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For fifteen years Lina worked as a kindergarten teacher, until one spring she rented an old house with an apple tree in the yard and opened a kindergarten of her own. She started with one group; now there are three. But some things haven’t changed: in the mornings Lina unlocks the door herself, while the hallway is still quiet and the smell of porridge is already drifting out of the kitchen.

For a long time her evenings all looked the same: the kitchen table, the lamp above it, attendance sheets and parents’ invoices in two neat piles. Her tea would go cold in the cup before she filled in the last line.

When Lina moved the whole kindergarten onto DayNest, her evenings changed: the teachers mark attendance now, parents’ invoices are prepared in the same place, and Lina gets to drink her tea warm again. In the mornings she no longer hurries from the door to her office: she says hello to every child, crouches down, straightens a slipping hat and listens to who dreamed what.

Lina hired Ieva straight out of university, the autumn the kindergarten opened its second group. She taught Ieva what she had learned herself over fifteen years: how to calm a crying child at the door, how to count everyone in the yard at a glance, and when it’s better to say nothing and just hold a hand. Now Ieva leads her own group.

She spends most of the day on the rug among building blocks and picture books, out in the yard by the sandpit, or at the windowsill, where beans are sprouting in jars and every morning some child runs over to see if they’ve grown. After the afternoon nap, while the children are still sleepy and rubbing their eyes, Ieva braids the girls’ hair.

When Lina moved the kindergarten onto DayNest, Ieva got the hang of it fastest and, over a cup of tea, showed her colleagues where to mark what. Now she marks attendance in DayNest and parents see the day’s news in the same place, so Ieva no longer has to go back to work in the evenings. And during the day her hands are free for the children: to tie a shoelace, catch a ball, take a drawing of the sun that’s still wet.

For six years Feliksas worked in the children’s section of the city library. On Saturdays he read to the children, and he noticed that what interested him most was what starts once the book is closed: the children’s questions. Where does the wind live? Can the moon see us in the daytime too? Wanting to understand how children learn by asking, he completed a part-time degree in early childhood education. Last autumn, when Ieva’s group grew, Lina started looking for one more teacher. At the interview she asked Feliksas what he would start with on his first day. “I’d ask the children what they want to find out,” he said.

On his first day Feliksas brought a plain turquoise box with a slot in the lid. The children covered it in drawings and named it the question box. Now anyone who wants to find something out draws their question, and Feliksas writes it down under the drawing. On Fridays the group opens the box in the yard: the children sit on and around Jonas’s bench under the apple tree, Ieva sits with them, and Feliksas reads every question out loud. One Friday he pulled out a slip of paper with a puddle drawn on it, and underneath it said: “Where do puddles go?” That question came from Jonas’s son, who had run in that morning still in wet rubber boots.

In Feliksas’s first week, Ieva showed him over a cup of tea where to mark what in DayNest, and now the two of them put the weekly plan together there: he adds the question the week will start with, she adds the yard games. During puddle week the children and Feliksas drew chalk lines around the puddles, and Ieva came up with a game: who will be first to notice that a puddle has pulled back from its line. By Friday only the chalk lines were left on the yard path. “So where do you think they went?” Feliksas asked. Some said the ground drank them, others said the sun dried them up, and Jonas’s son was sure the wind had carried them away.

When her daughter turned one and a half, Neringa looked at more than one kindergarten. She chose Lina’s within minutes: Lina crouched down to the little girl, asked her name and showed her the apple tree in the yard. Now Neringa drops her daughter off among the first every morning, because the agency’s morning meeting starts at half past eight. At the door the girl still holds her mum’s hand and only lets go when Ieva promises to braid her hair after the afternoon nap.

At the agency, Neringa’s day flies by between meetings, clients and deadlines: one client needs a new poster, another a whole campaign by Friday. She knows how to listen and find a way through, but her mind sometimes drifts to the kindergarten: has the bean on the windowsill sprouted yet, what kind of braids will Ieva do today. For a long time she would ask her daughter in the evening how her day went, and hear the same answer: “Fine.”

When Lina moved the kindergarten onto DayNest, Neringa started seeing the group’s news while still at work, usually in a short break between meetings. Today the children collected leaves in the yard, and her daughter’s bean was the first to sprout on the windowsill. In the evening Neringa no longer asks how the day went. She asks about the bean - and her daughter talks all the way home.

Ten years ago Jonas nailed together his first wooden shelves in a garage; now his furniture company employs forty people. When his son started at Lina’s kindergarten, Jonas noticed there was nowhere to sit under the old apple tree in the yard. One Saturday he brought an oak bench over from the workshop and set it up himself, and the next morning half the group was already sitting on it.

Jonas’s week goes by in meetings, at the workshop and on trips to clients, but he doesn’t book anything after four o’clock - that’s his son’s time. On the way, the boy doesn’t skip a single puddle, so in the mornings he often runs in to Ieva before he’s even taken off his wet rubber boots. This morning, still in wet boots, he pressed a sun with lots and lots of rays into Ieva’s hand. He drew it yesterday at the kitchen table while Jonas was making dinner, and kept asking if his teacher would like it.

Sometimes a negotiation runs late after all. On those days Jonas messages Ieva on DayNest in the morning to say Grandma will pick his son up, and in the evening Ieva lets the boy go with her without a second thought - Grandma is already waiting on the bench under the apple tree. But most days Jonas comes himself at four. Then the two of them sit a while on that same bench while the boy tells him what mattered most today, and they walk home the longest way - past every puddle.

For forty years Teodora worked at a weather station. Every three hours, day or night, in a blizzard or a heatwave, she went out to the instruments, and when she came back in she wrote the temperature, wind direction and rainfall into the logbook in pencil. She retired a few years ago, but every morning at eight she still walks out to the rain gauge in the garden and writes down in a notebook how much rain fell overnight. She put the rain gauge well away from the apple trees, so the branches wouldn’t block the rain - just like at the station.

She and Jonas agreed long ago: when a negotiation runs late, she is the one who comes to the kindergarten at four. On those days Teodora rides up on her orange bicycle, leans it against the fence and sits down on Jonas’s bench under the apple tree as if it were her own. When Kajus once explained to her that the wind had carried the puddles away, Teodora didn’t talk him out of it - after all, the wind really does help a puddle dry. She just asked how he had come up with that, and listened until he had told her all of it. Since then, before heading home, the two of them check from the bench which way the wind is blowing: Teodora takes the paper pinwheel Kajus made for her out of her coat pocket, the boy holds it up high, and his grandmother waits, very seriously, to hear what he will say.

On those mornings Jonas messages Ieva on DayNest to say Grandma will pick Kajus up. Teodora doesn’t need to ask Ieva how Kajus’s day went - she sees the group’s news in the same place. In the evening Ieva lets the boy go with her without a second thought: she has known since morning who is coming, and she has known Teodora for years. Sometimes Ieva comes out to the yard to ask whether it will rain tomorrow, because the group is going to the park. Before the autumn festival in the yard, Lina too asks Teodora first whether it will rain that day. Teodora looks at the sky, then at the apple tree’s branches to see which way the wind is blowing, and only then does she answer.

Every morning Gabija first checks that Mum hasn’t forgotten the lime-green earrings she picked out for her at the spring fair. At the kindergarten door she still holds Mum’s hand and only lets go when Ieva promises to braid her hair after the afternoon nap. Then she runs to the windowsill: her bean sprouted first, and every morning Gabija checks how much water is left in the jar.

During puddle week, the moment she got out to the yard, Gabija went straight to the chalk-ringed puddle to see if the water still reached the line. That’s how she won Ieva’s game, “who will be first to notice the puddle has pulled back from its line”. When the puddles were gone, Kajus said the wind had carried them away, but Gabija was sure the ground had drunk them - after all, her bean drinks the water from its jar too. That evening, all the way home, Mum heard about the ground that drinks puddles.

On the way to kindergarten Kajus doesn’t skip a single puddle, so he often runs in to Ieva still in wet rubber boots. Everything he finds or thinks up, he brings to the grown-ups. He hands chestnuts and smooth pebbles to his dad to hold, he pressed a sun with lots and lots of rays into Ieva’s hand, and he drew the question “Where do puddles go?” and dropped it into Feliksas’s question box.

During puddle week Kajus squatted down low by the puddles and traced their edges in pink chalk. By Friday only the chalk lines were left on the path: Gabija said the ground had drunk the puddles, and Kajus was sure the wind had carried them away. The two of them never did agree, and on Fridays, when Feliksas opens the question box, they sit on the same bench - just not necessarily side by side. Walking home the longest way with his dad, Kajus crouches down by every puddle: maybe it’s the one the wind carried off from the kindergarten yard.