Oooooooooooo! Happy Halloween! We hope you have a safe and fun Halloween this evening and we can’t wait to hear all about it next week! We also want to wish a meaningful day of peaceful remembrance to those that celebrate el Dia de los Muertos. We will change our clocks this weekend, falling back one hour, making it darker in the mornings for a while. Crickets will start the days inside now and throughout the winter months. Ladybugs and Honeybees will not change their routines, though we all need to understand that the time change affects everyone’s sleep schedules, and hungry times! 

The time change also sets off an official time of growing excitement about the upcoming celebrations of light, family and lots of over-stimulation! Take three deep breaths, take care of yourself, and take time to be calm and present in your immediate family together time. Traditions start now for families with young children. Have a family meeting to discuss and decide what you want those traditions to include.

Wasn’t it so fun to celebrate Belleamie, our beloved mouse puppet, who checks in with each student, every day, to see how they are feeling? Belleamie’s birthday gifts was such a beautiful example of how much our community loves and supports our program! Thank you to everyone who contributed to our Annual Giving Campaign. 

The staff so enjoyed our check-ins with each of you last week. It is so nice to have some one on one with our parents, mainly to hear how the start of school has been going for YOU! And we love to share the students’ self portraits with you. Aren’t they growing by leaps and bounds?!?

This week, we prepped for heavy rains each day, but were pleasantly surprised to have such beautiful sun breaks on the playground. The children are starting to feel the chill in the air and our box of school mittens has made its way onto the playground! We have a bunch of dollar store mittens that we offer to kiddos with cold hands, and we launder each week. Please send some mittens or gloves in your child’s backpack, (each mitten or glove name labelled) and look into rechargeable hand warmers, (the staff like OCOOPA handwarmers from Amazon – about 20 bucks for a set). We find that the kiddos love knowing how to turn them on, fuss with the heat settings, and it takes their mind off of being chilly, not to mention that it warms your whole body when your hands are warm. If you send in a rechargeable handwarmer, please make sure it is labelled as well. 

Next week is our Ladybug “Stuffy Spend the Night”, a sweet event that is only for our Littlest Littles. We love this adorable special day, and look forward to greeting our Bugs and meeting their stuffies, while we are all in our Jammies on Tuesday! 

We celebrated Halloween this week, and next week, we begin our studies of family, harvest and gratitude. Change your clocks this weekend and we will see you all bright eyed and well rested after the extra hour of sleep, riiiiiiiight? Have fun Trick or Treating! 

Ladybugs

How fun to welcome our new Ladybug family, Jane and Stevie and Kylie and Tiffani! These kiddos came in so smoothly that it felt like they had been here all along! Such a treat to have this sweet little family in our community.

We worked on our Five Little Pumpkin Books, made some spooky spiders out of clothespins and had a fun Halloween celebration on Thursday. We tried to get an apple ring off of a witch’s broom without using our hands! And we so enjoyed everyone’s costumes! 

Next week, we have a special event in the Ladybug class, and that is the Stuffy Spend the Night! On Tuesday, we will begin the celebration when we all come to school in our pajamas! It’s a pajama party for the Ladybugs, and we invite the Bugs to bring a loved Stuffy to join us at circle time. This stuffy should not be the one that they need to go to bed at night, because the stuffies will stay at school and have a fun and exciting “Spend the Night!”. They will stay at school and will be ready to be picked up on Thursday, with a wonderful story and illustration of their time at The Garden. This is such a sweet and special event that is only for the Ladybugs, and it is always so lovely to see the students ‘reunite’ with their ‘loved ones’ after their big ‘spend the night’. 

We realized that Winter Celebration is a little over a month away, so we started practicing some big group circle dances. Through this practice, we are beginning to learn rhythm, beat, listening to the lyrics of the song to follow instructions, keeping a circle as we walk around, and holding hands! (Winter Celebration is a lovely memory making gathering that we hold at Issaquah Middle School in December, invite the whole family, and each class does a dance or two, we celebrate family traditions and we greet Father Christmas!) We are happy to report that our Ladybugs are off to a great start with their circle dancing!

Crickets

The Crickets started the week on the playground and noticed that it was chilly. Check out some disposable hand warmers and also some rechargeable hand warmers (staff love the OKOOPA brand on Amazon) We change our clocks this weekend to fall back one hour. This makes it even darker in the mornings, so next week, we will begin our sessions in the classroom. We invite the parents to enter the classroom and walk through to the back door to say goodbye at the ‘waving window’. Leave their raingear, snow pants, etc. at their hook, ready for them to put them on when it is outside time. 

We had fun reading Halloween books all week in the Cricket class, and continuing our work on our Art Show fall piece. Check out the beautiful fall art work on the courtyard windows and remember to ask your kiddos to read their spooky stamper books to you. 

Such fun watching all the fabulous costumes this morning! You guys are so much fun! Can’t wait to hear how all the trick or treating goes tonight!

Change clocks this weekend, start indoors on Monday! Starting Monday, there will be fun courtyard activities for the Crickets to occupy themselves during the wait for the bell to ring. Help them out finding clues, counting animals, etc., to get them engaged in the fun searches.

Honeybees

What a big week we had, celebrating birthday circles for Presley and Max, and having several students realize that they are learning to read! Sweet Max expressed in his birthday book page that he would like to learn how to read when he is 5, and we had a great time illustrating to all of our Bees, that they are indeed, learning to read! The letter of the week was “C” and Cambrie brought in some wonderful items in the sound basket. We then reviewed the word ‘at’, made up of ‘a’ sound and ‘t’ sound. When we put a ‘c’ in front of it, we sounded out ‘cat’ and took turns adding different letters to the front of ‘at’ and then made flip books of ‘at’ words. It is so rewarding to watch our children’s eyes widen and grins grow as they realize that they are truly reading. Each child is unique and at their own pace of this activity. Some are learning what sounds the letters make, some are calling out other words that start with that letter and some are actually sounding out the three letter words. Next week, we begin to look at NO, GO, and SO, but mostly NO, as we begin the month of NOvember. 

We begin to look at family and harvest and the celebration of lights in November, and will start dancing, presentations and preparing for our Harvest Feast and our Winter Celebration. 

The clear and bright weather breaks provided us with lovely forest times this week. The Bees so love to take turns on the huge tree swing, slack lines and explore the different trails and hikes with the teachers. 

Change your clocks this weekend and we’ll see you all ‘well rested and bright eyed’ on Monday with that extra hour of sleep, riiiiiiight?!  Have a great weekend everyone. Have fun trick or treating tonight.