Bulletin Board
Events, opportunities and resources for our Garden community.
Friday, April 26
6:30-7:30 pm
Issaquah Middle School
600 2nd Ave SE, Issaquah, WA 98027
This all school event for the whole family celebrates the creativity of our students and their amazing artwork.
We’ll offer time to stroll through the gallery so families can read about each artist, see the development over the three years and appreciate the color and tittles that our kids choose before we gather to watch class dances.
We would appreciate help setting up. Let us know if you can join us at 5:30 to hang artwork.
Butterfly Tea
Fluttering by to invite you to the Children’s Garden Butterfly Tea
Join your child during class time for a special day of tea, cookies and fun!
Crickets
Wednesday, May 1 ~ 8:15 am – 9:15 am
Honeybees
Wednesday, May 1 ~ 2:15 pm – 3:15 pm
Ladybugs
Thursday, May 2 ~ 8:15 am – 9:15 am
*Children are invited to wear special occasion clothes
Who are you going to prom with?
No date? No problem! Go stag or bring your best friend, your mom, your neighbor… your favorite barista, whoever. All are welcome!
See you at the punch bowl.
The Mousehole
What a wonderful week we all had for spring break! Brook celebrated her daughter’s 3rd birthday, Brin enjoyed checking out and not having a schedule, as well as celebrating her daughter, Thea’s birthday, Cara enjoyed travelling to Austin, Texas, to view the eclipse, Cari had fun rooting her daughter on at a soccer tournament in Arizona, Emily had the best time visiting her grandmother in Florida, and Donna spent the week, gardening, garage cleaning, and knitting for her future grandbaby!
We appreciate the work of our crew behind the scenes over the break – Claudia LeBarge worked tirelessly to bundle and create our catalog for our main fundraising event of the year. Mick Holsbeke coordinated a new heating system for the school over the break and Ali Lapinsky repainted the parking lot lines right before break to keep our spaces easy to find.
The teachers worked with the kids this week on our dances that we will feature at next week’s Art Show. Of course, we all love the dances, but we want our Art Show attendees to focus on the wonderful visual art from our students. The teachers have worked with our students to make some guided art pieces as well as collect some amazing works of their free spirited ‘from the easel’ pieces. Brin interviewed each of the Gardeners for their ‘biographies’ which will be displayed next to their collective works as an “about the artist” piece, and each class did their own version of an “Art Completes Us” picture for their biography board. Take a walk around the displays to see the development over the three years, the volume of creativity that each student produces and appreciate the color and titles that our kiddos choose to use. To enable your viewing of as much of the visual art as possible, we ask you to arrive at the Art Show at 6:30, reserve your seats with coats/bags, etc., and then peruse the art displays. The formalized program will begin at 6:50 and will wrap up by 7:30. You’re going to love it!
We had another fabulous Board Meeting Tuesday night, keeping the program on track and discussing new ideas for next year. We love our Board of Trustees. Thank you for all that you do to keep us rolling along smoothly. If you have an interest in becoming a trustee, please talk to any staff or board member.
On Wednesday evening, we had an alum movie night on the playground. With such beautiful weather, we welcomed several graduates from the last two years to revisit their beloved playground, enjoy pizza in the classroom and watch a fun movie with their friends and teachers in the movement room.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Please read on for Class news.
Ladybugs – We celebrated Quentin’s 3rd trip around the sun on Tuesday! What a fun day! We talked about what we love about the planet Earth that we live on and prepared a beautiful art installation for the playground fence to celebrate Earth Day. We also made some beautiful butterflies to carry our invitations to the Butterfly Tea to our special grown-ups. We have a tea party scheduled for May 2nd, for the first hour of class. We hope you can join us.
We are sending Gabi and Casey and Max good wishes as they are expecting a new baby on Monday, and Bryn and Chris and Jack and Wells are also in our thoughts, as they are expecting a new baby any day as well!
Crickets – Oh, my goodness! It felt like it has been a month since we have seen our crickets! Don’t they change and develop so quickly during this school year?
We started our final quarter of the school year on Monday with discussions about the earth, our feelings and welcoming our newest Cricket friend, Karen, to our class. Karen and her family have just recently moved to Issaquah from Japan and are still learning the English language, but Karen easily blended in with our Cricket class, using ‘hello’ words and manner words, and sharing a sweet greeting card with each of her classmates on Monday. Please say “hi” to Karen and her mom, Yuri and her little brother, Kaisei when you see them. Yuri found out about our program from a current Garden parent at a park. As always, we are grateful for your referrals.
Honeybees – We are entering the final quarter of this Honeybee school year and what a lot of fun events we have coming up. With the Art Show next week, Butterfly Tea the following week, we are soon at the Honeybee Roundup and our beloved Graduation ceremony. Please make sure you have all the important dates marked down on your calendars.
We started the week talking about the Earth and made some beautiful watercolor earths to hang on the playground fence. These Bees are getting so good at sounding out words, writing their letters and sharing their feelings. We sounded out “feel” at circle on Monday and then worked with ‘thought bubbles’ to say that when we think of ‘_____’, it makes us feel ‘______’. They did a great job, coming up with different words for the typical happy or sad emotions that we often feel.
Our Gibson Ek intern, Kali, worked with the children on Tuesday to write the thing that they are most grateful for about the Earth. We worked on our Art Show dances (some very complicated and fun numbers, that we can’t wait to show you) and painted some beautiful butterflies to make our invitations for the Butterfly Tea.
Please let us know if you are unable to attend the Art Show next week, as we are doing some partner dancing and will need to organize some helper alums to fill in our couples.
We celebrated Adrian’s 5th trip around the sun on Thursday and made a beautiful birthday book for our dear friend.
Have a great weekend! Hope to see you all at the Art Show next Friday!
Ladybugs
Crickets
Honeybees
Gratitude Corner
Thank you immensely to our room parents who keep our parents on track, aware and alert of all things going on throughout the year! Whether it be student allergies, auction projects, or keeping everyone in the know about special events and photo opportunities, we thank you immensely for being the staff’s go between, informants and great support. We so appreciate you!
Thank you to Tyler Wain, Cricket Ellie’s dad, for rigging up a great nozzle/spout for our rain barrel on the playground. The kids have been loving the access to the water again, and the teachers have been loving that it doesn’t stay in the ‘on’ position and drain all the water out of the rain barrel! Thanks Tyler!
Calendar
Please mark your calendar with these important dates.
April
April 26: Art Show 6:30-7:30 pm Issaquah Middle School
May
May 1: Butterfly Tea for Crickets and Honeybees
May 2: Butterfly Tea for Ladybugs
May 4: Auction Prom ~ Forever Young
May 23: Ladybug and Honeybee Classes Work Party
May 24: Cricket Class Work Party
May 27: Memorial Day-no school
Daily Class Schedule
Ladybugs
Tuesday and Thursday 8:15 – 10:45 am
Crickets
Monday, Wednesday and Friday 8:15 – 11:15 am
Honeybees
Monday-Thursday 12:15 – 3:15 pm
~ Poems~
School Poems
Part of our daily routine at The Garden is singing or saying a few of our traditional poems.
Find a printable version to our Closing Circle Song, and the poem “We Light This Candle” at the following links.