September at the East Andover Village Preschool (EAVP) has been filled with new friendships, butterflies, and garden adventures.

Twenty-five preschoolers and four teachers, many of who were strangers just a month ago, are spending our days together playing and learning. Each of us is taking a turn presenting a home-school project – a bag filled with things that tell a story of who we are. This has been a lot of fun and has helped us get to know each other.

Our three monarch caterpillars have grown fat on milkweed, made cocoons, emerged as butterflies, and been released into the world. Along the way, our observation and research have taught us many new things.

Did you know that butterflies taste with their feet? Or that they sip nectar through a straw-shaped tongue called a proboscis? We also learned that butterflies that are born in August and September, like ours were, will not lay eggs here; they are leaving on a long journey to Mexico before the cold weather arrives.

We continued to watch our garden grow and change; we went on scavenger hunts, made observational drawings, and did some measuring of the plants and vegetables growing there. We harvested tomatoes and spaghetti squash and then prepared and ate them.

We picked some beautiful sunflowers, brought them inside, and painted pictures of them in the style of Vincent Van Gogh. We picked other flowers, placed them on fabric, and hammered them to transfer their color onto the cloth.

Our herb garden has given us a chance to use our sense of smell while we watch the bees and butterflies that we have invited to the playground when we created this garden.

We are looking forward to our upcoming apple-picking field trip and to our first parent conferences in October.

A big thanks to the community members who have supported our school by purchasing mums in September. We are looking forward to our next fundraiser, the EAVP Creepy Crawl 5K walk/run on Sunday, November 1 – we hope you’ll join us!