To those that observe Yom Kippur, we hope you had a meaningful fast and a good end and good year ahead of you. 

Wasn’t the Homecoming so much fun? We love how many current families came out to play with the staff and each other and we so love catching up with our wonderful Garden Alumni. Thank you to Elisa and Erica for heading up the Homecoming gathering! We sure had a wonderful time and the food was great! Congratulations to Yuri, the Bake-off winner! That upside down apple cake was delicious! We loved hearing the Garden Grads’ memories and plans, how much they appreciated the roots of The Children’s Garden and how they were going to use their wings in the future. 

Speaking of Homecoming, we are excited about the Salmon Days festival in Downtown Issaquah this weekend! We hope your kids wear their salmon hats and show off what they have learned about our resident celebrity fish. The staff are all huge fans of the festival and we love to unexpectedly run into current students and alums! If you happen to see one of us wandering around, shout our name! We’d love to see you.  

Welcome back to Teacher Cara! I don’t know who was more excited that our sweet teacher has returned, Cara? Or the students? Each of our staff have some once in a lifetime opportunities this year and the stars aligned to make sure they all occurred at different times! We are blessed to have consistency with subs – Thank you Freya, Cari and Emily! We are blessed to have a supportive community and we are blessed to have a staff that are best friends and working to make everything work for each other! Cara just got back from a visit to her husband’s home country, Croatia, on a sailboat, where one of her sons proposed to his partner! Donna is headed to Ireland with her husband for a special birthday, and Brin is headed out for a week to celebrate her mother’s 80th birthday! Brook and extended family are headed to Switzerland over Christmas and Cari has a college grad and a high school grad this year, so she will be busy in May and June. We are all community, and we all work together. How fortunate are we that we still have consistency for these littles to develop their comfort level and self confidence! Thank you to our board and staff and families to make it all possible. 

The Curriculum Coffee Talks were a great opportunity to share our school’s program and plans for your kiddos. Each class has its own curriculum that builds on the other classes. Our main goal is to help these preschoolers develop a love of learning, social emotional awareness of themselves and others and advocacy for themselves and others, making them wonderful community leaders and members. We also have a hearty curriculum and are staffed by early childhood educators. We are pretty proud of this oldest preschool in Issaquah!

Now that you have heard about our curriculum, it’s time to check in on your student to see how they are doing in class! Make sure you sign up for your 10 minute zoom session that happens later this month. Check out the link here to find your perfect spot!

Ladybugs

It was so nice to have Cara back in class this week. We also welcomed our Gibson Ek intern, Kali, who will be working with the Ladybugs this school year. Kali already babysits for a couple of our ladybug students, so it felt like she is a familiar face to the kids and the parents. 

We made peek a boo books based on a song that we love to sing at circle, “Open, Shut Them”  Have your Ladybug ‘read’ the book to you and watch their hands as they do the motions. 

We made some beautiful salmon hats that the kids can wear to Salmon Days if they choose, and we talked about who likes to eat salmon: and a few of the kids raised their hands and then we talked about other predators, orca whales, eagles, bears, and we learned that some ducks eat the salmon eggs. We talked about the journey of the salmon down the river to grow up in the ocean and then their big journey back up the same river to lay eggs! 

We are happy that so many of you could join us for our Curriculum Coffee Talk. Please know that  you can always ask us questions or comment on what we are learning in class. If we can’t get to you in the gazebo at drop off or pick up, please give the school a call/email/text message and we will get back to you as soon as we can. We love to be part of your ‘team’ to help these Ladybugs grow and learn! 

Crickets

We had fun learning about the life cycle of the salmon this week and made some fun hats that we can wear to Salmon Days this weekend! We were preparing for our visit from Larry the Fish Man on Wednesday. Caleb brought in a great “C” sound basket, and we practiced writing “C’s” and using a correct pencil grip. 

We had a great Curriculum Coffee Talk this morning and we are so happy that so many of you could join us. Please know that you can always ask us questions or comment on what we are learning in class. We also hope that if any of you has a skill or an interest that you would like to share with the class, or even if you would like to come in to class and do an art project, craft, or read a special story, please let us know! We would love to have you! If we can’t get to you in the gazebo at drop off or pick up, please give the school a call/email/text message and we will get back to you as soon as we can. We love to be part of your ‘team’ or village to help these Crickets grow and learn! 

Honeybees

Almost everyone received a star on the poetry chart for “I am a Salmon”, and we started learning our new poem, “I think Mice are Rather Nice”. Belleamie and Apple Mouse introduced the poem and the Bees, as usual, are  well on their  way to having this week’s memorization under their belt! 

We painted some beautiful salmon to adorn our hats to wear to Salmon Days, and we played in the sensory table with the life cycle of the salmon. All of this to prepare for our visit from Larry the Fish Man on Wednesday. 

On Thursday, we started off our session with a Curriculum Coffee Talk. It was so nice to see so many of our Honeybee parents attending to hear about how we are preparing our students for Kindergarten. Please feel free to  ask  us  any questions or share any comments that you might have at any time. If  we can’t speak to you at the moment of your call, text or email, we will get  back to you as soon as we can. We absolutely love being a part of your team, or your village, in helping your student grow and learn.