h Wow! What a great Salmon Days weekend we had last weekend! The rains held off and several staff members reported Garden Community sightings! That’s the best! We saw a few of our Gardeners in their beautiful salmon hats. How sweet! 

The teachers loved ‘bragging’ about and presenting our curriculum last week. Staff is now preparing for our check-ins coming up in two weeks. If you were unable to attend the curriculum coffee talk, please check out our curriculum page on our website. Our website dives into the history of the school and program and has our Mission Statement, which is the basis of our philosophy. We are a play based, social emotional curriculum, with a hearty curriculum to help prepare our students for Kindergarten, as well as building community and good citizenship in our students and their families. 

Brin was out of the office this week, celebrating her mother’s 80th birthday in Arizona, and Donna left on Wednesday for a few days in London and then a week in Ireland. Brin will be back next week and Donna will be back in class on the 20th. With our regular staff of Brook, Cara, Cari and Emily, we are so fortunate to add Freya to our quiver. The consistency and the flexibility of the Garden teachers to rotate around and sub in other classes, keeps the consistency going for our students and families, as they continue to see the same faces in all three classes and the office.  

We are excited to see everyone at Carpinito Brothers next Friday for our annual Pumpkin Patch trip! Bring the whole family! The teachers will join you and hopefully a few big sibling alums will be able to join us also. 

Ladybug

The Ladybugs started working on a fun autumnal art project that we will save for our Spring Art show. Each year at The Garden, we create three or four beautiful multi layer art projects that are matted and titled by the children. We hold on to these art projects to present at our All School Spring Art Show that is held sometime in April or May. Our intern, Kali, has offered to take on the project of creating a weekly take home art project that will come home with mail on Thursdays. 

We made peek-a-boo books based on the Closing Circle Song. We hope you will have your Ladybug read their booklets to you at home. 

Cricket

We started a beautiful Fall LeafArt Show project that we will save for our Spring Art show. We continue to work our way through the alphabet looking at the letter “D” this week, and using wooden pieces at circle, called “Mat Man”  to form the upper case D. 

We started working with the Crickets to write their names in all uppercase letters. Some of the kids traced a ‘yellow brick road’ and others tried to form the letters themselves. We work with the kiddos where they are at. This gives us a good idea of their pencil grip, their hand dominance, (right or left) and if they recognize the letters in their name. This is the work of the Cricket class.

We also worked with our Cricket friends on recognizing the numbers 1,2,3, 4 and 5. We love the song, “1,2,3,4,5…once I caught a fish alive” and we want to work with the kids to recognize the written numbers. When we did calendars last week, we also worked on tracing the first 5 numbers.  This week, we finished our salmon study, learning a song called “I am a Salmon” and made a peek-a-boo booklet about the song.

Second Step is well underway

Honeybee

We practiced saying our poem, “I think mice are rather nice”, and we are learning a new poem, “October is a Grumpy Man!” This particular poem was written by an alum dad, when his youngest of 4 Garden students was in the Honeybee class. Coco St. Pierre Nelson was one of our Garden Grads at Homecoming this year. One of our classic poems is “September is a Lady in a Russet Gown”, and Tom and Coco decided to write their own example, speaking of turning green leaves brown, windy days, rains, and the days getting darker, thus, “October is a Grumpy Man”. We love to watch the Bees recite this poem, complete with stomping feet and furrowed brow. 

The Bees are working with Emily on a beautiful salmon themed Art Show piece that we will save to display in spring. The works of art that we display at the Spring Art Show are typically multi stepped, done over the course of several days. Many different mediums are used and different application processes. Many of our alum students’ art show pieces are still framed and displayed in their homes, and the offices of their parents.