Garden Gazette January 13, 2023

News, pictures and videos from the classrooms.

Hello Gardeners! Happy Friday! Boy the week started off with gusty winds and flickering lights but settled into typical Pacific Northwest January weather by the end of the week! Please familiarize yourself with our emergency school closure page below. We were without power, but outside on the playground for our first Cricket class of the week. Luckily, the power came back on, because the wind gusts started sending branches dropping and sailing all around us and we immediately took the Crickets inside to safer space. If we had no power, we would have probably kept the kiddos in the courtyard, away from tall trees and texted or called for early pick up.

Honeybee Joaquin’s dad, Jeremy, surprised us all with a fun pulley system to get water out of the creek! The kids had so much fun raising and lowering the bucket to provide water for the kids lined up with all the new pots and pans and dishes for the mud kitchen! It was quite the hot spot! Thank you so much Jeremy for your ingenuity, time, and thoughtfulness to give us such a fun new addition to our playground!

Our Gibson Ek intern, Niyaz, started out in the Ladybug class early in the school year, but for scheduling and other preferences, he moved to the Honeybee class after two or three weeks. This week, Niyaz informed us that he has found a different internship that is more aligned with his learning path. We are sorry to see him go, and our Honeybee class decorated a Thank You banner for Niyaz. It was sweet to hear the little things that they remembered about him or are thankful for. Yesterday, we met Lily, a 9^th grade student at Gibson Ek, who is going to begin working with us next week. She spent the afternoon with the Honeybees and was a wonderful help! She will come next Tuesday morning to observe the Ladybug class and then let us know if she feels the morning or afternoon classes on Tuesday and Thursday will be the best fit for her. We love our partnership with our local high school students. The children love the high energy level of the teenagers, and the teachers enjoy watching the love of teaching grow in these young adults. It’s a wonderful program.

With our enrollment/registration for the 2023-2024 school year currently going on, we are excited to envision our classes for next year. The staff have been approaching some parents about recommendations for placements in the fall. We feel that there are some students who could benefit with a placement in a different class – perhaps a repeat of their current class, or a jump to a class ahead. Please confirm your plans on returning to The Garden, and chat with the teachers if you have questions regarding your child’s placement.

We are getting excited to officially kick off our auction season next Saturday, the 21^st at 1PM. We all can’t wait to find out the fun theme that the auction committee has chosen, so that we can start choosing our auction outfit for April 29^th at the Pickering Barn! The auction is our biggest fundraising event of the year, and THE party of the year for our Garden community! Hope to see at least one adult from each family at the Kickoff to get all the details on our responsibilities, expectations, and ways to have fun and help out.  

Ladybugs   

Oh! These Bugs are amazing us! Just after a few months of school, they are entering the classroom, greeting their classmates by name, and asking where those are that have not arrived yet. The kiddos had fun attending ‘tea parties’ with our Ladybug tea set – so adorable, and we also enjoyed reading stories from Korzen’s storybook, “Collection of stories for 2 Year Olds”. We loved the book so much, we immediately went to Amazon and ordered their 2,3-,4- and 5-year-old story collections.

We practiced “Wee Willy Winkie” and acted it out some more, and we worked on our fun snowy art pieces that we started last week. Each of our Bugs practiced using scissors, some for the first time.

We celebrated Ainsley’s ½ birthday on Thursday, as she has a summer birthday. What an exciting couple of weeks for Ainsley! Becoming a big sister again, this time to a baby brother, her daddy creating a pathway and gate from her home to The Garden, and a half birthday celebration! Ainsley, like a lot of our Bugs is really finding her voice in our class! We love to see/hear it!

Crickets

Wow! What a windy start to our week!? Our poor Crickets playground time was cut short when the wind gusts started breaking branches on the tall trees, and after snack, they started asking, “When do we get to play outside again?” We made up for it on Wednesday by having an extra long time on the playground!

We had a fun “O” sound basket brought in by our “O” friend, Olivia! We realized that we were over halfway through the alphabet, so we spent our work time practicing correct formation of all the letters, A-O. At circle, we used our “Mat Man” wooden bars and curves to let each child come up and form a letter with the pieces. It was sweet to see some of the kids saying, “I need a little help”, and then having other Crickets jump up and say, “I can help you!”

We finished our “Elmer the Elephant” Art Show pieces, and we read more books that have a similar theme to “Elmer”. It’s okay to be different, you don’t have to look like everyone else, and looking one way is not better than looking another way. Elmer, Rainbow Fish, Sneetches, We all Sing with the Same Voice, etc. are stories that are beloved by the kids and also send a lovely message. We learned the song “I am Amazing!”

The Crickets have definitely turned the Winter Break Corner and are happily and excitedly enjoying every single moment of school! They are loud, they are active, they are CRICKETS! We love to see it, although we are constantly asking our kiddos to use an inside voice, use walking feet inside the classroom and not to talk while the teacher is talking at circle time! These Crickets love their classmates, and we teachers love these Crickets. What a fun group.

Honeybees

The Bees started off the week celebrating Joaquin’s 5^th trip around the sun on Monday. We so love the Honeybee birthday circle. It is wonderful to watch our kiddos be honored by each of their classmates, hearing what they love about the birthday person, what the birthday person is really good at, and what they think the birthday person will be when they grow up and why and their special wish for their classmate. This is such a memory for our Honeybees from their final year at preschool.

The Bees had fun opening our class holiday gift at circle on Tuesday and we had so many lovely tea parties and celebrations. The children used our shape puzzles to provide cookies, chocolate mousse, donuts, and finger sandwiches! Wow! You families know how to Tea Party! We loved it. Thank you so much!

As mentioned above, our enrollment/registration process has begun, and we have been hearing several parents talking about paths that they are exploring for the kindergarten year. While our Parent Teacher Conferences are not until early March, we are always available to chat about your child before then. If you have questions or concerns or need suggestions or referrals, or if you are interested in repeating the Honeybee year, please let us know. We are happy to discuss the options that are available.

Each week, we are paired up with a new hive and we love the opportunity to get to know all our classmates! This week we began preparing for our first report! Each student did a report on their hive mate! The Bees interviewed their partner, asked them simple questions and then delved deeper to find out what they have in common…. what do they both love, what do they both dislike, etc., and then our bees stood in front of circle and gave their report on their classmate.  We loved watching these reports this week. It was absolutely lovely to watch the expressions on their faces when they realized that they had likes in common, or skillsets in common, even having similar hair!

Ava’s mom, Jackie, came into class on Thursday to help the Bees make their own ‘kitty cat pizzas’! How fun! We so enjoy having parents or grandparents coming into class to share a skill or an interest with our students. If you would like to spend 30 minutes or so in class sharing a musical instrument that you play, doing a science experiment, teaching something or even reading stories, please let us know and we will schedule it. We love having guests!

During one of our circle discussions this week, we talked about how our “Good Guy/Bad Guy” or “Bad Kitties” or “Pirates/Good Guy” play games often happen to hurt feelings, even if that is not the intention of the game. We brainstormed other games that we enjoy playing that do not hurt feelings and are lots of fun to play! This week, we redirected any good/bad play to one of the other fun games that we listed. It was a very fun week, and we had lots of smiling kids walking down the brick path each day!

The teachers’ goal is for all of our students to leave The Children’s Garden with a love of learning, an appreciation of individual differences, a joy in celebrating their own uniqueness, and a desire to contribute and be a part of a greater community.