So many things have been happening at The Learning Garden over the last few months and I've been too busy to write! 

So far the start of the new school year has been going well. All of our preschool teachers were able to attend 3 days of training with St. Paul Schools learning about their curriculum format, Early Childhood Workshop.

We opened our second preschool classroom at our Como location. Ms. Marnita is leading Preschool A and Ms. Tajae is leading Preschool B. It's wonderful to see our preschool program growing!

We've had some new staff come aboard. Ms. Marjane joined the infant team and Ms. Lacey joined the toddler team at Como. Ms. Christine is helping out at Hamline while Ms. Julie is out with an ankle injury, Ms. Emily joined the Toddler classroom and Ms. Michelle joined the Pre B classroom at Hamline. It was really great having our new team join us for our October training day. We had a full training day with a session on Special Needs and a session on Culture titled "What's in a Name?" with some guest trainers. 

Once the school year started I got very busy going to visit programs seeking NAEYC Accreditation, making a short trip out to visit a couple of programs in Iowa and North Dakota (more about my visits in the next post).

What Keith and I have really been busy with is getting our 3rd location up and running. We ran into some delays with the building inspector, but he finally signed off on the upper level which means we can open with infants. Our licensing visit is October 30th and we will open with children on November 4th. Ms. Rhonda, who was my original Infant Teacher when I opened in October 2012 has moved back to Minnesota from Arizona and will be the Lead Infant Teacher/Site Supervisor. We are ecstatic to have her back with us! Ms. Myranda who has been working at Como will be moving over to the IGH location when it opens...she's almost done with her Child Development Associate Credential (CDA). I've known her all my life so I'm like a proud mama bear!

Here are some pics of the infant room at IGH...it's big! The licensor said we can have up to 24 babies...can you imagine?!? We will probably do 12 or 16 at the most.  

This week we had our unannounced annual licensing visit at our Hamline location. It's always stressful as no one wants a citation, but citations can be learning experiences. Ashley was prepared and the licensor was impressed with her organization. We will get a fee for a background study violation...we had a staff with two spellings of her name and so there was an issue with fingerprinting...a little out of our control. We received 3 fix it tickets; one for missing an address for an emergency contact, one for not having the names of the cereals on the menu and the third for plungers being in the upstairs bathroom that the Pre-K class is using during construction. Everything was corrected that day and Ashley sent off the corrections to the licensor a few hours later. Good work Ashley!

Our First Annual Summer Picnic is in the books. The rain stayed away and we had a little over 50 staff, parents, grandparents, aunts and children attend. We learned a few lessons that we will fix for next year. We will change the time to 10-1 so that we don't interrupt nap time. We will do the raffle a little differently and have a lot of smaller prizes so the children have a better chance of winning and we are thinking about hiring Bob the Beachcomber to come and party with us. Overall we think our first picnic was a success and we had a great time! 

Today Ashley, our Hamline Site Supervisor, Hareen, our Curriculum Coach and I met with our Preschool Team. This fall we will have 6 preschool classrooms between the 3 locations...very exciting! In previous years our program has been infant-toddler heavy so this has been quite a new adventure for us. We have a wonderful team of smart, passionate and dedicated preschool teachers, each who bring a new perspective on teaching and learning to our program. We reviewed our partnership with Saint Paul Public Schools (SPPS) and how their Early Childhood Workshop (ECW) curriculum fits into our programming and our Kindergarten Readiness goals. The teachers all worked on their fall daily schedules to ensure they included the Early Childhood Workshop components such as Morning Meeting, Small Groups and Regroup to Revisit. The staff will have the opportunity for additional training on ECW this September with SPPS. Hareen and I will be working with the teachers to help them understand how to individualize and plan for the different age preschoolers each classroom will have, as some will have just older, just younger or a combination of 3-5 year olds. 

More information about Early Childhood Workshop, our assessment process, and our curriculum will be provided at our September Parent Meeting!

We are closed Friday, August 30th so that all the teachers can receive training and support with our Teaching Strategies GOLD assessment system and our Curriculum framework. 

I'm looking forward to watching our preschoolers grow and bloom this year!

Hello Families, Teachers, Friends and Family Members!

Welcome to my blog! I wanted to find a way to communicate the exciting things that are happening in our program and that I encounter while working in the field of Early Childhood as a Director, an NAEYC Assessor and an Early Childhood Trainer. Sometimes I might share a funny kid quote, a kind word from a parent about a teacher, or a program or staff accomplishment. Unfortunately, sometimes I might share a disappointment (such as the recent delay in our childcare licensing process at our newest location in Inver Grove Heights) or a frustration about the lack of support for those in our field. Whatever it might be, I hope you will enjoy going on this journey with me!