cara will be out of town for a few sessions in September and Donna will miss a few sessions in October, not to mention illnesses and other family emergencies that may come up, and we want everyone to feel comfortable with all our staff. We just know you are going to love Freya. 

We made some fun Ladybug hats, sang fun songs about apples to get ready for our wonderful Apple Fest next Friday, where we have a lovely all family pot luck and an old fashioned sing a long out by the sandbox. We hope you can join us. 

Each weekend, we send our Belleamie (not the real one! An alternate) home with one of our Ladybugs so that they can have fun with her at their house. We invite you to ‘journal’ their weekend and include a few pictures that we can share with the class. We also do our classroom news, The Ladybug Log, to send home each week as well in ‘Kidmail’. Typically, for the first several weeks, this is anecdotal until the students are comfortable with sharing with us their news of what they did over the weekend or what they dreamed about the night before. Many of our parents in the past have kept all the Logs in a folder or binder to look back on through the years. They are a sweet memory of this moment in time. 

We can’t wait to watch these Ladybugs grow!

Crickets – 

Oh! My goodness! Can you believe these kiddos are Crickets? It has happened so fast! We couldn’t wait to check in with everyone on Wednesday to see how their summer went and to watch them reconnect with each other. One of our favorite things about the Cricket class is that we typically welcome a few new students, and it always enriches us so quickly, to have a bunch of new 3 ½ – 4 year olds, looking for friends. It never fails. These kiddos are longing to make friends and are at the perfect age to do so. It is always fun to watch the Crickets tentatively approach their classmate, trying to remember a long three months ago when they played with them before. Many of the returning students are sure that they know the new Crickets from last year! 

We celebrated three new big sisters that had new babies added to their families this summer – Addy, Isla and Marley. Congratulations to all three families and we know that these kiddos are going to be the best big sisters!

Each week in the Cricket class, we send home the ‘Sound of the week’ basket with one of our students. We ask you to help your child find 4 or 5 small objects that begin with the sound of the week and then the child can ‘show and tell’ the objects at circle time on Monday. 

We made Cricket hats for our first day, practiced our apple songs for the sing along at apple fest next week, and drew our self portraits to kick off our Cricket portfolio that we build throughout the year. Brook, Donna and Cara are the regular Cricket teachers. Cara will be missing a few sessions in September and Donna will be missing a few sessions in October. Cari is on for substituting and we know the kiddos will love to reconnect with their beloved Ladybug whisperer! We also use Emily from time to time and we have a wonderful substitute named Freya that you will get to meet when a sudden illness or absence arises and Emily or Cari are not available.  

We loved watching the kiddos discover the new water wall that Emmie’s dad, Tyler, is creating for us! One of our Crickets said, “Wow! Is this science? I didn’t know we would have science here!” Thank you Tyler! 

Honeybees – 

Wow! This is it! Your kiddos are truly, already, no kidding, Honeybees! 

Can you believe it? This class is our oldest of our ‘littles’ and they are already amazing us. Everyone was so excited on Monday to meet up again out on the playground, including the teachers! Mondays are not a day that Cara usually works in the afternoon, but we had to ‘shoo’ her out after about an hour or so of helping these bees make adorable honeybee hats because she just couldn’t bring herself to leave the kids and hear all about their summers! 

Cara and Donna job share the Honeybee class. Emily and Brook are full time four afternoons with the Bees, and Donna works Monday and Tuesday afternoons and Cara works Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. Both Donna and Cara are missing a few sessions throughout September and October to have some fun with family, so September will be “Donna heavy” and October will be “Cara heavy”, but we love that the kiddos don’t miss a beat and are comfortable with all of their teachers. Having Emily as a sub in the Cricket class last year and as the Camp Tree Circle lead, has already introduced her to most of the Bees and they have all immediately warmed up to her gentle nature, warm voice and infectious smile. We have such a wonderful team of Honeybee teachers, along with Brin as our anchor in the office. Your Bees are in great hands.

Each week, the Honeybees learn a new poem and our goal is that the kids get comfortable standing in front of their peers to recite the poem. This week, we played a lot at circle time with “Way up High in the Apple Tree” poem, trying different rhythms, using different voices, acting out the different lines of the poem, and learning other songs and poems to prepare us for The Apple Fest which is next Friday at 6:30 at school! Hope you can all join us for this fun family pot luck and sing a long! Each week, the poem will be posted in the gazebo and also sent out in The Honeybee Buzz so that you can also help your student practice over the weekend. Each child is unique, each child has different strengths. We never push a student, but rather work with them to bring out their best.

We are introducing the lower case alphabet this year, working with the kids to write their names with upper and lower case letters. Again, each child is unique, and we work with them where they are at. We have already shown the kids their new cubbies and asked them to find their cubby by looking at their name. Everyone found their cubby easily, recognizing their name. We work a lot with name recognition and name writing through the Bee year, getting them ready for  Kindergarten.

Pretty soon, we will start using our Honeybee Hivemates chart to pair the kiddos up to do different projects, eat snack together, or pair up with to present or recite a poem or idea. We love the Hivemates chart and enjoy mixing and matching our kiddos to get to know each other better and work with kids that they normally would not do so.

Each week in the Honeybee class, we send home a sound of the week basket. Some weeks, we send it home two times a week. We learn the letters of the alphabet in a different order in the Bees class, an order that allows the kids to form words and begin sounding out and reading words faster. The sound of the week this weekend is “S”. The Bee class is an exciting one. We are thrilled to be starting the year with your kiddos and love watching them learn and grow. 

Have an amazing weekend!