Grace Garden Preschool

We talked about ‘Discovery’ this week. Our class had a great time tracing their bodies on butcher paper and then making clothes for them. This was a creative process that involved making different choices based upon what each child liked - not what their friend did but only on what they wanted. We hung them all around the room.  In the end, it was great to look around the room and see all the differences that make each one of us unique. We also enjoyed making a "mystery painting" which involved drawing on white paper with white crayons and then painting over the drawing with water colors. The pictures magically appeared! The Bees discovered that they knew many sounds of letters of the alphabet. They came up with a word for each letter all on their own. They have begun the early stages of literacy that will bloom next year in Pre-K. Such an exciting time!

In chapel on Wednesday, Pastor Amy sang so many of our songs from this year. The kids love it when she uses her guitar. She also told the children a story about how one tiny seed can grow so many plants. The children are planting so many seeds of their own right now and it has been a pleasure to help nurture them along.

In music on Thursday, Ms. S sang the favorite songs of the year complete with dancing and giggles!

Next week is our last week of school and we will have so much fun. On Wednesday we are going to have our much loved Water Day. Please send your child to school in a bathing suit and water shoes, and pack a towel for them. Please apply sunscreen before school. We will enjoy different types of water activities and celebrate great moments together before we end our school year. Our class has been asked to bring the popsicles this year.  Each family is asked to bring in one box of popsicles.  Let us know if you have any questions!

Thanks,
Ms. Andrea and Ms. Melissa

We had fun learning about the planets in our solar system! The children enjoyed zooming in and out of space all week long.  In the sensory table we had blue moon sand, complete with astronaut and rocket toys. At the easel the children painted with black paint and glitter which was then used as a galaxy background for their solar system. They did a great job coloring and placing their planets in the "galaxy". They really focused on their project as they remembered that Mars is the red planet and Pluto is the furthest from the sun. It was great to see the Busy Bees also work as a team piecing together a large floor puzzle of the Solar System.  The children created their own constellations by drawing lines to connect star stickers they placed on their paper. It was great to see how each one was different!  During centers, the children utilized the writing center as they practiced writing their name and the letters of the alphabet. They have been exercising their smart minds with word puzzles and matching games, too.

 In celebration of Mother's Day, the children artfully put together a gift for you!  They worked very deliberately on this project, as we are sure you will be able to tell the time that went into making this gift. 

In Chapel, this week Pastor Amy used different sized balls to illustrate to the children how small the Earth was compared to the Sun and other planets. She reminded us that God created everything including the moon, the stars and the planets. Pastor Amy also taught the children that God gave us curiosity, which allowed us to discover the other planets.  We ended Chapel with a blessing and one of the childcare's favorite songs, “I Am Amazing.” 
During music, the children had a dance party to get their wiggles out and we warmed up our voices with "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star".  Ms. S then introduced some new songs about our solar system.  We LOVE learning her new songs!

Please don't forget to join us at our Garden Party on Saturday, May 12th.  This fundraising event is from 5pm-7pm.  Bring a picnic dinner for your family and listen to the tunes of Austin’s own Joe McDermott.  Fresh lemonade, home baked goods and popcorn will all be available for you to purchase.  You will also have the opportunity to purchase specific playground equipment for the school!  We look forward to seeing you and your family there. 

Thank you for taking the time to attend our Parent-Teacher Conferences. We enjoyed sharing your child's accomplishments with you. As always, if you have any concerns please let us know.

Have a great weekend,
Ms. Andrea & Ms. Melissa

The Busy Bees had a great week talking about our new unit on the Ocean. They are so interested in all the books we have in our library about animals that live in the sea. We also have some beautiful under the ocean pictures hanging in our classroom that they enjoyed looking at. Tuesday we had a great time talking about going to the beach and what salt water feels like in our eyes and what it tastes like when it gets in our nose and mouth. They enjoyed painting stripes on angel fish with forks, and making dots on a spotted frog with cotton swabs. In our sensory table this week we have magnetic fish and fishing poles to simulate a real fishing experience.  The Bees also enjoyed painting at the easel with blue paint to make pictures of the big, dark blue ocean. On Wednesday they enjoyed making whales that were spouting water and on Thursday we enjoyed a science experiment that showed us what will float and what will sink. Speaking of water, our garden sure needed some! We quenched its thirst and gave it a good watering and are hoping that May will bring us the rain that April did not!  In chapel, Pastor Amy taught us that we will never be alone and God has always been there for us and always will be. She also told us that God’s love is larger than the Ocean!   In music, Ms. S taught us great songs about the ocean while we danced like we were fish in the sea!

We hope to see you at our Garden Party on Saturday, May 12th.  This fundraising event is from 5pm-7pm.  Bring a picnic dinner for your family and listen to the tunes of Austin’s own Joe McDermott.  Fresh lemonade, home baked goods and popcorn will all be available for you to purchase.  You will also have the opportunity to purchase specific playground equipment for the school!  We look forward to seeing you and your loved ones there. 

Have a wonderful weekend and we will see you at the conferences on Monday!

Take care,
Ms. Andrea and Ms. Melissa

"Let's save the Earth" was a new game on the playground this week as the children ran around looking for trash!  The three R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle was our unit of the week. The Bees are very knowledgeable on this topic and they all shared some great ways that they practice this at home. We sponge painted paper plates blue and green to resemble the Earth and had scissor practice cutting out hearts to assemble a mobile from this Earth. We practiced our letter recognition skills as the children used alphabet stamps to find the letters they see the most:  the letters in their name. The Busy Bees really enjoyed our crayon recycle project!  They were encouraged to peel and break old crayons into small pieces, something they are not usually allowed to do, and then they sorted out the pieces by colors or mixed them together to make rainbow crayons.  The next step was to bake them and then, voila…we had new crayons to use!  Our sensory table was filled with snap beads, and with their great imagination the Bees constructed bracelets, necklaces, snakes, and even lizards!  Our new Recycling Center had a ‘waiting list’ as it was a big hit this week. The children sorted paper, cardboard and plastic bottles into different buckets to recycle.

In chapel, Pastor Amy continued our weekly message of taking care of our Earth. The children gasped when they saw her throw trash all over the altar. They were quick to remind her of the ways we take care of our Earth and our chapel. She then took them on a pretend trip to outer space for them to be able to see the beauty of our Earth from far away. After landing safely back on Earth, we closed chapel with a blessing from Pastor Amy and some of their favorite music.

Ms. S had another great week of music for us on Thursday. We sang our favorite silly songs, as well as learned new songs about recycling.  We used recycled products to make instruments to play with, too! 

Next week, please sign up for one of our 30-minute parent/teacher conferences, all of which will be held Monday, May 7. Free childcare will be available that day. We can't wait to show you how much your children have grown, and all they have learned this year.

Also, we hope you will join Grace Garden's teachers on the playground on Saturday, May 12, from 5 to 7 p.m. for our Garden Party fundraiser! Joe McDermott is performing, and the teachers will be baking their favorite treats to delight your families. We hope you will pack a picnic dinner and come enjoy each other, while considering a donation to new playground equipment.

Thank you for another week of sharing your child with us! We truly enjoy witnessing how they have grown thus far in the year.

Have a restful weekend,

Ms. Andrea & Ms. Melissa

This week we have been talking about weather and the weather could not have been more perfect!  We enjoyed the wonderful sunshine and just right temperatures by enjoying our snack time outdoors each day.  We began our discussion of weather by thinking of all the different types of weather that we have either seen or read about. We made weather charts to use on rainy, sunny, cloudy or windy days. (They all wanted to include a snowy day on the charts even though we don't really see that much in Austin!)  We had a great time reading about all different types of weather.  We talked about being scared of storms and that it's okay to feel scared.  Many of the children were able to express their worries about loud thunder, flashes of lightening and tornadoes.

We also talked about how sometimes after a rain storm a rainbow will appear in the sky.  We then made rainbows out of tissue paper and streamers.  On Thursday we had a great day making rain drops that are hanging from our ceiling. Our birds are now flying through rain! They used water colors and glitter to make them look like drops of water. They did such a great job!  In our sensory table this week we had "clouds" which were cotton balls. The kids had fun shaping them to look like clouds they see in the sky.

We had a guest speaker in chapel, Pastor Paul, who told the children a very captivating story of how Jesus calmed the waters during a storm while on a boat. He's a great story teller and all the children were very attentive.  Aside from making the story hilarious for the children, he taught them how to make the sounds of pitter pattering rain using their fingers. It was wonderful!


In music class we had a great time singing songs with Ms. S.   We sang to weather songs and worked on a fun finger play called "Here is the Bee Hive, Where are the Bees?"

The Grace Garden teachers would like to invite you to a Garden Party/Benefit Concert featuring Joe McDermott, one of the nation's top children's music recording artists. This picnic will take place on May 12 from 5-7pm on the playground of Grace Garden.  This event is going to help raise funds for new playground equipment!  There will be photos and pricing of playground equipment, hand-picked by Grace Garden teachers, which you may donate that evening by cash, check, or charge. There will be home baked sweets, hot popcorn, freshly squeezed lemonade, water, as well as beautiful candid photos of each student for sale!  Admission is free to all Grace Garden and St. John's United Methodist Church families. Pack your picnic dinner, blanket and family and join us for a wonderful evening. 

Just a reminder to please send your children to school in close toed shoes. Inevitably, someone always seems to get their little toes hurt or someone trips in a shoe that isn't really made for running.  Also, check your child's cubby and make sure you have weather appropriate, labeled clothes in case they need a change. 

Have a wonderful weekend!  We look forward to seeing you next week when we will talk about recycling.

Love,
Ms. Andrea and Ms. Melissa

Happy Spring Busy Bee families! We have spent a lot of time outside soaking up the sun and having fun. The Bees had a great week learning all about different modes of transportation. From buses to trains, airplanes and boats, it is a favorite subject in our classroom. The Busy Bees had a great time discovering how all of these modes of transportation are different, such as how fast or slow they go, what they carry (such as passengers or cargo), and how they travel, either on the road or in the sky. The children did a great job of recognizing these differences with their Land, Air, Sea flip charts. Their little fingers get great exercise peeling those stickers off. On Tuesday, some buses had no sitting room as they picked their passengers from magazines for their collage activity. We also practiced our number sequencing with a helicopter connect-the-dot worksheet on Wednesday morning. For centers, the children enjoyed seeing the different tire tracks left behind when they drove the cars through play-doh and paint. The sensory table had a waiting list this week as we turned it into a full service car wash for all types of vehicles. Another big hit this week was the new, shiny, red box car we painted. Their imaginations were at work pretending they were off on a trip…it was a speeding fire truck on its way to help, and even a  race car that had just won first place. Who knew a box had so many possibilities?

In chapel, Pastor Amy greeted us with our favorite songs and a great story. The story was about when Jesus was in a loud and busy place.  He rowed across the lake to have some "quiet time".  She explained to the children that we all need some quiet time and we can do that by being still and listening to our hearts.   She also taught us a new song, “Michael Row the Boat Ashore, Hallelujah!"

In music, we sang some old favorites such as “Wheels on the Bus” and “Row, Row Your Boat.”  While in their pretend boat some children rowed really fast, while others decided to take their time rowing. Either way, we had a great time using our voices and moving our bodies!

Whether we were zooming to chapel, or flying to music it was an exciting week for the Busy Bees. We not only discovered differences in transportation, but also in ourselves. We talked about how everyone has different qualities and how that makes our classroom a special place! 

Have a restful weekend, 
Ms. Andrea & Ms. Melissa

Easter week is always a special time at Grace Garden.  Spring time and Easter projects are such a delight!  Despite the allergens in the air, we have taken full advantage of the beautiful weather and have had tons of outside playtime.  The Bees have had a great time finding caterpillars, roly-polys and a whole host of other bugs. We started our week out by dying Easter eggs. They were all excited about this and had a great time coming up with their own special colors. They exercised their brain with some counting worksheets and had a great time playing with hundreds of brightly colored pom poms in the sensory table.

On Wednesday we made Easter baskets for the big egg hunt!  The children also got to use a grater and vegetable peeler with chalk to make beautifully colored Easter cards.  

And on Thursday we put the cards together and enjoyed our massive egg hunt. We labeled all the eggs for them.  The bees all know how to recognize each other's names and were able to find their own and their friend's eggs, which resulted in a very kind and helpful egg hunt.  Good job Busy Bees!

For gardening we checked on our growing arugula and watered all the plants in the garden. In chapel Pastor Amy showed us how we are all lights in this world. She lit a candle for each class to show us how together we can make the world a very bright place. The children loved it. In music Ms. S. taught us “Little Bunny Foo Foo” and some other fun Easter songs for us to enjoy learning together.

Have a wonderful Easter weekend and we will see you back next week.

Much love,
Ms. Andrea and Ms. Melissa

It has been a great week in the Busy Bee room. We learned all about insects, from beetles to butterflies. The children were able to identify certain characteristics of insects, such as how many body parts and legs they have. During outside time, while enjoying the beautiful spring weather, the Bees were on the lookout for anything crawling or flying. We read great books, including one of the children's favorite, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. They are always amazed at how much food that little caterpillar can eat! The Busy Bees decorated beautiful butterflies and had fun flying them around the classroom. We practiced our counting with a number flip chart and created a very busy garden full of insects with stamps. The children also had fun making their own spider webs by painting with marbles. Your child's scissor skills are amazing!  We discovered this as they completed their morning activity on Wednesday.  Kudos to you parents!

In chapel, Pastor Amy told the story of Jesus' journey to Jeruselum and shared with the children how Jesus was a different kind of king. She told of the palm parade and how His followers wanted to greet him and lay their coats down for Him. However, Jesus did something that was unusual by washing the feet of his disciples. She even demonstrated this with one of the Dragonflies. The children are always excited to go to chapel and listen to the stories Pastor Amy has to tell.

In music this week, we revisited some of our favorite songs as well as sang some new ones about 'little crawlers' and 'buzzing bees.'  The Busy Bees love any kind of music and motions that Ms.S shares with us.  

Next week, we are talking all about Easter. We will have an egg hunt on Thursday and are asking every child to bring in a dozen filled eggs. Please remember to make these treats either nut-free candy or small items such as stickers, tattoos and special band-aids.  These will be opened at home, so please add tape to the outsides of each egg.  

Throughout the year, we have been learning ways that we can be good friends with one another, such as using kind and gentle words, by sharing with each other and playing nicely together. The Busy Bees are doing great job and are really trying to be good friends to everyone around them, even with the littlest ones on the playground. Reminders are sometimes needed, but we have witnessed the children beginning to correct themselves all on their own. They have grown in so many ways since the beginning of the year. Thank you for sharing your child with us!

Have a restful weekend,
Ms. Andrea and Ms. Melissa

Chirp chirp!  This week we talked all about birds!  On Tuesday we made flying Robins that are now hanging from our ceiling. We also spent a lot of time that day talking about the storm on Monday night. We discussed how important the rain is for our earth, as well as for all the birds and other animals that need the water to drink. On Wednesday we painted using the medium of bird feathers!  We also painted small birdhouses.  Hang these up in a tree at home and see if any small birds decide to make this their new home. On Thursday we constructed handprint birds and nests for our “birds” to sit in.  We then made bird feeders out of cheerios.  If you hang these in a tree the birds will enjoy snacking on them!  All in all, the kids had a great week back to school and thoroughly enjoyed seeing one another.  Since our unit was all about birds this week, the letter B came into play. We decided to make B glasses and hold them up to our faces every time we heard a B word at circle time. Each child also had the task of coming up with a B word. Every single one of them did!  We were really impressed!

In garden we checked on our arugula and to our surprise it was thriving! The rain and sun of course helped the plants along. As soon as they are a little more established we will send them home with you in hopes you can replant them.  In chapel the children enjoyed singing the familiar songs they have learned with Pastor Amy. One song in particular made us remember what we are thankful for. We can’t tell you how sweet it is to hear what your child is thankful for!  It reminds us to be thankful for even the most simplest of life’s gifts.

In music with Ms. S we learned the songs "If I Were a Butterfly" and "The Ants Go Marching."  We also got to pretend through parachute play that the parachute was a big net and we were catching bugs with it!  The Bees loved this activity.  
 
Thanks to Connor’s family for the yummy snacks this week. Remember to check your child’s cubby and folder at the end of every week.

We can’t believe the year is passing by so quickly!  Before you know it, your child will be one of the “big kids” as the Bees call the Caterpillars. It’s been gratifying watching them learn and grow.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Love,
Ms. Andrea and Ms. Melissa

This week our theme was Spring and we have been busy little bees in our class!  We started off our week on Tuesday by reading a special story called The Napping House by Don and Audrey Wood. This is such a special story and the entire class loved it. We made Napping House story telling sticks which enabled the children to become story tellers and relive the story by verbally and physically going through each action. Please have them tell you the story! They loved this so much that we had to do it over and over. Each one of them fully participated! On Wednesday the Busy Bees had a great time making blooming spring trees by gluing a tree trunk to a large piece of paper and then dropping paint by means of a medicine dropper on to the top half of the tree. Then we took wax paper and pressed the paint dots and when removed, the paint turned in to beautiful flower blooms. On Thursday we practiced writing our names and then made 'bean names.'  They are hanging in the room if you would like to come and check them out!

For gardening this week we planted arugula seeds. We are taking good care of them in hopes of seeing them sprout sometime soon. Hopefully after Spring Break we will come back to some greenery that we can send home and you can re-plant and then enjoy at the table. In chapel on Wednesday, Pastor Amy talked about how important forgiveness is. She told us that part of life is being a forgiving person not just once, but over and over again. We hope to be forgiven for certain things and we need to realize others have that same need. In music on Thursday Ms. S taught us a new flower song about Spring, and we also enjoyed singing some of our familiar songs as well.

Next week is Spring Break! Have a happy week and we will see you back at school on March 20th, which will begin our unit on birds and insects.  If your children have any special books on birds feel free to bring them in for us to share.  

Much love,
Ms. Andrea and Ms.Melissa