Wasn’t that a fun Egg Hunt? We loved having 35+ current families, several alum egg hunters and 4 new families that are enrolled in the Ladybug class for September! How fun to have Emily be our bunny and alum Charlie as our junior bunny! What an amazing community! It was fun to have a couple alum families drive by the lower parking lot and honk their horns excitedly as they knew exactly what day it was at The Garden!

The auction excitement is brewing! Last Sunday, several Cricket moms met at Leah’s home in North Bend to decorate their Kentucky Derby hats! Sasha suggested a party/brunch/get together, and that’s exactly what transpired! A few of the staff joined in on the fun and had a great time eating delicious food, drinking a mimosa or two, and enjoying several laughs, sharing ideas and making masterpiece headwear for our auction ensembles! We can’t wait to show them off!

On Wednesday, we had the Sehra family join our Cricket class to share with their daughter Sana’s friends their cultural springtime New Year and Harvest celebration, Vaisakhi. How wonderful it is to have such rich cultural variety in our community and how grateful we are that our families share their traditions with us!

Next week is our much anticipated Spring Break week! We hope you all have wonderful and relaxing family time and we look forward to seeing you two weeks from today at our Spring Art Show, at Grand Ridge Elementary. We would love to have a bunch of adults join us early to help us hang and display the beautiful masterpieces that the children have created throughout the year. Please sign up on the Art Show page. We had a new parent ask us if this is an adults only event. Definitely not! The children will be performing their dances and the whole family is invited to join us. Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, whoever would like to be a part of this wonderful evening.

We are so thankful to our Cricket mom, Nikita, for offering a parent-ed opportunity on “Tantrum Talks” this week! The goals of this session were to:

• Develop an understanding of Sensory Processing and how it impacts behavior.
• Gain skills to implement simple sensory home activities to meet the needs of preschool students.
• Understand our own sensory needs and their role in Self Care.

Nikita has been working in schools supporting a diverse spectrum of learners for almost two decades and now supports teachers and students in the Renton School District as a Special Education IEP Specialist and works as a Family and Parent Advocate through Frame(work) Consulting. Providing parent-ed has been a long-time value at The Garden and we are so thankful for this opportunity to support our families, students and community. Thank you, Nikita!

Happy Vaisakhi! Enjoy this Palm Sunday and Happy Easter! Have a joyous Passover! Have a wonderful Spring Break! It is springtime at The Children’s Garden!

Ladybugs
It was kind of opportune that Cari had Emily substitute for her last Thursday, as the Egg Hunt was such a success for our Bugs to greet the bunny! The kids recognized Emily and were not afraid to approach her. We were all impressed with how brave our littlest Gardeners were last Saturday to see the Bunny and grab a carrot and a stuffy! It was so fun!
The Bugs learned a new finger play this week, called “This is a Bunny”, and we made a new peekaboo book about planting a seed and watching it grow.

We continued to have fun dancing as we prepared for our Art Show performance in two weeks. In anticipation of our Spring Art Show, this is a good time to say that we don’t force anyone to “perform” if they are not comfortable, and we also invite parents to join us in our circle dances if that makes the kiddos more comfy. Some are only comfortable sitting on laps and watching and some are comfortable doing solo “Riverdances” if we let them!! Every behavior is ‘normal’ and we love to have all of them in our midst!

We celebrated Marley’s third trip around the sun this week and enjoyed sharing our lovely birthday circle tradition with one of our newest Ladybugs.

Crickets
We had alum helper Jack help us out in the classroom on Monday, and we celebrated Cambrie and Coco’s 4th birthday this past week! We worked on spring time stamper books, and continue to practice writing our names, tracing, copying, and saying each letter out loud as we write it. This is a great practice to do at home as well. Get yourself some magnetic letters and let the kids play with them on the fridge door. Sound out the nonsense words that they spell, label their room door with their name. Put their name on a card above their towel, write their name on their cup. Repeatedly have them recognize their name and say the letters that are in their name. Rhyme words with their name. Goosey Loosey, Henny Penny, Cara Tara, etc. Talk about other words that start with the same letter as their name; Leah, Lentil, Lake, Lion, Lettuce, etc. These are all easy things to chat up in the car, talk about at the dinner table, or talk about at bedtime, to add to their awareness of the letters in their names, and letter sounds in general.

On Wednesday, we had Porter and Nolan as alum helpers, and we enjoyed learning about Vaisakhi with Sana’s parents, Harv and Ema. What beautiful colors! We enjoyed some delicious treats and learned some fun dance moves! Thank you so much Sehra family! Happy Vaisakhi!

Honeybees
We heard 8 more World Culture Reports and can’t wait to share everyone’s report after Spring Break at the “World’s Fair”.In the past few days, we went to Germany, Ecuador, France, Iran, Portugal, India, and Tibet. We love how proud our students are to share what they have learned. We have a few students who have not yet done their reports, so we are rescheduling our World’s Fair until after Spring Break, the last 15 minutes of class on Wednesday, April 23. Each student’s board will be displayed and they will stand proudly by their boards and answer questions about their countries. We hope you can join us to see all the work that has gone into these boards, and check out their passports that have “travelled” around the world!

The Bees began working on an extended mapping project. There are lots of fun activities helping the children learn directions, how to read a map key, etc.

We also spent a few days in the forest after the Egg Hunt, helping us take down the surveyor tape that surrounded the hunt areas and assist us in doing a final ‘sweep’ of the forest. We love spending time with our students in Luna’s Forest.

The Honeybees learned a second dance this week for the Art Show and we are sure that you are going to be impressed with their performances! One of the dances is a partner dance, so please let us know if you will not be able to attend the Art Show so that we can schedule an alum or two to join us for our dance.