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
Friday, April 26 is the last Day to Purchase Prom Tickets
The Mousehole
We started this week celebrating Earth Day and we will wrap up this week celebrating art and all things beautiful on this Earth! The children talked at each circle this week about the things that we love and appreciate about the earth, and how we can help to keep it healthy and beautiful. During work time, we focused on practicing our dances for the Art Show and made our beautiful invitations for the Butterfly Tea next week. We know you are going to appreciate all the work that has been put into both of these special events of The Children’s Garden School Year.
It was such a beautiful day on Monday that the Crickets and Honeybees spent extra time outside enjoying the sunshine. As the sun begins to make the days warmer, dare we say hotter, we invite the students to bring along a pair of rubber boots for some creek play! Water shoes don’t work, as the water is icy cold, but a pair of rubber boots that go up to their shins is perfect! It’s also a great time to make sure that they have an extra pair of clothes to change into (that fit!) in their cubbies, in case they take a fall in the water. Tyler Wain, Cricket Ellie’s dad, fitted the rain barrel with a great spigot and the kids have been having a great time playing with the water in the mud kitchen and watering the plants on the playground. We’ve actually had to refill the rain barrel with the hose just to keep their water needs met!
Next week is our Butterfly Tea Parties. In March, we had special guests join us on Leprechaun Day. We hope to have a different special person join us for our Butterfly Tea. This is a tea party, where our students will be encouraged to use a microphone to say “My name is ____, and I love you _____” to whoever is present. We have also been rehearsing a recitation for each of our students and see if that happens. We always encourage, never demand, and always celebrate where are students are at. We hope a special person from each family can join us for this memorable special event.
We’ve put the loaner mittens away for the spring and summer. The kids still ask for them, but mostly to keep their hands free of sand and dirt! This would be a great time to check the top shelf of the lending library to see if there is anything of yours in the lost and found. There are water bottles, lots of gloves, hats, dishes, and adult clothing as well. Check it out and claim it. Anything unclaimed by the end of the school year goes to a donation center.
While you’re at the lending library, please check out the new books added and the pile of puzzles. Help yourself to take one or more home to enjoy and then pass it along to a friend or neighbor. Feel free to bring a few good books or toys from your spring cleaning to share or pass along. Our Lending library was built by an alum dad and dedicated to the memory of an alum mom who lost her battle to cancer a few years ago. We love our lending library and enjoy seeing parents sitting and reading books on the steps as they wait for the bell to ring to start class.
So, tomorrow is the Art Show. The staff is beyond excited, as this is an event that showcases the growth and expressions of the students over the past year. We love watching the kids dance and play, and enjoy seeing their pride as they stand in front of their years’ worth of visual art. We display the kids guided art pieces, as well as their free form art pieces from the easel. Several parents have asked us why their child’s art work looks so different from the drawings and paintings that they do at home. At The Children’s Garden, our students always have the space and quality materials to experiment and play with the materials available. The easel is always open, lots of different paints and crayons and stickers and markers are always available. We also ask our kids to ‘make a frame’ around each of their art pieces. In our minds, it is always frame worthy, as it is always what the child wants to ‘show’. The matting definitely sets the works apart from everyday scribbles, but is something that you can also do with their everyday scribbles! When we ask the children to title or name their pieces, this too adds importance to their artwork. We look at photo books of lots of artists’ works – we show several different artists’ methods of drawing a human face – Picasso, Dali, Rembrandt, Klimt, Van Gogh – not just to show different methods, but to also show that no way is ‘correct’ and no way is ‘wrong’. Everyone’s drawing of a face is ART. We appreciate everyone’s way of creating art. Please stroll through the three classes of art work this evening and look for the evolution of art work from the Ladybug class through the Honeybee class. The Ladybugs start with pure freedom and you can see that the Honeybee’s become more controlled and directed. The staff absolutely loves The Annual Art Show and we hope you can all make it tonight at 6:30 at Issaquah Middle School for an hour of celebrating Preschool visual and movement art.
Hope to see you at the Art Show Friday evening, hope you all have a wonderful weekend, basking in the glow of the fabulous community building Art Show, and we are excited to see our special guests next week at our Butterfly Tea Parties.
Please read on for Class news.
Ladybugs
We celebrated Peyton’s 3rd trip around the sun on Tuesday! How fun to honor each of our kiddos at their own circle. We created beautiful butterflies to invite our special guests to our Butterfly Tea Party next Tuesday for the first hour of class.
Crickets
What a fun week with the Crickets! We read some fun books about the earth and how to celebrate our planet for Earth Day and to take care of our Earth because it is our home!
Honeybees
The Bees started Monday with almost 2 hours outside. It was such a beautiful day and we had fun playing with water and enjoying our snack as a picnic break. It is hard to believe that we only have 7 weeks more with these Bees. We learned about word families – all the words that end in _ook, and all the words that end in _ee. Two things that eyes do, is ‘see’ and ‘look’, and we read the next book in our series of “Wee Thinkers” and talked about how we can read what someone is thinking by following their eyes.
It is never too late to work with the kids on being inclusive, rather than excluding. Just Monday, we overheard some exclusive behavior and focused our class on making sure that we always check in, always include everyone and try to always be aware of other people’s feelings. We are always learning and working to make our Garden grads the best students entering Kindergarten.
Can’t wait to see you all at The Art Show Friday evening and wish you all a wonderful weekend.
Gratitude Corner
We are so frickin’ grateful for our Office Manager, 4th teacher, beloved arm stamper, extra bathroom host, and major, do all, solve all, help all, hear all, Wonder Woman, BRIN! Brin gets this newsletter out each week, on time, with all the QR codes, Sign Up Geniuses, and calendar announcements – whether she is in the office or across the country! We so love our Brin and certainly miss her when she is gone! Brin is the first face that new families see and the last face that they see as they wrap up their graduation and gather their emergency kits and extra clothes, along with Kindergarten referrals and requests to be big kid helpers. She is the brilliant Gazebo decorator, calendar designer and the staff’s first go to when we are experiencing technical difficulties. When Brin sees a need for something, she will lay awake at night, thinking of solutions. Often times, the staff just needs to look at Brin with a puzzled look and she will jump in, look at our phones and suggest fixes. She lends an ear when we are discussing a needed tweak in the classroom and she offers ideas, based on her years as a mother at The Garden, or suggestions, based on her work with other non-profits. Brin’s love of The Garden is deeply rooted with both of her daughters blossoming through their three years at The Garden, and we love how she glows as she watches The Garden Way continue on. WE LOVE YOU BRIN!
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.