
Bulletin Board
Events, opportunities and resources for our Garden community.
Substitutes in the Classroom
We are lucky to have many wonderful in-house options when one of the staff is unable to make it to work. This said, there are times we reach out to our wonderful out-of-house substitutes, all of whom have professional experience working with small children, we know well, adore, and have the upmost trust in. We would like to take a moment to introduce you to a few faces you may have seen, or may see in the future with our classes. Like all employees of the school, every sub is background checked. If you or someone you know are interested in joining our sub list please let us know!

Fio
What I love the most about spending time at the Children’s garden school is playing outside with everyone, playing with the tire swing, coloring inside and definitely reading books.

Matt
My favorite things to do at The Garden are being chased on the playground, reading silly stories, and circle time!

The Garden Community Cares About The Earth
Our opening circle song says “to take good care of the earth” and what better way to do that than to keep plastic film from her soil. The Children’s Garden school is hosting a plastic film drive from now until November 1!

Belleamie’s Birthday Gifts, our annual virtual fundraiser, kicks off next week!
Children will be celebrating our friend Belleamie’s birthday with festivities and fun in the classrooms. Belleamie will be handing out a party favors:
Thursday, October 24th
Ladybugs and Honeybees celebrate Belleamie
Friday, October 25th
Crickets celebrate Belleamie
The Mousehole
Well, another fun and eventful week at The Garden! (Are you recognizing a trend?!) We kicked off the week with a lovely day on Monday – no rain and lots of wonderful falling leaf play! Oh! How the kids loved chasing the ‘leaf fall’ and making wishes on the leaves that they caught!
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving to those who celebrate and hope you all had a wonderful Yom Kippur! A special congratulations to Donna, who became a grandmother on Tuesday, to a sweet boy, named Sebastian Wells! Donna has three children and is feeling very lucky to have her first grandchild be born to the one child who lives locally! Thank you from Donna, for all of your warm wishes.
We had such sweet connections with you all during our Fall Check-Ins, and we spent the week learning about leaves, pumpkins and Autumn.
We had our October Board meeting Tuesday night and we so love spending time with our Board of Trustees, solving problems, making plans, and supporting our mission statement.
What a fun way to wrap up the week by spending our Friday morning with our Garden Community at the Carpinito Brothers Family Fun Yard! The staff absolutely loves spending the day with all our kiddos and families in such a beautiful setting. Thank you, Carpinito Families!
Read on for class news:
Ladybugs: What a wonderful week we had with our littlest littles! We started working on our “Itsy Bitsy Spider” booklets and had fun playing on the playground amongst the fall leaves. We continued our work on our autumnal Art Show piece, and we shared our news about pumpkin patch visits and our excitement about the Carpinito Brothers Family Fun Yard on Friday! On Thursday morning we celebrated Caleb’s birthday. How fun to watch the Ladybugs learn about The Garden birthday circle.
We took turns at circle, dancing about our clothes. During free play time, all the children danced about their clothes on the rug. During circle, all but two got up and danced in front of their peers. The last two had us ‘sing’ about their clothes, but did not get up to dance. Every little advancement is growth! We love that we are seeing such comfort levels so early!
These Bugs are becoming such a sweet and connected group of kids. We all started as parallel players, but it is exciting to watch as they begin to learn how to share and ask for a turn. It is a hard concept to learn and it is happening!
Crickets: We had a fun two days, playing for a long time on Monday outside on the sunny and dry playground, and learning about the parts of a leaf. Each Cricket took a turn to stand at circle and state their name, tell us their plan, and then demonstrate what they know. “Hi, I’m Donna, and I am going to do “Jack Be Nimble”. Each of our kiddos then recited the poem and ‘jumped’ over our candlestick at the center of circle. We are so proud of our Crickets!
We learned about the parts of a leaf, the stem, the veins, etc. as we rubbed a crayon over a mystery item, and it revealed what we were studying. We finished our beautiful ‘leaf forest’ pictures to hang in the Movement Room windows. Aren’t they gorgeous?
Eleanor brought in a fun “F” sound basket and, of course, we did news.
The Crickets worked hard this week, practicing our ‘cleaning up’ skills and our ‘raising a quiet hand’ skills at circle. These kiddos have SO MUCH TO SAY! :0)
The Honeybee class had such a wonderful time on the playground on Monday, as they ran amongst the whirling and swirling autumn leaves and tried to catch them midair. Isn’t this such a beautiful time of year?
At circle, we had a wonderful sound basket from Jeffrey, about the letter “N”, practiced making rainbow “N’s”, and we practiced our recognition of ‘starting letter’ sounds to put the lines of our poem in order. Each child took a turn to step up at circle and recite the poem, using the sentence strips as our guide. Every Honeybee completed their “AT” books, so you should have one at home for your child to ‘read’ to you. They are really catching on to the idea of rhyming words and sounding out initial letters of a word.
Brook worked with the children on identifying the parts of a leaf, the stem, the veins, the blade and the apex, etc. Brook finds such fun ways to use our theme words and subjects in song and circle activities. Last week we did the lifecycle of the salmon to the tune of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and this week, we woke up our ‘leaf bodies’ using the new terms that we have learned when studying the parts of a leaf.
Emily worked with the kids on an absolutely stunning art project, making Lions with a leaf stamped mane and a roller fern leaf background. Check them out! They are so beautiful! We love having so much beautiful art work hanging around the campus!
Cara worked with the kids and introduced our ‘Spill the Beans’ game at circle. We are working with “3” this week, so three lima beans are placed in a cup. One side of the beans is painted red. The kids shake the beans in the cup and ‘spill them’. We then ask the kids; how many beans are red? How many beans are white? How many beans are there all together? And then we write it out as math sentences. 2 + 1 = 3. We repeat the process several times and get other sentences, 1 + 2 = 3, 0 + 3 = 3, 3 + 0 = 3, etc. It is so exciting to watch the kids’ faces and their eyes light up, as they recognize what an amazing concept they just figured out!
We read a wonderful book called “Why do Leaves Change Color” and learned how the leaf gathers air, water and light to make food for the tree, and the chlorophyll and pigment in the leaf change the color as the tree slows down it’s need for food in winter and closes off the supply line.
The most important thing that we are ‘teaching’ all three of our classes, is their love of learning and their social emotional skills. We are so proud of all that our kiddos learn during their time here, at The Garden.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Pumpkin Patch
Ladybugs
Crickets
Honeybees
Gratitude Corner
What a huge thank you we have for the Carpinito Families for hosting our annual Pumpkin Patch visit! What a fun day to spend with all of our friends and families at the Carpinito Brothers Farm Fun Yard! We loved watching the kiddos race their rubber ducks, ride on the hay wagons and explore the beautiful pumpkin farm, but mostly, we loved spending time with all of our Garden families and alums! What an amazing day!
This week, we thought it would be so fun to say a huge thank you to our teacher, Cari. Cari joined us when Brook was expecting her first child. Cara ran into Cari’s husband at a youth soccer game and mentioned that we needed a maternity leave sub for Brook. Mark Kovats, an alum dad of The Garden, said that he would mention it to Cari, a former Kindergarten teacher, and alum Garden Mom, as she had been mentioning that she wanted to maybe get back into teaching.
How blessed are we!?! That this ‘Ladybug Whisperer’, was open to the idea and available, to take on our two mornings a week class, and that she forms such loving bonds with the littlest littles, that we all love the reunions when she subs for the Crickets or the Bees.
Cari and Mark have three kids that have gone through The Children’s Garden and have always been such true supporters of our program. Cari is the teacher who will remember the name of your child’s stuffy, and years later, when she is cleaning out her kids’ toybox, will still be reminded of your child, when she finds an animal that is the same. She will take home the peek-a-boo books each week to make them fold exactly so, and then delight each week, working with your ladybug, in creating their own personal wristlet books to bring home. Cari is the first teacher to turn the fireplace on and the last teacher that each Ladybug hugs goodbye.
We sure love and appreciate you, Cari! We are so grateful to you!
Book shelf, wagon appreciations
Office Notes
News and reminders from the office.

Parking Lot Practices
From arriving and parking to exiting the driveway, we have some parking lot practices to help make drop-off and pick-up safe and smooth.
- Create 2 lanes when exiting the driveway
- Always hold hands with children while in the parking lot.
- Park according to our Parking Lot Map
Visit our Parking Lot Practices page for details and a downloadable parking lot map.

What if my child has COVID like symptoms?
My child has an ongoing cough,
can they come to school?
What are The Children’s Garden School’s Health & Wellness Safety Practices?
For answers to these questions and information about our health and wellness policies please visit our
Health and Wellness Page.
Calendar
Please mark your calendar with these important dates.
October
- October 21-27: Belleamie’s Birthday Gifts
- October 24: Belleamie Birthday Circle-Ladybugs and Honeybees
- October 25: Ladybug Birthday Circle-Crickets
- October 30: Halloween Crickets
- October 31: Halloween Ladybugs
- October 31: Halloween Honeybees

Save the Date!
Winter Celebration
Friday, December 6
6:30-7:30 pm
Issaquah Middle 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.