Parent & Family Resources

Happy New Year Berry Patch Families! 

I hope that you have had a wonderful time with your family celebrating, playing, and (maybe?) having some time for rest and reflection. We are excited to see you all again tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday! A few important notes for January:

Winter Afternoon Enrichment
We are eager to begin our winter afternoon programming next Tuesday, January 10th! All families who registered have received confirmation of enrollment via Brightwheel. If you registered but do NOT have a Brightwheel message from Carrie, please reach out to her. Amazing Athletes (Tuesdays and Wednesdays) will be a blast and we have a great class of Afternoon Spanish berries at both locations (Tuesdays at BPE and Thursdays at BPW) along with PM Playmates on most afternoons. 

Welcome to December! It is so very December-y outside with the beautiful snow and sunshine. We are excited about all the fun that is planned for this month. There is innate joy in being in a school full of young children- this feels especially true during the magic of the Holidays!

Get Cozy with our Berry Patch Sweatshirts
Berry Patch Sweatshirts are available this month at both locations! This is a great Christmas present for your little berry. They will be available on a table near your school entrance. There is an order form on the table- you can take the sweatshirt you want with you, just jot down your child’s name and the size you took and you will see the charge on your January invoice. 

Happy November!
I LOVE this month where the focus of so much energy is on being Thankful! We are so grateful for each of our Berry Patch children and their families and our amazing staff. Lots of fun happenings this month at The Patch.

Dads/Special Guests & Donuts NEXT WEEK

• Berry Patch East: Monday OR Tuesday, 9:00-10:00 am
• Berry Patch West: Wednesday OR Thursday, 9:00-10:00 am
• Click HERE for reminder of which day your child’s class is scheduled

Happy Fall Berry Patch Families, 

We are excited to jump into this month FULL of so many ‘back to normal’ activities! 

Afternoon Enrichment Programs
Lunch Bunch has begun for our Huckleberries, PM Playmates and our Fall Partnership Class (STEM with Science Made Fun) are beginning this week for our registered Blueberries and Strawberries, and our Afternoon Spanish Class starts today with Ms. Zara at Berry Patch East and Thursday at Berry Patch West. Our afternoons will be full of fun for the rest of the school year! 

Monthly Morning Spanish
Ms. Zara begins her Monthly Morning Spanish Classes for all of our Huckleberries-Strawberries this month. Ms. Zara will be coming to both schools monthly for individual classroom Spanish learning time. What a gift to have a Spanish Teacher on our team. Click HERE for Ms. Zara’s October Newsletter 

See The Good!

We see always what we are looking for,
and if our mind has become trained to look for
trouble and difficulty and all dark and dreary things,
we find just what we seek. 
On the other hand,
it is quite as easy to form the habit of looking always
for beauty, for good, for happiness, for gladness
and here, too, we shall find precisely what we seek.                                                                       
-j.r. miller

Our theme as a school this year is a reminder to each one of us to ‘See the Good.’ As I presented this guiding principle to our staff during Work Week we talked about all the ways that we can be looking for the good throughout our days and that in focusing on all of the good moments that happen we can train our brains to start seeking out the good. We are so excited about this! 

Berry Patch Location Names
Colonial Church has officially changed its name to Meetinghouse Church, so we are also making a shift in how we refer to our school locations. We will begin making this transition this spring. We are one Berry Patch School with two campuses – our new location names will be:

• Berry Patch West (6200 Colonial Way, Meetinghouse Church-formerly Colonial Church)
• Berry Patch East (5300 France Ave. S., Calvary Christian Reformed Church)

May CSO (Children Serving Others) Project
We will be collecting items for “Summer Fun Bins” for our friends at Whittier Wildflowers Preschool this month. Look for a flier with a QR code for Amazon shopping link. Items can be brought to school at check-in through Friday, May 14 or shipped directly to Whittier Wildflowers (2608 Blaisdell Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55408.)

End-of-Year Strawberry Events
We will celebrate our Strawberries launch from the Berry Patch with some special times together:

April 4, 2022

We had a great time in March talking about all things OCEAN, BEACH, SEA CREATURES! Our Special Reader, Mrs. Pope, came to visit as a Pirate and we also had a visit from the real, live Ariel from Little Mermaid who shared her story with us. This month, we will learn about and explore all things FARM and SPRING! The highlight of our experiential learning will be a whole farm full of animals coming to visit us- Joah’s Ark will bring a baby cow, sheep, goats, bunnies, ducks, and more to both of our locations!

More Important Happenings:

March 1, 2022

What a gift for the kids to get outside again after SO MANY ‘too cold’ days in February. Rosy red cheeks after time in the snow is such a great sign of healthy kids! There was lots of love in February. Mrs. Trudell’s Strawberry class at Colonial shares their grins here on the day of their Valentine’s Day celebration. Our Mozart and Monet month was amazing. The learning that all of our berries did about different artists and the experiences they were able to have in creating culminated in some amazing galleries. I loved hearing children say, “I am an artist!”  We also had the joy of our visit from Darin Anderson, professional cellist with the Minnesota Orchestra. The kids were mesmerized by him and the sound of his cello. He has a gift with sharing with children. Mrs. Pope, former Strawberry teacher, also visited all of our classes and shared a story about art/artists and had a hands-on activity for each child to try. Alongside all of this fun in classrooms, our school community collected over 100 hats and sets of mittens to share with others. Thank you so much for your generosity. What a great month we had together!

February 1 , 2022

We did make it! It was not an easy month- thank you for your patience and endurance as we have ridden the Omicron wave. We learned a lot and have streamlined our COVID Protocol further – with what we recognize we are able to manage as a staff and what what does not put undue burden on families. This will be passed out in cubbies this week and can be seen HERE. 

January 3, 2022

I hope that you had a wonderful time as a family over the holidays! We look forward to seeing your family at The Berry Patch this week. 

COVID-19 Reminders

We will continue to do all that we can to keep our classrooms safely open. Thank you in advance for your understanding as we come back together that we may have staffing shortages and/or classroom closures due to the current exponential spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Here are a few important reminders/updates:

• If your child tested positive for COVID OR was exposed to COVID over the Holidays please let us know right away so that we can make a return to school plan.