~ Bulletin Board ~
Events, opportunities and resources for our Garden community.
Palm Springs!
We have a very exciting announcement to share! A generous alumni family donated a 4 night-stay in sunny Palm Springs at a retro galactic themed VRBO home to this year’s auction! Did you know that the sun shines in Palm Springs 350 days of the year!?!? A perfect getaway for all of us in Washington who need a little more sun. Start planning your next trip and get ready to bid on this item in a few weeks!
Cricket Folk Music Singalong
Wednesday, April 5 at 10:45 am
We had a wonderful Happy Time Sing-along to our Honeybee lass this week led by professional musician and alum parent Ali Marcus of Happy Time Studio.
We look forward to Cricket parents and siblings joining us for the last half hour of class next week.
April 5 from 10:45-11:15
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.
~ Mousehole ~
News, pictures and videos from the classrooms.
What a nice week we had! We have been sprucing up the school grounds to get ready for the Spring Egg Hunt tomorrow, (No Fooling!) as well as starting to learn dances for our upcoming Art Show! This time of year, it feels like the next big event is right around the corner! – well, it is!
Please make sure that you are checking the Gazette, kid news and the school calendar below, so you don’t miss out on any of our special events – each one full of such wonderful memories.
Each of our students, in all three classes, have been having fun going out to Brin’s office throughout the year to use the extra bathroom, be a class messenger and take the daily attendance out to her, and some just love going out to visit with Brin and have a little solace from the high energy of the classroom! Lately, we have been sending the children out to be ‘interviewed’ by Brin, as she is writing the “About the Artist” biographies for our Spring Art Show. Both Brin and the student are loving this little ‘one on one’ time together.
We’ve been seeing such creative and fun class projects coming in for the auction. Hope you have your tickets purchased, your sitter booked and your groovy outfit picked out! We can’t wait to Party like it’s 1977!
One more week of school before Spring Break! The Crickets and the Bees will be having an Alphabet Party, the staff will welcome last year’s graduates for a movie night, and we will all be celebrating this beautiful Spring.
Read on for Class News:
Ladybugs
On Tuesday, we had fun making our cute decorations for the Spring Egg Hunt tomorrow. Wait ‘til you see these adorable little creations. We wrote down everyone’s’ news and recited “Baa Baa Black Sheep”, read a cute story called “We’re Going on an Egg Hunt”, and enjoyed a nice long time out on the playground.
We celebrated Maddy’s ½ birthday on Thursday and made some great art from the easel for the Art Show. We also started learning our dance for the Art Show. Lilly’s big brother and alum of The Garden, Nolan, was a fabulous big kid helper in class on Thursday. We loved his wonderful manners and his happy memories of his time at Children’s Garden!
We hope to see you all tomorrow!
Crickets
We painted some ginormous eggs for the Spring Egg Hunt tomorrow, and continued learning our dances for the Art Show.
As we warm up our bodies, we are learning some Italian! Ada’s family helped us fill in a chart with the different body parts names in Italian. See if your Cricket remembers any of the phrases!
We went up to the forest on Wednesday, did some hikes and did some Spring cleanup around the tree circle, getting ready for the Egg Hunt. If you are not already having your Cricket student help you out with some gardening or yard work, you’ll be surprised to see how much they enjoy it and how much they accomplish!
We hope to see you all tomorrow!
Honeybees
What an exciting week for all of us in the Honeybee Class! We travelled to Mexico, and Italy with our World Culture Reports and finished the week with our World’s Fair on Thursday, where every Honeybee stood with their board and took questions and feedback from all of the Bee parents! Didn’t they do a fabulous job on all of their reports? We hope you enjoyed them all as much as we do. We are so proud of these 4- and 5-year-olds with their courage to stand up in front of their peers and present what they have learned.
We continued reading our “Wee Think” social emotional books. This week, we learned about ‘thought bubbles’ and reading body language to figure out how someone is feeling and we also learned about sticking to the ‘group plan’.
Our smaller class size, (breaking into two groups) has been wonderful this week. We always notice with our students that they seem to get a lot of “spring fever” this time of year and built up energy. Making the class size smaller has been a great help at keeping the super loud stimulation down. We’ve been working with both of our groups taking some English ivy from a few beautiful trees on our playground. The kids feel like super heroes, saving the lives of these beautiful trees. They loved watching the pile of ivy grow huge! as the week went on.
Our friend Emily was sick the first few days of the week and we were so grateful to have Eowyn’s mum, Rebecca, help us out on Monday, and Cari help us out on Tuesday. We were blown away by all of the parents who texted us to say that they would be happy to help. Thank you everyone! We so love and appreciate our community! The staff and students were happy to see Emily back in the classroom on Wednesday!
On Wednesday, we watched a fun video of some dance moves to help us get ready for the Art Show. We all can’t wait to show off our dancers!
We hope to see you all tomorrow!
Ladybugs
Crickets
Honeybees
~ Gratitude Corner ~
We love our community and are so grateful and humbled by the support and love you so generously give! Thank you!
Spring Has Sprung!
Spring has sprung in our courtyard with beautiful flowers. Much thanks for all the beautification prep for our Spring Egg Hunt by Cricket James’ mom Leah, next year incoming Ladybug Arianna’s mom Jennifer, and Cricket Cooper’s grandma Lisa Reinitz, who also sprinkled her spring magic and decorated our courtyard wreath!
Garden Gloves
Our Forest Force has been saving the day by pulling heaps and piles of English Ivy from our beautiful trees. Thank you so much to Honeybee Nathaniel’s mom Stephanie Cryer for donating adorable garden gloves for all our Forest Super Heroes!
~ From the Board~
The Garden Needs Your Help!
Here at the Children’s Garden we are so lucky to be a part of such a nurturing environment where our children are learning and growing every day, and our tireless teachers contribute their heart and souls. As parents and families of our students, we know that each one of you plays a vital part in weaving together the fabric of this community. We are pleased to be able to offer so many varied ways for you to join us in building these bonds together.
Today we want to announce that we are seeking a new Board Treasurer to join our Board of Directors’ leadership team in July of 2023. Every year, we have new board members join as others complete their service. This year, our dedicated Treasurer is moving on, and it is crucial that we find someone to fill this very important role for our community.
The key activities of the Treasurer include:
- Work with Brin and our bookkeeper every month (about mid-month) to produce monthly reports/analysis to the board;
- Lead the annual budgeting process between February and June;
- Provide insight and guidance to the Board throughout your term as we work through strategic assessments and decisions about program and policies.
The ideal Treasurer has bookkeeping and accounting experience, proficiency with accounting software and Excel, and is a detailed and accurate project manager. They can investigate and analyze specifics as well as link it to the bigger picture for the larger leadership team.
This is an open call to our community and we are very much looking forward to hearing from you and brainstorming or answering your questions.
Board service is so much more than the donation of your time and professional expertise; it’s an opportunity to connect and share in the Garden experience in a unique and special way. Our board terms are three years long, in order to provide as much stability and effectiveness for the program as possible.
If you are interested in joining the Board as Treasurer, or if you have any questions about the position, please do not hesitate to reach out by responding to this email or emailing our board President, Erika White, directly at helloerikawhite@gmail.com.
Thank you for your consideration of serving The Children’s Garden in this meaningful way.
~ Office Notes~
Honeybee World Culture Fair Thursday, March 30 at 3 pm
Mark your calendars Honeybee families and join us for a tour of the world as our Bees show their World Culture Report boards and answer questions.
Bring Your Eggs Next Week!
Thank you to everyone who signed up to join us at our
Spring Egg Hunt
Saturday, April 1 at 10 am
Remember to drop off one dozen hardboiled decorated eggs for each egg hunter you will be bringing on or before Friday, March 31 at 11:30 am.
~ Upcoming Events~
Please mark your calendar with these important dates.
Month at a glance
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.
