CG Birthday: How to Celebrate with Us!
We are turning 49 on April 6th, but we are celebrating ALL MONTH LONG!!
Normally this would warrant one of our excellent all-school events with food trucks, moon bounces, a giant cake, maybe a carnival…
But since we can’t do that, we are finding a ton of new, exciting ways to celebrate, and we want to tell you how you can join us from your own home.
Sign up for our Spring Stuffy Sleepover!
Our featured author Andrea Lamont will be doing a reading of her new book “The Friendship Rock” for the stuffys and their kiddo friends at home. This event is a total blast that we really think is a perfect way to celebrate together while apart.
Participate in and Share our Book Fair!
From April 12th-April19th, 24/7, you can participate in our Online Book Fair with Scrawl Books! There will be readings, book recommendations, and wish lists! Whether you are supporting your classroom, buying your kids’ new favorite book, or finding your next “relax by the fire pit” Spring read, any book you buy supports our fundraising efforts to raise money for our Non-Profit mission. The best birthday present you can give Common Ground is helping us raise money for our educational efforts.
Host your own Fundraiser on Facebook!
Our Non-Profit missions benefit our students, our teachers, our outreach, our support of much needed educational reform. By supporting our beloved school, we are also supporting our community! Helping us raise money to support those efforts is an AMAZING WAY to help us celebrate our birthday.
Here is our Our PayPal Donation Link where anyone can donate! Thank you for widening our impact.
You can Celebrate “The Week of the Young Child” with us!
We have several activities we are doing with all of the children at the center, but here are some ideas for how to celebrate at home!
Music Monday: Instead of turning on the tv when you get home, turn on the stereo and have a dance party!! Show your kids your favorite songs, and let them show you theirs, make a big Youtube playlist of your favorites, dance your heart out!
Pro Tip: Eighties Pop makes great Dance Music, here is our Owl’s Spotify List.
Struggling to come up with songs? Check out our Mister Josh Rock at the Blocks series on Youtube!
Tasty Tuesday: THROW YOUR OWN COMMON GROUND BIRTHDAY PARTY!! We know putting together something complicated on a Tuesday night feel like it’ll take more energy than you have, so you can always save this for a free weekend day. Whether you decide to try it on a weeknight, or a weekend, this does not have to be over the top to be special with your kiddos. Big Bird has a super easy Banana Bread Recipe! Make healthy banana bread “cupcakes,” stick candles in them, sing Happy Birthday, and chow down!
Work Together Wednesday: At school we will be planting our new class gardens!! We encourage you to plant local, pollinator-friendly plants with your kiddo so they can contribute to a healthy environment. Every little act brings great goodness to the world, and if your kid learns that early with you, they will be more confident and ready to do more and more each day.
Artsy Thursday: Draw chalk art on your sidewalk. Send postcards to family members you haven’t seen awhile with pictures from your kids. Let your kids paint with ice cubes or paint rocks to leave on your local trails. Any little art project that you do with your kid is time spent creating something lovely in the world, no matter what your skill level is. This is also a perfect opportunity to show teacher appreciation: If you want to make your teacher’s day, have your kiddo make an art project for them telling their teacher just how much they matter.
Family Friday: Movie Night! Family Walk! Shadow Charades! Board games! If you want to make it Common Ground themed, this is a fine night to throw the CG Birthday Party! You can also do a “name that teacher” guessing game.
All-Smiles Saturday: Sign your kids up for our Saturday Session on April 10th! While your kids are partying it up with us, you can relax, go on a date, do some much needed yard work, finish that 1000 piece puzzle you’ve been saving, anything that makes you smile!
HOWEVER: If SPRING CLEANING without interruption is what really makes your Saturday perfect, we highly suggest saving any gently used clothing/linens, small household appliances, personal accessories, and books for our JUNE FUND-DRIVE DONATION EVENT! By cleaning out your houses and freeing up your space, you could earn your school BIG MONEY. It’s our favorite type of “fundraiser,” because it is a WIN WIN WIN. You get a cleaned out bureau and don’t create more waste, we get much needed funds for our various educational objectives, and someone gets much needed “new to them” items for an affordable price from UNIQUE without creating more waste.
Whatever you do to celebrate, however you do it, please send us pictures. We would love to make a huge birthday picture collage for the center to show all the ways we honored Common Ground Childcare. Show us your cakes, your decorations, your art projects and gardens! Whatever it looks like, it was done with love, and that is everything to us.
Love Love Love,
Your CG Family
P.S. Let us know how you plan on participating on Common Ground’s Birthday in the Comments!
Paleontology and Potatoes
When it comes to Child-Led Learning, Full-Body Play, and Play-Based Curriculum, our Owls Teachers are really DINO-mite.
Today was the last day of Spring Break, and we wanted to do something extra-special for the Owls. They spent last week solving fairy riddles, sewing their own stuffed animals, and just enjoying each other’s company. Being a whole class of hybrid learners, we knew what they really needed was a technology detox. The one drawback to last week was that it was pretty cold each day! But today is pretty mild, and we wanted to get the kids outside as much as possible before school restarted…
There is no greater grand-finale to a no-tech week than a prehistoric dinosaur dig!
The idea came from last summer, where we had noticed some of the kids were digging, looking for “dino bones” in the mulch. We thought to make it an actual activity for our spring break, so it was time to get our hands dirty! The owls prepared for our dino dig outside in our garden patch with Miss Liz! After the fun dirt patch was all set up and the owls went in for snack, something strange happened… suddenly the dirt was filled with small dinosaur skeletons and a scattering of gorgeous jewels! The students were absolutely delighted. They gathered around the patch with spoons and plastic baggies, carefully sifting through the new dirt to find “long-forgotten” treasures. The children had a great time observing the various rocks and minerals they had found. What we were delighted to see was, rather than being a total free-for-all, they began helping EACH OTHER find dinosaur skeletons amongst the dirt. They all took turns scooping and combing through soil, feeling for a fossil, bones or rocks. When some students found more dinosaurs than others, they made an effort to re-hide the skeletons and guided their friends to find it for their keeping.
This activity was an absolute delight for everyone involved. Not only did they get to experience a “paleontology dig,” but they practiced working on their socializing, patience, fine motor skills and problem solving. These social-emotional tools are as essential as any reading/writing practice, and the events have spurred their imagination for future games and projects. At the end of the day, everyone went home happy and with great treasures, a truly wonderful way to end the spring break at Common Ground.
This was just the first digging project. We have a lot of planting to do in April, especially during Week of the Young Child.
The Owls class has shown their love of digging and playing in dirt, so we figured a little Spring Break Gardening would partner nicely with our Dinosaur dig. Every so often you end up with a sprouting potato or two in your kitchen. That is an excellent and easy way to start growing your own and teach about nature and sustainability. We started with 6 sprouting potatoes, provided by a family member who started scrap gardening during the pandemic, and a google search https://www.gardeners.com/how-to/potato-grow-bag-instructions/7099.html. The class got to see the sprouting potatoes whole in the classroom and learned that seeds are not the only way things can grow. We purchased soil and two potato planting bags. With good quality Dollar Store spades, the kids took turns and worked together to get the base layer of soil down. We planted our chunks and took turns again to cover them up. The bags are placed on the grassy patch by the main entrance which is perfect for us to be able to monitor when we go out for recess and then add more soil when the sprouts outgrow the top layer.
As you can see, the best memories do not have to take too much effort. This is an afternoon they won’t soon forget! We encourage you to go on outside and get your hands dirty! You won’t regret it.
CG Recommendations: Top Ten Strollers for Spring Walks
Hi! Spring is in the air and we are SO EXCITED to see so many of our parents walking up with their strollers to pick up their kids.
Reston is one of the most walkable cities in America. The local Reston nature trails are phenomenal and we are right on the W&OD Trail.
Do you want to walk to the Reston Farmer’s Market at Lake Anne? EASY! Did you want to take the W&OD trail to downtown Herndon? Vienna? No problem.
You could walk the Lake Thoreau Loop in South Reston, admire the incredible scenery, and stop to play at three playgrounds minimum with very little detour.
There are so many amazing spring ways to make memories right in your back yard! No travel or indoor activity Covid-19 risk required. While we urge caution and social distancing, we are also right on Metro’s Silver Line. If you wanted to take your family to walk among Washington DC’s gorgeous Cherry Blossoms (peaking until April 10th, 2021), you could get there without having to take a car at all!
The key here, of course, is having the right stroller for your young family.
Here at Common Ground, we have seen (and tried!) them all. Umbrella strollers. Jogging strollers. Double umbrella and jogging strollers. Convertible strollers that match up with carseats. Strollers with three wheels, four wheels, eight wheels. We are here to give you our TOP TEN recommendations so that you don’t have to find out mid-memory making that a particular stroller is just not working out…
Single Stroller: Baby Jogger City Mini GT2 Stroller, Jet
Carseat Travel Stroller: Graco Modes Pramette Travel System
Best Convertible Carseat Stroller: Doona Infant Car Seat & Latch Base – Car Seat to Stroller
Lightweight, One-Hand Foldable Stroller: Babyzen YOYO2 6+ Stroller
Excellent Jogging Stroller: BOB Gear Revolution Flex 3.0 Jogging Stroller
BEST NEWBORN TO 50lbs UMBRELLA STROLLER: Summer 3Dlite Convenience Stroller
Amazing, Unstoppable Double Jogging Stroller: BOB Gear Revolution Flex 3.0 Duallie Double Jogging Stroller
Best Economy Jogging Stroller: Baby Trend Expedition Double Jogger, Centennial
Best Lightweight Double Stroller: Kolcraft Cloud Plus Lightweight Double Stroller
Classic Ultralight Inexpensive Stroller: Cosco Umbrella Stroller with Canopy
Do you have a stroller you absolutely love and want to recommend? Leave your suggestion in the comments!
Love Love Love,
Your CG Family
Birthday at CG: Book Fair
One of the best events that can happen at any school is A BOOK FAIR!! What is a more wholesome way to support your school than to get kids excited about reading?
This CG Birthday Book Fair is being hosted by our local friends SCRAWL BOOKS and it is COMPLETELY ONLINE! Which means it goes 24/7 from Monday, April 12th to Monday, April 19th. You can shop together at home. You can share with your friends and family all over and help them find their new favorite book WHILE earning money for our educator support funds.
All week we will be featuring books with recorded readings, so check out our Facebook and YouTube to see which books our kids like best!
We also have wish lists for each classroom as well as the weekly Summer Camp themes, so check those out as well if you would like to directly support your classroom!
OUR BOOK FAIR IS LIVE! CLICK HERE!!
How does it work? Simple! You can see our recommended book lists on our Book Fair site HERE, but you can also just go to https://www.scrawlbooks.com/ and shop ANYWHERE on the site!
How do we get credit? Easy. Read the instructions below. These are also available on the Book Fair webpage.
Checkout:
Checkout as you normally would, but please note the following:
1. Use COUPON CODE: In order for Common Ground to receive credit for your purchase, you must use COMMONGROUND.
2. SHIPPING METHOD: Choose Common Ground Book Fair.
3. ORDER COMMENTS: Note the name of the student and grade where books will be delivered. If your books are presents and you want them held in the library for pickup please make a note of that (wrapping on book fair orders is not available). Families with multiple children are asked to choose one classroom for order delivery OR place separate orders for each child.
Delivery:
All books purchased through the Common Ground School Book Fair will be delivered to the classroom specified in the order comments, 1-2 weeks after the Book Fair ends.
Please let us know if you have any questions. We are so excited to do this with our favorite local bookstore! Supporting us in the Book Fair is also supporting them, which is amazing, especially during the pandemic.
HURRAY BOOKFAIR!
— Mrs. LJ and your CG Family
P.S. Do you want MORE recommendations? We wrote a fantastic Earth Day post HERE with ten amazing Biology/Environmental books for clever youngsters.
Common Ground Celebrates: Week of the Young Child
We are excited to celebrate the 50th annual ‘Week of the Young Child’ with NAEYC just one week after Common Ground turns 49!
The Week of the Young Child is a chance for us to spotlight how we impact early childhood experiences. From the work we do in our classrooms to our advocacy work, we are excited to share Common Ground far and wide!
Each day the week of April 10th we will be celebrating a center wide theme! The classroom teachers will put their own spin on how they celebrate in their rooms to keep our fun age and developmentally appropriate!
‘All Smiles’ Saturday - we will be open for care from 9:30am to 2:30pm, since we know that Saturday hours put a smile on our parents faces!
Music Monday will feature an outdoor concert from Mr. Josh
Tasty Tuesday will include in class treats, and a chance to pick up dinner when you pick your kiddo up!
Work Together Wednesday will focus on working as a team to plant our gardens on the Common Ground grounds!
Artsy Thursday will feature amazing art work from all classes.
Family Friday will highlight how families, not just the kids that attend, are what make the Common Ground Community special!
During this week, we ask that you participate by sharing your support on your social media channels by sharing what Common Ground (and quality early childhood education) means to your family. You can:
share our posts
share photos of your child enjoying our activities
share your participation in some of our fun “at home” activities that we will share with you that support our themes
purchase some of the recommended books from our book fair, since reading together is one of the greatest gifts you can give your child
If you’d like to register for our “All Smiles Saturday” care hours, please do so here. Like last time, there is a suggested donation of $25 per child, however we know that the value of a few hours off work with care could be worth 100x that, so please don’t limit yourself! Donations can be made here: paypal.com/us/fundraiser/charity/1778362
