The Sunflower School

So anyone who knows anything about me (and Ann) knows that we have rather strong opinions on appropriate playground design.  After much research and a couple tanks of gas we stumbled upon a delightful man, Isaac, who is an Amish carpenter who happens to make octagonal gazebo playground structures out of wood with adorable cupolas on top.  These have been well tested by his TV free children.  So we had to buy one and we won't tell you the price because you will burst into tears and the envy will ruin your weekend, but we will say that if you are ever in Penn Yan go by Rockinghorse Woodwork and speak to our good friend, Isaac.  He could give a class or two on effective parenting; I have rarely seem such joyful, purpose filled children.  They were fully engaging with their father as he set up our playground structure, quiet and listening and watching and learning and participating.  No whining, no "I'm bored", in fact the three year old tried to help his dad level the structure.  I took notes!!!

So now there is this gorgeous piece of art in the garden for the children to climb on and we love the way it looks next to our beautiful, farm inspired building.  (photo of North West view from across Rt 332)

November 6, 2007
Margaret has been extremely helpful - she has personally tested every single toy in the building.  Current favorites are the pink kitchen and the wooden wheelbarrow, which she fills with the giant dinosaurs.  Thomas unpacked our hollow blocks and built a wonderful garage for the new wooden trucks (thank you Community Playthings).  Dave spent several late evenings personally cleaning and setting up the dividers.  I built furniture all weekend with the Katie. She is much better at it than I am - apparently it is good to have all four legs of a table the same length (something about balance and safety). Anyway, I am learning a lot and I have the allen wrench injuries to prove it!  The best part was having an adorable family, newly moved from Richmond, VA, pop-in on Saturday and request a tour and brochure, and then try to enroll their two year old!  I explained we were not yet set-up for business, but the dad insisted we were the best place he had seen!  Family number 9 on our waiting list!!!

Today met with our licensing lady, Ann Byron, who has been super helpful.  She blessed the interior configuration and took another pile of paper from me to help us toward our goal of opening in early December 2007.

November 20, 2007

No, you don't need an antibiotic for that!  Atelierista is the fancy-shmancy "Reggio" way of saying Art Teacher and we hired a doozy.  Ms Lindsey is a NYS certified Art Teacher spending $$$ in gas to go to Buffalo once a week in the pursuit of her MS in Art Education and while all those degrees are impressive, it was her warm and joyful personality that sealed the deal.  She's very capable and not only can really truly paint and stuff in real life, but likes to engage children in all that fun, too.  And she's been very flexible to answer the phone while I'm touring all the pop-in tours.  She is joined next week by Ms Sheila, Ms Bridget, Ms Katie, Ms Shannon and Ms Vicky to round out our core staff and we are looking forward to our training week together before prying open the doors (gulp).

About curriculum - why "Reggio inspired"?  Well, it isn't a curriculum (the children are the curriculum) - it is a philosophy of care.  The aesthetic is truly inspirational if you attend conferences here and sundry (as Ann and I do), but it is the values of family primacy and a collegial staff that very much resonate to our sensibility.  We are not Italian (however much we may wish and hope to be) so we respectfully call our program "Reggio inspired" and hope to take all that is transferable and adapt it to an American model.

Margaret Rose continues to be our product tester:

December 4, 2007
Glorious soft, snowflakes!  Katie and I shoveled INTO work today, which was pretty fun - nothing feels more comfortable than sipping hot Ginger Peach tea in a toasty building while watching snow blow at 23 degrees a mere pane of glass away.

Lovely Ann left us Sunday, but not before waving her magic wand over our interior - of course it looks fabulous now.  And Miss Lindsey completed a spectacular trompe l'oeil in the school-age classroom, which adds warmth and light and drama to the big kid study area.

Horst and Ellen are back in town!  They had a great trip West visiting their sons - adding over 8,000 miles to the car going to Seattle and cutting down through Texas on the way home.  Typical, Horst was on a stepladder making some modifications for us within five minutes - how blessed are we?

Big news!  Steady enrollment paperwork (and checks) coming in, but more significantly our clients just seem super (well) nice.  We're a little bit worried that people will think we have an exclusive "cute children" only rule or maybe only attractive people live in this area, we aren't sure, yet.  We'll try to ugly the kids up by smearing paint and playdough on them!!! 

The Winter Art Class series starts in two weeks and we are excited to have strong enrollment.  Great chance for creative kids to get messy while parents shop til they drop!

December 10, 2007

Today is my sister's birthday (she is much, much older than me, so wish her well) AND the birthday of our child care - yes, we got licensed!  Many thanks to Ann Byron and Steve Templeton and the OCFS team for holding our hand and helping us to meet this dream.  We are grateful.

If you are someone, or know a child, who wants to enjoy longs days filled with adventure, wonder and joy - please stop in for an enrollment packet!  We'd love to have you join us.

The Finger Lakes Community is invited to tour our new facility at a Cider and Song Open House on Friday, December 21st from 3:00pm-6:00pm.  All ages welcome!

December 16, 2007

Our landlord, a local boy, suggested leaving some hills when we fenced the playground perimeter.  This is why:

Booty sledding!

December 21, 2007

I feel so blessed for the wonderful turn out at tonight's Open House.  I especially appreciate the full attendance by our passionate and articulate staff who engaged with the enrolled and prospective parents in such a beautiful, caring way.  My heart overflows with gratitude.

This week has been especially delightful with the bright and inquisitive minds charging our classrooms with energy.  Pictures speak louder than words so I leave my gentle readers with images of Ms Lindsey reading Peanut Butter Rhino for the seventh consecutive time

and our block center transformed by young engineers who built a zoo so that the animals would be "safe" from the dinosaurs (point to ponder: Why weren't the dinosaurs caged?)

Happy holidays to all and joy and peace in our new year and always!

December 29, 2007

Having recently hosted an amazing staff orientation and training day that ran over 90 minutes because everyone was busy chatting excitedly, I have to share some of my thoughts on the value of a collegial staff.

Parents, rightly, want to know who will be taking care of their children and why I employed them.  What qualifications I require and what qualities I saw in them to offer them a position that entrusted them with other people's children.  I make it very clear to enrolling families that my priorities are: talent, experience and education, in that order.  As a mother, I am always aware of the honor parents give me by placing their children in my care.  I am very grateful to my former clients who discovered this project and voluntarily wrote testimonials of the quality care their children received in the programs I have administrated.  To do the job well is the reward.  To pretend to have done it by myself is ridiculous.  All caregiving is relationship.  I praise the talented teachers I have had the great good fortune to have worked with and share this success with them.

Applicants have been attracted to our childcare because of the values we state in our paperwork and those implied by the interior and playground aesthetic.  I am highly aware that employees have NOT taken another position to choose to work for us. It would be unconscionable to cite one set of expectations, get them all signed up and locked in and then foist on them entirely different work conditions.  While we are on this journey together, we will proceed with expectations of trust, fairness, self-initiative and cooperativeness, and above all, respectfulness.  It is also my responsibility to protect the cohesive team by adding members who appreciate our "unique chemistry" and whose presence will enhance it.

I have the opportunity (and the responsibility) to background check and interview all potential staff.  But Children's Garden policy also gives applicants the chance to interview me.  Can I verify my resume or is it all bluster?  Why shouldn't staff see my evaluations and letters of reference?  I need them to know that I know why I am doing what I do and that I also know how to do it.  I want every single member of Children's Garden staff to want to work there, and not just be treading water in the moment.  This week I received a letter from a lovely woman who withdrew her application, although she offered to serve as a site resource.  She said I had asked her in the interview a question she hadn't asked herself, "What do you want to get up and do every day for work?" and this made her realize she is actually very impassioned to deliver holistic health opportunities and is now going to put her energy into making this dream a reality.  She would have been a wonderful teacher for our school, but I know she will go forward and help others find healing and I am delighted she has discovered her "bliss".

Children's Garden of Farmington has been particularly blessed with a talented and diverse core staff.  Teachers range from a young woman completing her CDA, to NYS certified educators, to a children's book author/illustrator and a former Nazareth College Art Instructor.  It would be unseemly to micromanage a group this experienced and educated, and I feel confident they have all embraced the principles of care Children's Garden seeks to reflect.  We will no doubt have our molehills, but I fervently hope that there will be no mountains that divide us, only those that we climb together.

January 2, 2008

Just a few images to illustrate our point about multi-age socialization and learning:

January 10, 2008

So, I'm making playdough with five people under the height of 37" and they're doing all the work, measuring and pouring, and stirring, and kneading and kneading until the sticky blob in the dusty dry bowl becomes a smooth blob.  And I'm really just standing around and watching having done the important work of providing oil, flour, salt and water (my job is so difficult), when a little tow-headed boy looks up at me, smiling, and says, "Fanks!"

January 18, 2008
Children's Garden of Farmington has begun to offer MESSY MONDAYS providing sensory tub fun for children ages 18 months through 5 years every Monday from 9:30am-10:30am.  Some quick pictures of what we do!

Wonderful Leo Buscalia reminds us that we cannot separate children's learning from play.  The work of childhood IS play!

January 25, 2008

What a fabulous week!  Thanks to our Canandaigua Mommies Group and the Holistic Moms for two energizing playdates.  So much fun to meet and mingle and have all these little people enjoy our site.

Notes from this morning as Porter, Mellanie and Nicholas explored the new batch of green playdough:

Nicholas opens a box of collage materials to use to stamp patterns into the dough.  He helps himself to the scissors in the box to cut a length of beaded cord off.  Mellanie rolls and flattens and fashions appendages from the dough.  Porter creates balls and smacks them with his palm to flatten them.  He does this several times in a row and when he runs out, he asks me to reroll the balls.

Porter, "Fwive, nine, phirteen, fifteen, one, two, tree!"

Mellanie, "I'm making a troll. This is his head and face."

Porter rolls a ball into a tube.

Mellanie, "And he eats salad and lives in a cave."

Porter holds up his log of dough.

Porter, "Poop."

And that is exactly what it looked like.

Feb 22, 2008
Wonderful winter!  As our child care center fills with beautiful children, we make time to document their wonder and joy and unique creativity.

Nicholas designs and creates a clubhouse with floor and windows.

Emily gathers icicles.

Ben climbing the pillow mountain - yes, he is always pretty much in this mood.

 This group of scientists is working with the "rainbow ice castle": a giant block of ice covered with rock salt to make it porous, it absorbs watercolor as Isaac, Michael, Emily and Marcus experiment with color mixing while developing their small motor muscles by using the squeeze bottles.  This is one way to learn about primary and secondary colors - or we could use flashcards (maybe not).

The Children's Garden Preschool Open House is Wednesday, February 27 at 6:00pm to provide a presentation to parents of the 100 Languages of Childhood and the Reggio Philosophy of Care.

Please visit our website at www.barefooteducation.org!

April 3, 2008
Children's Garden is so grateful to the 84 attendees of our Spring Fling open House! We are honored to be a part of your weekend plans and tickled that you brought your energy into our center.  We would especially like to thank Mikayla Morris for bringing her parents, her grandparents, her aunt and her GREAT-GRANDMOTHER to visit with us!!!  Good times.

We wish to extend an open invitation to the families of young children with special needs who are regularly denied child care services.  You are very welcome at Children's Garden of Farmington.  We don't think there is any reason not to include you.  And to all the programs that make up rules about the perfect age for potty-training or "safe" behaviors or "staff impact" - we say "phooey" on you.  It is unconscionable to discriminate against children because they wear a diaper or can't sit for 20 minutes on a carpet square listening to nursery rhymes.  Hey, maybe it's a deficient ENVIRONMENT not a deficient CHILD.  Come play with us!

May 19, 2008

Children's Garden is approaching its' five month anniversary and the people we are most grateful to are the families that fill the program with hope and encouragement.  Why do full time working parents find time to actively support a child care center? Because they care and they are included! Too many programs shut out the concerns of parents; a successful school fully engages with families to reflect their values.  We appreciate the many parents that actively market the child care center based on their happy experience.  We will continue to work hard, develop program and improve our services.  Respect is the ethic and joy is the goal.  Thank you.

Current interest areas include our frog pond, with special thanks to Colby, Haley, Elliott and Hannah (and parents) for donating tadpoles, frogs and containers.  Whew!  This has been the hoppiest thing to happen this month!

And how our garden grows!  Grampa Lipnicky came by with his tiller and made our first plot for veggies.  As our seedlings get stronger (and weather cooperates) we will transplant these into the ground and see if the children can nurture them into a salad snack.  The bareroot berries have flourished in our green window to become radiant bushes - these, too, will be transplanted outside with a future goal of parfaits and cobblers.  We also hope to start our sweetpea fence at the end of this month!

Many thanks to our hardworking teachers for supporting each other during times of transition without grumbles or bumbles.  There were a few early mornings and late afternoons where we danced fast as we adjusted new staff schedules to swelling enrollment, and the good nature of everyone kept it all copacetic!  Do we tell them thank you enough?  Probably not. 

July 7, 2008
What a wonderful working week with our dedicated staff.  In addition to pulling apart and putting back together the classrooms, we enjoyed a fabulous fieldtrip to Annie's Ark in Livonia.  If you ever have the opportunity, please go and observe the outstanding playground that Annie has crafted for young children - it is exactly what an early learning environment should be.  We took notes and sobbed into our hankies as Annie calmly reminded us that it took her 20 years to make it happen.

On Thursday, July 31, 2008 from 5:30pm - 7:00pm all families are invited to potluck with staff at our Summer Pasta Picnic.  Entertainment includes a slide show of our first 6 months in action and the school-age crew has prepared a masked drama for our entertainment.  Extended family are very, very welcome.  Bring your favorite appetizer, salad or dessert to share, folding chairs or a blanket for the grass, and be prepared to make new friends with the parents of your child's friends!

August 1, 2008

Thanks to all the families that were able to join us for our Parent Pasta Picnic last night!  Whew - we think there were 70-80 people here, maybe even more!  And plenty of food!

And in gratitude to the staff who fill our hearts with appreciation and joy.  What a fabulous job they are doing with our children.  All credit for the Art Gallery and the production of the boisterously entertaining play "Where the Wild Things Are", and slideshow belongs wholly to the teachers.

Now, some pics:

August 19, 2008
Children's Garden has added another preschool classroom to meet expanding requests for a Reggio-inspired early educational environment!  With gratitude to all our fabulous families for promoting our program!

September 30, 2008
The Children's Garden of Farmington licensed daycare will be closing today.  We are grateful to all the family and friends that helped us to create our own little slice of Eden over the past year.  The school community will continue as Care-a-Lot Child Care provides program to the families and with the wonderful teachers who have kept our children safe and happy.  We cherish our memories of this exhilerating experience, and wish for everyone joy, health, peace and prosperity.  With love to all who made our dreams possible!

Sincerely yours,

Kathleen Seabolt