Lilac Children's Garden

On Tuesday afternoon, the girls had their first afternoon at Lilac Children's Garden. The first half hour was an opening ceremony and we all went. Tom drove of course. It was my first time outside since the baby was born! They did a bridging ceremony where each child walked over a rainbow bridge to their teacher and gave their teacher a flower.

Soren was pretty nervous when we first went in, not wanting to talk to even people she knew, and was upset that I couldn't stay in her classroom with her. I was already exhausted by this point, but my friend Lauren had offered to bring the girls home with her kids, and she ended up staying with Soren's class the entire afternoon, which was so thoughtful! Soren had a few more tears but apparently had a really good time after that. They made felt mice and stitched them all by themselves. Soren's is so cute and his name is Trouble. They played outside, did form drawing, sang songs such as Tony Chestnut , and I am not sure what else, since she was kind of closemouthed about it. Apparently she had fun though, because they ended up staying an extra hour on the playground with new and known friends.

Emma didn't even say goodbye to us, true to form ;). She did have some tears later on though over some social stuff between a few girls playing with each other. She is trying hard to make "bosom buddies" with some girls and I think with the new baby, the first day at class, and news we got on the way to LCG (more on that in a minute), she just broke down.

She had a recorder lesson on her new pentatonic recorder and was thrilled to already know "Hot Cross Buns" and some other songs that they were doing from Kindermusik classes. She has to get used to the new recorder though, as she was using a soprano one at KM. They also did form drawing and she will be making her own knitting needles. They sang some songs. Her teacher sent a note about what they did too:

We had a lovely day our first day. This is a bright and lovely group of children.

I'll be e-mailing you each week with a brief summary of what we've done. Please let me know if you ever have questions, comments or concerns. You can always call me too.

After our opening ceremony, we went to our temporary room (room #21) and did some bean bag games to learn each others names. Then we played a game with silks, identifying what we all had in common.

Then we lit our candle and did our opening verse (same as last year).

For form drawing, we reviewed the spiral-- drawing it in the air, on each other's backs, with our fingers on our papers, and then finally drawing it on paper.

We did some singing-- O Golden Sun, Yellow the Bracken, and Today.

We got out our recorders and reviewed some songs-- Hot Cross Buns, Merrily We Roll Along (same as Mary had a little lamb).

Then it was on to snack and Lila's birthday. I'm trying to do the snack schedule so the birthday child can bring snack. Don't feel like you have to make cupcakes or anything though! We had lots of sharing at snack, then Lila showed us some baby photos of herself. Then we sang to her and gave her our birthday wishes.

Then we went outside and played some circle games-- Bluebird, and Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley. Then we did some impressive jump roping.

Back inside I told the story of Chanticleer, also known as the rooster and the fox. We all made beeswax figures from some character in the story.

We then went outside for the final 10 minutes for some playtime.

I really enjoyed my day and am looking forward to a wonderful year.

I enjoy the beautiful girl energy of my class (and Nat, of course, is lovely too). We did have a little tiny bit of talk in class about who was going to play with whom, and I think a some girls felt left out. Nothing mean was said or done. I think they are all so excited to be together and play together. I did
tell them that if we're talking in class, it should be something for the whole class. It's not a big deal at all, I just want to make sure everyone feels included.

More later. Have to feed the troops!