UW Child Development Lab

💛 🎊 Happy Retirement Malika! 🎊 💛

This past week, we celebrated Lead Dragonfly Teacher Malika Guend's retirement after 26 dedicated years with the Child Development Lab.
While we will miss Malika dearly, we are so excited for this next chapter of her life, and we are beyond grateful for the time we had with her and the connections that she made with CDL staff, children, and families over the years!

Congratulations Malika!🎉

🌸🧺We had a blast at this year's Spring potluck!🧺🌸
Thank you to all the CDL staff, students, and families who came out to make the night so special!

🤍❤️🎓Congratulations 2026 CDL Graduates!🎓❤️🤍

We are so proud of all of you and all that you have accomplished! While we will miss you all, we will cherish the time you spent with us.

The kids worked hard this week to create Bucky Badger garlands and congratulations posters to send you off in style!
We wish you all the best and more in your future adventures!

❤️✏️Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!✏️❤️

We are so grateful for all of our wonderful, passionate, kind, caring, and loving teachers. We cannot thank you enough for all that you do every day to have such a profound impact on the lives of children and families.

We showed our love and appreciation for our teachers with a week full of treats and goodies!

Our themed appreciation days included:
Monday: Muffins & Yogurt Parfait Bar
Tuesday: Tasty Treats
Wednesday: Pizza Lunch
Thursday: Build Your Own Trail Mix
Friday: Teacher Gifts & Donuts + Coffee with Families

A huge thank you goes out to all of the lovely families who made these celebrations possible this week! ❤️

🐳🐶Field Trip to the UW Vet School🐶🐳

We had the pleasure of visiting the UW Veterinary School this week! Classrooms either strolled or hopped on the 80 bus for a quick ride over to the school, where they met CDL parents Tatiana and Leandro to learn more about animals and the work they do at the vet school.

We got to see a real whale eyeball, several animal skeletons, including Sally the Giraffe, and learn about dogs and how we can help care for them when they are sick. We are so grateful to Tatiana, Leandro, and the Vet School for having us. We had a wonderful time!

CDL teachers had a blast unboxing all of their new classroom materials, provided by the Office of Child Care and Family Resources!

We are beyond grateful to OCCFR, for always supporting our program, teachers, children, and families! 💕

💜🏡Family Friday🏡💜
We ended Week of the Young Child with a celebration of our families and a school-wide book swap. Books were donated throughout the week, which were put on display this afternoon for families to stop by and grab a few new titles to add to their home libraries.

Thank you to all of our CDL families, and everything you do, we couldn't do it without you!

🖌️🎨Artsy Thursday🎨🖌️
Today, we took our creativity outside and gathered in front of SoHE to fill the sidewalk with colorful chalk drawings and murals!

🌿🪴Work Together Wednesday🪴🌿
Classrooms worked together to plant a variety of seeds, including marigolds, basil, cucumbers, tomatoes, and more! Once the seeds have begun to sprout, they will be moved over to our garden beds to grow tall and strong.

CDL teachers also enjoyed a wonderful pizza lunch provided by The Office of Child Care and Family Resources. Thank you OCCFR, for all of your continued support and generosity!

🍋🍊Tasty Tuesday🍊🍋
Each CDL classroom celebrated the second day of Week of the Young Child by whipping up and enjoying their own tasty treat!

The Honeybees mixed up personalized trail mix, the Chipmunks made Rice Krispy treats, the Bunnies created mini personal pizzas, the Otters designed their own edible sculptures, the Ducks cooked up pancakes, and the Dragonflies put together a fruit salad.