~ Bulletin Board ~
Events, opportunities and resources for our Garden community.
When: Saturday, April 29th 5-9pm
Where: Pickering Barn – 1730 10th Ave NW, Issaquah, WA 98027
Who: current families, alumni families, teachers, friends and supporters of CGS – bring your friends and family! PLEASE NOTE – This is an adult only event.
Honeybee World Culture Fair Thursday, March 30 at 3 pm
What a wonderful group of World Culture Reports we have had so far! Our eyes have been opened to wonderful attractions, beautiful music, diverse cultures, delicious foods and brilliant presenters! We have all added a few more destinations to our travel bucket lists.
Thank you for all of your assistance to the Bees, researching, cutting, pasting, rehearsing etc. It is such a rich experience for the students, and they are more practiced and comfortable standing in front of their peers and sharing what they know. It is such a point in time of maturation and confidence. We love this unit. It is a ‘coming of age’ experience for us all. Alum parents tell us it lays a strong foundation for fun and fearless public speaking in the years that follow.
Arrive 15 minutes prior to pickup and tour the world with our amazing Honeybees!
Are you joining us?
Sign up your “egg hunters”
Our bunny is getting excited for to see everyone who has signed up for our
Spring Egg Hunt
Saturday, April 1 at 10 am
Download and print our Spring Egg Hunt flyer. We will also be sending this flyer home in kid-mail next week.
~ Mousehole ~
News, pictures and videos from the classrooms.
What a fun week full of mischief! The children in all three classes enjoyed bringing a special guest to their Leprechaun Day celebration where rainbows, gold, tricks, and mischief delighted us all! Everyone found a piece of gold on the playground and took it home to treasure.
My daughter graduated from The Children’s Garden in 2000, has grown up and moved to Bellingham, Senegal, and now, Denver, and her Leprechaun Gold has moved right along with her. It is still on her dresser today. Our kids’ and our own memories that we take from The Children’s Garden are lifelong.
We have so enjoyed getting a peek at all of the class auction projects being worked on and coming together! The excitement is growing! Book your babysitter, decide on your auction outfit, and get your tickets for this year’s Garden Auction! We know you are not going to want to miss out on the fun, the excitement, the community and the auction items! Tickets are available by clicking on the QR Code in the Gazette. Can’t wait to Party like it’s 1977 with you all!
Next week, our focus in the classroom turns to all things spring in preparation for our Spring Egg Hunt on April 1st. Watch for sign-ups for helping us set up this beloved Garden Event.
We are just about a little over a month away from The Children’s Garden Art Show, so we are making our final selections of a year’s worth of art to mat and present in April. We are beginning to learn our dances that each class will perform. The Garden staff so love this event. If you notice lots of extra grins and twinkles in our eyes, you’ll know we are humming the tunes in our heads and thinking of the amazing artwork that our students have created! Watch for details of The Art Show coming soon!
Parent Teacher Conferences next week! Look for your zoom conference invitation over the next day or so from the teacher who is having your conference. No class Monday for Bees, no class Tuesday for Bugs, and no class Wednesday for Crickets.
Read on for Class News:
Ladybugs
How fun to have our special guests accompany us to Leprechaun Day on Tuesday! We had so much fun meeting several grown ups for the first time! We had 2 Grampas, 1 Mum and lots of Daddies join us in the classroom as we made Lucky Leprechaun Crowns and explore the toys and activities that our Ladybugs treasure. When we went out to the playground, we couldn’t believe our eyes! A leprechaun had left behind some of their gold! Each Ladybug took home a little treasure to remember their Ladybug Leprechaun Day. Something that we will remember from Ladybug Leprechaun Day are the wonderful tricks that were demonstrated at our circle time – dances, gymnastic tricks, jokes and secret handshakes – what amazing feats!
On Thursday, we had Teacher Ellie helping us in the classroom. We continued working on our Hungry Caterpillars and finished our Baa, Baa Black Sheep Books. We did news and had fun in the nice spring weather – sunny but cold! We also celebrated Bella’s 3rd trip around the sun! What a fun week! We so love these Ladybugs and their families!
No Class this next Tuesday, for Parent Teacher Conferences. You will receive a zoom invite from the teacher that is doing your Conference in the next day or so. We look forward to chatting with you about our favorite part of the job – your kid!
Crickets
When we think of mischief, our Crickets come to mind! We have so much fun watching their eyes twinkle as they run and play with amazing high non-stop energy throughout the campus!
Cooper’s big sister, Calla, who graduated from The Garden last year, was a big kid helper on Monday. We had fun making stamper books about Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We acted out Goldilocks a few times to give each Cricket an opportunity to be an actor and each to be an audience member. The Crickets love acting out these classic folk and fairy tales.
We read a book called, “It’s Okay to be Different” by Todd Parsons and Brook worked with the students to come up with an idea of something else that it is okay to be different about! The kids had so much fun coming up with these ideas, illustrating them and then having them read to the class. The giggles and laughs were so fun to hear, and it was such an empowering project to recognize differences in people and that it is always okay to be different! We hope you enjoy their book!
Charlotte brought in a fun sound basket for “W”. We can’t believe we are getting down to the last few letters of the alphabet! On our last day before Spring Break, we are planning an alphabet party to celebrate our accomplishment! Each Cricket will be asked to bring in a few items that start with the first letter of their name. This is a great exercise for them to begin recognizing the letters in their name and look at objects that start with the same sound. We’ll get more details on that out as we get closer to the date.
What a fun Leprechaun Day we had this morning! There are extra shenanigans and a weeeee bit more luck when Leprechaun Day falls on St. Patrick’s Day! How fun to see all of our special guests be shown around the playground and the classroom, and were those Leprechaun Hats the sweetest? We love to see the wee folk all bearded up! Can we just tell you, that the level of excellence and showmanship of our Leprechaun Day tricks keeps getting better and better! Thank you for all your support and participation in our program. We couldn’t do it without you.
Tillson’s Mum, Lindsay, helped us out in the classroom on Wednesday. It was awesome for the teachers to watch the kids run around chasing Lindsay! Man! She had some great ‘dodges’ and kept the Crickets on their toes! (She also tired them out significantly!) James’ aunt and cousin, who are visiting from Flagstaff came in to the classroom after Pickup time and James showed them around the school. We loved hearing Leah and James talking about all the things that they love about our program. The teachers beamed with pride, and took a few moments to brag about all of the things that we love about our Crickets and our Community!
No Class this next Wednesday, for Parent Teacher Conferences. You will receive a zoom invite from the teacher that is doing your Conference in the next day or so. We look forward to chatting with you about our favorite part of the job – your kid!
Honeybees
Oh, how we love our Honeybee World Culture Reports! It is hard to believe the amount of growth and confidence that has developed in our Bees. This week, we have learned about Viet Nam, Holland, Switzerland, Northern Ireland, and Brazil.
Hope you enjoy watching your child’s report that we video record for you, and we all look forward to our World Culture Fair at the end of all of the presentations where you can ‘tour’ all the countries and ask questions of the students yourselves. This date will be announced as we near the end of this unit.
We read a book called, “It’s Okay to be Different” by Todd Parsons and Brook worked with the students to come up with an idea of something else that it is okay to be different about! The kids had so much fun coming up with these ideas, illustrating them and then having them read to the class. The giggles and laughs were so fun to hear and it was such an empowering project to recognize differences in people and that it is always okay to be different! We hope you enjoy their book!
We had another “Pep Rally”, as our Honeybee Cheerleaders learned another “Star” word, Like. Star Words are made up of the 50 most frequently used words in kindergarten. Most of these words are short: I, A, Be, Me, And, At…, but some of them are longer and are not always easy to ‘sound out’: Like, Love, You… and when we introduce one of those words, we ‘cheer’ it out! “Give me an ‘L’!” “Give me an ‘I’!” …”What does it spell?” The Bees enjoy taking turns to be the letter holders and the pom pom holders, while the rest of us love cheering it all out! As we learn our Star Words, we are also learning how to use them in a sentence, what punctuation is, and how to put a space between our words when writing them out. There is a lot of learning going on in our Honeybee class!
Cassie’s Mum, Jasmine, helped us out in the classroom on Wednesday and Thursday. Lucky Jasmine! She got to watch Eowyn’s World Culture Report and participate in our circle where we are learning how to see ‘words’ in a sentence. A poem, or a sentence, is not just one big word, but a bunch of words! Finding the spaces between words is a big clue to see how many words are in the sentence. We looked at this week’s new poem to count the words in each line, figure out which line is the first line by recognizing the word, ‘Like’, and figure out which line is the last line of the poem, because it had the period at the end. Next week, once we have memorized the poem, we can delve deeper into looking at the beginning sound or letter of each line to put the lines in order and will learn a bit more about punctuation. Speaking of sentences, we had fun doing another “Spill the Beans” circle with 5 beans this time, learning all the different math sentences that can total 5! These kids are almost KINDERGARTNERS!
If your Honeybee is starting to show some strong emotions or suddenly acting shy, or sad, it could be the natural emotions that begin to show up this time of year for a lot of our students. They are realizing that they have a limited time in this classroom, with this group of peers, with these teachers, or just, that things are changing. My oldest son, John, went through this every year of elementary, middle school, all the way through high school. He would just get a kind of quiet, depression, feeling blue kind of mood on and off for the last few months of school. He would say, “I know I am going to see everybody again, but I know that it is never going to be exactly like this again.” If you are beginning to notice some emotions creeping into your family time, check out the article on transitions on our Curriculum Page.
We had such a fabulous Leprechaun Day! Glorious weather and amazing tricksters as special guests! We had fun making rainbow hats, exploring the playground and finding GOLD, and watching the amazing showmanship of our Honeybees and their loved ones! This is such a beloved special event at The Children’s Garden, and we are so glad that you could all see why.
No Class this next Monday, for Parent Teacher Conferences. You will receive a zoom invite from the teacher that is doing your Conference in the next day or so. We look forward to chatting with you about our favorite part of the job – your kid!
Enjoy the weekend!
~ Gratitude Corner ~
We love our community and are so grateful and humbled by the support and love you so generously give! Thank you!
We are so lucky to have you!
We loved watching the children dance, show off their special tricks and revel in the magic that only a Children’s Garden Leprechaun Day can bring! Thank you to everyone who joined us for this event and to ALL our Garden family members;
May love and laughter light your days, and warm you heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours, wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world with joy that long endures.
May all life’s passing seasons bring the best to you and yours!
~ Office Notes~
Finalize Your Enrollment by March 31
If you’ve got an incoming student for the 2023-2024 school year, you’ve completed registration and now it’s time to finalize your enrollment.
It’s easy!
- comple your 2023-2024 Tuition Agreement and
- pay the Enrollment Fee.
Not sure if you’ve finalized enrollment? Check in with Brin or view your completed forms and paid fees in your student’s Brightwheel account.
Grab Your Green Bag!
Our next Community Cornucopia collection for the Issaquah Food Bank will be the last week of March for an April 1 delivery.
Bag pick-up and drop-off as well as a list of Issaquah Food Bank requested items are in the office.
Visit our Community Cornucopia page for info.
Folk Music Singalong
We are thrilled to bring a Happy Time Sing-along to our Honeybee and Cricket class led by professional musician and alum parent Ali Marcus of Happy Time Studio.
Parents and siblings are welcome to join us for the last half hour of class on
March 27 from 2:45-3:15 for the Honeybee class and
April 5 from 10:45-11:15 for the Cricket class.
Ali will strum a few folk songs on her guitar giving us the words and some historical context about the artist and songs we sing.
What a fun and lovely way to come together in song and stories in this live music event.
~ Upcoming Events~
Please mark your calendar with these important dates.
Month at a glance
March
March 20 – Honeybee Conferences during class time. No School for Honeybees
March 21 – Ladybug Conferences during class time. No School for Ladybugs
March 22 – Cricket Conferences during class time. No school for Crickets
March 27 – 12:45 pm Join us for the Happy Time Studio Singalong for Honeybees during the last half hour of class.
March 30 – Honeybee World Culture Fair
March 27-31 – Community Cornucopia donation deadline. Please bring your bags to the office on or before March 31.
April
April 1 – All School Egg Hunt
April 5 – 10:45 am Join us for the Happy Time Studio Singalong for Crickets during the last half hour of class.
April 10-14 Spring Break
April 29 – Let’s Party Like it’s 1977! Children’s Garden School Auction4
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
~ Quick Links~
Quick access to informative Garden pages.
Health and Wellness
What are the protocols for a stuffy nose?
Please view our Health and Wellness page for our health safety practices and protocols for the 2022-2023 school year.
Curriculum
Explore our Curriculum page for the foundational elements of our programming to see how we integrate social skills, literacy and math readiness, science, cultural enrichment, and the creative arts in an emergent, play-based environment in our unique natural setting.
Closure and Inclement Weather
With winter weather upon us, you can view our Closure and Inclement Weather page for policy information and pick up a hard copy from the bulletin board.
While we monitor conditions at the school, please note our families live across a broad geographical area and conditions in your neighborhood or on your route to/from school may differ from that at The Children’s Garden. If you are concerned that it is not safe for you or your child to be on the road, please do not hesitate to stay home.