Joyful Beginnings: October 3-7, 2022

Dear Joyful Beginnings families,

Welcome back to school! We were happy to see everyone coming back with fun stories and exciting experiences. The children really loved playing in this crisp and pleasant fall weather. We started our week with watercolor painting. The children expressed their creativity through watercolor, paper, and brushes. While the materials were simple, the paintings were amazing. The children loved singing the song “Pretty Leaves Are Falling Down” during circle time while watching the wind blowing the leaves down from the trees. In the forest, we could hear the beautiful sound of leaves rustling. The donkeys, goats, and chickens were missed greatly by the children. On Thursday and Friday, we walked to the farm and paid them a visit. Everyone was excited to see the animals and petted them gently. We were moving to our Apple Theme by adding songs about apple picking in our circle time and we started a new story called “Apple Star”. 

This week, we have picture days and conferences. I am looking forward to seeing all of you. 

Upcoming Events and Friendly Reminders:

  • The weather is cooler, please pack weather appropriate clothes in your child’s backpack. 

  • Picture Day will be on Wednesday, October 12th and Thursday, October 13th.

  • Teacher-parent conferences will be on October 12th-14th. Please Sign-up here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0E4BA8A92CA2F4C43-joyful

If you have any questions, or do not see a time that works for you, or you prefer a zoom call, please let me know.

  • Our next cook day will be on October 19th and 20th. We will make caramel apples in the classroom. Please bring one apple from home by October 18th. We will provide caramel dip (Brand: Marzetti). If your child is allergic to caramel or you have a personal preference, please let us know, we will provide honey as an alternative.      

Thank you for sharing your sweet children with us and thank you for your support.

Best,

Ki Siyu and Ki Priti

Joyful Beginnings: September 19-23

Dear Joyful Beginnings families,

It has been a wonderful week in Joyful Beginnings. The children have settled into our daily rhythm and we gradually added more activities into our classroom. We continued with our autumn leaves songs in our circle time. The children were curious and observed the leaves softly floating in the air and sinking into the ground. To celebrate the Day of Courage in our classroom, the children created beautiful and magical star wands. They were excited to play with them in the forest. We finished telling our story “Young George and The Baby Dragon”. It was a story about helping friends in need and also being brave when there was a challenge. There was a fire breathing baby dragon near a gnome village, and the gnome king asked George to help to make it stop. George promised he would try his best. George kept his promise and came back with the baby dragon. It turned out that the baby dragon had hiccups and with each hiccup, out came the fire! The gnome king used his healing stone and helped cure the baby dragon of its hiccups. With thanks, the dragon decided to stay with the gnomes to protect earth. It was such a cute story to tell and the children enjoyed it. We also celebrated Eleanor’s 3-year-old birthday in our classroom. She shared some yummy treats with us. Thank you Eleanor and Happy Birthday!

When we come back from the fall break, we will start to add songs about apples in our morning circle time and start a new story called “ The Apple Star”. We hope you have a great fall break and enjoy your time with families. Please dress your child in labeled layers for our new season’s weather.

Upcoming Events and Friendly Reminders:

  • October 3rd is a teacher in service day, there will be no school on that day.

  • Picture Day will be on Wednesday, October 12th and Thursday, October 13th.

  • Teacher-parent conferences will be held from October 12-14th. It is a great opportunity for us to chat about where your child is developmentally and socially. Each conference will be 20 minutes long. We will meet at the picnic table or small playground at drop off, and we can walk to our platform or our indoor space depending on where the children are at the moment. Ki Patiah will sub for me on Thursday and Ki Ieva will be in the classroom for me on Friday. 

Please sign up here.

If you have any questions, or do not see a time that works for you, or you prefer a zoom call, please let me know. I am looking forward to seeing you!          

  • October 29th is Kingdom of Halloween.  Please save the date for this magical festival.

Thank you for sharing your sweet children with us and thank you for your support.

Best,

Ki Siyu and Ki Priti

Joyful Beginnings September 12-16

Dear Joyful Beginnings Families,

It was another awesome week in Joyful Beginnings. Everyone enjoyed this beautiful weather and the children kept exploring nature. During our outside play, the children loved baking cookies, cakes, and pie with sand and dirt. So far, their favorite baking activity is to dig dirt in the forest and make chocolate cookies. Our outside platform provides the children a great space to build with blocks. While building together, the children develop new friendships and learn how to share as well as taking turns. Block building activity encourages the children to use their imagination and creativity. During our indoor play, the children loved the rainbow circle that we made with pillows. They practiced hopping, skipping, and balancing skills while playing on the pillows. 

On Monday and Tuesday, the children did watercolor painting. They used golden yellow watercolor to paint beautiful stars. During our nature walk on Thursday and Friday, the children collected sticks to use for their star wand art project. This week, the children will practice their fine motor skills by lacing ribbons and yarns through the holes the teachers punched on the stars. We will glue the sticks on the back of the stars by the end of the week, and the children will be able to take their star wands home. 

Upcoming Events and Friendly Reminders:

  • This Thursday, we will celebrate Eleanor’s birthday in the classroom. Happy Birthday Eleanor！

  • September 26 - 30th is Fall Break.  School will be closed.

  • October 3rd is a teacher in service day, there will be no school on that day.

  • Teacher-parent conferences will be held from October 12-14th. It is a great opportunity for us to chat about where your child is developmentally and socially. Each conference will be 20 minutes long. We will meet at the picnic table or small playground at drop off, and we can walk to our platform or our indoor space depending on where the children are at the moment. Ki Patia will sub for me on Thursday and Ki Ieva will be in the classroom for me on Friday. 

Please Sign-up here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0E4BA8A92CA2F4C43-joyful

If you have any questions, or do not see a time that works for you, or you prefer a zoom call, please let me know.           

I am looking forward to seeing you!

Thank you for sharing your sweet children with us and thank you for your support. Have a wonderful fall break!

Best,

Ki Siyu

Joyful Beginnings: September 6 - 9

Dear Joyful Beginnings families,

Last week passed so fast! We finished our first story and finger play. The children enjoyed the story “The Kissing Hand”. It is a classic story about how a mother raccoon helps her child understand that her love will stay with him wherever he goes, even to school. The children’s favorite is the fingerplay “Whisky, Frisky”. They had so much fun doing movements with the fingerplay and they loved the little puppet show with the story apron. This week, we are going to start our art project for the Day of Courage. We will paint stars with watercolor and will also begin to tell a story about a young boy named George and a baby dragon. To celebrate the slowly changing seasons, we are going to sing new songs about autumn leaves in our circle time. 

Ki Priti has joined our class since last week. Welcome Ki Priti! She will be working as the assistant in our Joyful Beginnings classroom Monday through Friday. She had supported classes in kindergarten classrooms in the Wasatch Waldorf school in Utah before recently moving to Georgia. She and her husband have two children in our Grades program as well. Ki Ieva will focus on Handworking classes and will come in and help Joyful Beginnings every now and then. We love Ki Ieva and we want to thank her for all she has done for us!!!!!

Song and Fingerplay we have learned: 

Good Morning Dear Earth                                                Whisky Frisky

Good morning dear earth,                                         Whisky, Frisky, hippity-hop!

Good morning dear sun.                                            Up he goes to the tree top!

Good morning dear resting stones,                       Whirly, twirly, round and round,

And the plants that grow.                                          Down he scampers to the ground. 

Good morning dear trees,                                        Furly, curly, what a tail!

And the birds everywhere.                                        Tall as a feather, broad as a sail!

Good morning to you,                                                Where is his supper? In the shell;

Good morning to me.                                                 Snappy, cracky! Out it fell!

Upcoming Events and Friendly Reminders:

  • September 17th is a community work day. 

  • Fall Break is the week of September 26-30. 

Thank you for sharing your sweet children with us and thank you for your support. 

Best,

Ki Siyu, Ki Ieva, and Ki Priti

Joyful Beginnings: August 29- September 2

Dear Joyful Beginnings Families,

It has been another wonderful week in Joyful Beginnings. We enjoyed singing the song “Good Morning Dear Earth” during our circle time. We loved to greet the sun, the trees, and the animals in nature every morning. On Monday, the children used leaves to decorate their watercolor paintings. On Tuesday, the children had fun creating drawings with beeswax crayons. On Thursday and Friday, we went on a nature walk to the farm. It was so lovely to see the children feeding and petting the animals. 

Our rice day was very successful. The children did such a great job helping prepare the rice. It was delicious to eat for our morning snack. Cooking is an important part of Waldorf Education, especially in the early childhood years. Cooking connects children to the natural world and gives them pride in what they put into their bodies. The preparation of a meal can also help children understand where their food comes from. 

This week, we will add a table puppet show for our story time, and we will incorporate using a story apron when we do our squirrel finger play. 

Here is a list of our weekly activities: 

  • Monday & Tuesday: Art and Craft Day

  • Wednesday: Wash Day

  • Thursday & Friday: Farm Day

Upcoming Events and Friendly Reminders:

  • We are planning to have a Cooking Day once a month, and we will let you know one week before it. Please look out for the information.

  • September 17th is a community work day. 

  • Fall Break is the week of September 26 - 30.

Thank you for sharing your sweet children with us and thank you for your support. 

Best,

Ki Siyu and Ki Ieva

Joyful Beginnings: August 22-26

Dear Joyful Beginnings families,

We had a wonderful and busy week! As we have settled in to our rhythms and routines, we began with our story and a finger play. The class enjoyed sitting on the tree stumps and listening to a loving story about the raccoon, Chester. Also, the children liked playing with our whisky, frisky “squirrel friend”. We will continue to enjoy the same story and finger play for two more weeks. Young children love repetition. It gives them a sense of security, knowing what comes next, and allows them to take in the story and finger play more deeply. We encourage our families to embrace these concepts at home too.

During free play in our indoor classroom, some of our friends helped sweep the floor, some learned how to use the toy ironing board and iron, while others took loving care of our babies. During our Forest time, we collected pine cones, and we made so many yummy foods in our mud kitchen. Ki Derek put up a beautiful sail over our forest platform. We loved it! We built houses, towers, and car ramps on the platform. 

This week we are planning to add our first rice day on Wednesday and Thursday. The children will help to stir and clean the rice. We will cook the rice in our rice cooker while the children are playing, then we will enjoy it for a morning snack. 

Upcoming Events and Friendly Reminders:

  • Thank you very much for sharing some fun books with us for our indoor classroom. 

  • Please pack two or three toppings, such as cooked veggies and eggs, in your child’s lunch box on Wednesday and Thursday to go with the rice. We will have rice for our morning snack. Please also pack a spoon or fork for your child. 

  • The Garden school will be closed on Monday, September 5th, in observance of Labor Day. 

Thank you very much for your support. We hope you have a great long weekend.

Best,

Ki Siyu and Ki Ieva

Joyful Beginnings: August 15 - 19

Dear Joyful Families,

It has been a great week in Joyful Beginnings. We had fun playing in our indoor classroom as well as our outdoor platform. We went on a nature walk to the farm. The children loved feeding the donkeys and goats. We learned a lovely verse in our morning circle. This week, we are going to use the song “Good Morning, Dear Earth” in our circle time and we will add more verses to make our circle time longer and more joyful. 

This week, we will also bring a story and finger play to the children.

  • On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we will introduce the story “The Kissing Hand”.

  • On Tuesday and Thursday, we will introduce a sweet finger play about a squirrel. 

After one and half weeks getting to know the children and exploring different options, we successfully established our healthy daily rhythm.

Our Morning Verse:

The earth is firm beneath my feet,

The sun shines bright above,

And here stand I, so straight and strong,

All things to know and love,

Good morning, Good morning!

Reminders

  • Joyful Beginnings indoor classroom can use more children’s books. If you would like to share one small hardcover children’s book with us, it will be greatly appreciated. Please refrain from books with marketed characters or pop culture themes. Books with simple, gentle themes and lovely illustrations will be loved by our students.  Thank you!

Best,

Ki Siyu and Ki Ieva

Joyful Beginnings: August 10 - 13

Dear Joyful Beginnings families,

Welcome to Joyful Beginnings! We had a wonderful first week. This past week, we were gradually building our daily rhythm and getting used to our inside and outside transition periods. Each child had his/her special symbol in the classroom and they did a great job remembering and finding their symbols. Our new platform in the forest was so beautiful. It was magical to see children taking care of baby dolls, cooking in the mud kitchen, and exploring in the forest. We were reminding the children to stay in our outdoor fences, please help us reinforce this topic at home too. We want to keep them safe in the forest. For our circle time, we did a cute name song to help the children remember each others’ names. Next week, we will introduce our inside classroom toys to the children. 

Reminders: 

  • Please pack one or two sets of complete change of clothes in their backpacks.

  • Please pack a simple and healthy snack. Keep two or three food choices in their snack boxes. 

  • Please apply sunscreen and bug spray before coming to school. 

  • Please label all the belongings. 

                                    Thank you very much!

Best,

Ki Siyu and Ki Ieva