We had such a fun time at last weekend’s Garden Homecoming, and the staff had fun running into so many Garden families at the Salmon Homecoming last weekend at Issaquah Salmon Days Festival! 

The Crickets and Bees continued to learn about our favorite fish this past week and the Ladybugs continued to work on their first ‘peek-a-boo’ booklets.

We had Curriculum Coffee Talks for all three classes, and are so appreciative of all the parents who could join us to learn about our social emotional and play based educational program. We love to collaborate with you all as a village on your child’s TEAM! Our next step in this process is our scheduled zoom check-ins over the next few weeks. These are 15 minute chats to see how the school year is going for you, how we see your child entering and participating in the classroom and on the playground, and any concerns, questions, or additional information that you might have. 

Each class is beginning to work on a fall art project that we will save for the Spring Art Show. Art Show pieces are different from the weekly theme art pieces and easel art that we do. Art Show pieces are typically multi step, multi layer and multi day projects that we mat, frame and title. We try to have 3 or 4 pieces for each student at the Art Show. The kids are now getting comfortable with the daily routine of their classes, and we are able to begin pulling them out and working with them one on one on these more detailed projects. It’s hard to wait until spring to show them to you!

Picture Day is next week! We’re excited to bring this longtime Garden tradition in-house this year with Brin behind the camera! Ladybugs and Honeybees will have their pictures Tuesday, October 13 and Crickets will have their pictures taken, Wednesday, October 14. We’ll have a makeup day in November for children who won’t be here for picture day.

Read on for Class News

Ladybugs

We are excited to begin our first Art Show project with our littlest littles, the Ladybugs. We still have a few teary entrances, but the tears subside faster each day and the children are settling into the daily routine. With their increasing comfort, they are coming easier to the teachers to do their work, and we are able to take on more detailed projects and multi layered art pieces. 

We want you parents to know how much we love our students and our curriculum at The Children’s Garden. We are deeply committed. The teachers have already spent several weekends and evenings crafting and sewing items for the special events coming up in the Ladybug school year! This Garden is such a special place, filled with memory making events and cherished items to hold on to for years to come. 

Once the students are all comfortable with drop off, we ‘host’ a special event for the Ladybugs, where the children bring in a stuffy (one that they don’t need to sleep at home) to a special ‘stuffy spend the night’. It is a highlight of the Ladybug school year, and we will let you know the date, once we set it, when we find all the kiddos are comfortable in saying goodbye to Mum and Dad. 

On Thursday, we had a wonderful Curriculum Coffee Talk to discuss how we use our play based and social emotional curriculum throughout the year through seasonal themes and emergent topics. Freya helped us out in the classroom, providing extra arms and hands, while we talked about our program in the Movement Room. We look forward to chatting with you all during our Zoom check-ins to discuss how your kiddo’s school year is going at home and at The Garden. Let us know at any time if you have questions or concerns, and we will get back to you as soon as we can. 

Ladybug Picture Day is Tuesday, October 13 during class. Drop off as usual.

Crickets

We were lucky to have Cari in class with us on Monday, subbing for Cara and Freya with us on Friday, subbing for Donna. The kids do love their teachers but there’s something extra special about getting to visit with our sweet substitutes. 

We kicked off the week learning about the letter “D”, and had some wonderful sharing at circle of dinosaurs, dogs, diggers, dragons, ducks and dolls! We even had a drill thrown in! We continued our study of the salmon, and completed our booklets “I am a Salmon”. 

We could still smell the salmon that Larry left in the creek last week, and it prompted most of the Crickets to share about their time at Salmon Days, where it smelled the same in most areas! :0)

We love our Wednesday story times in the Cricket class, and this week, we had Grace, Jack’s mum, share a fun story about a shy hedgehog trying to make a house out of a pumpkin, but needing help along the way, and learning how to be comfortable making friends. We also worked on our very first “stamper book” of the Cricket class this week. Where the Peek a Boo books are a Ladybug staple, the stamper books are the Cricket equivalent. We provide the kids with a group of rubber stamps that fit in with what story or subject we are studying, and they stamp them in a blank booklet, and then tell the teachers the words to go with their pictures. Once complete, the student sits in the ‘author’ chair, while the teacher reads their story. We encourage you parents to read their stories, or have them ‘read’ the story to you. This can be a bedtime story, or a little side activity to play time. We want you to do the same with their weekly news. It is so wonderful to let them know that their words are heard and their words are important. The stamper books are an amazing tool to teach the basics of reading – how to hold the book, how to turn the pages as the story unfolds, how a story starts, the title, THE END, etc.

On Wednesday, we had a wonderful Curriculum Coffee Talk to discuss how we use our play based and social emotional curriculum throughout the year through seasonal themes and emergent topics. What a great turnout we had! We look forward to chatting with you all during our Zoom check-ins to discuss how your kiddo’s school year is going at home and at The Garden – and as we said at the check-in, you can always approach us with questions or concerns or send a message into Brin and she’ll get it to the teachers. 

Cricket Picture Day is Wednesday, October 14 during class. Drop off as usual.

Honeybees

Our Honeybees continued their study of Salmon and continued their salmon art piece. We all noticed the smell around the playground of the fish that Larry left behind in the creek. The two fish had indeed been moved by some critter or another, with one completely missing and the second just missing some major body parts. It was fun to surmise what or who may have been involved – Bears? Eagles? Raccoons? Brook? The Cricket class? This worked in perfectly to the continued study of the life cycle of the salmon, predators, and other obstacles these amazing fish might encounter. 

While on the playground, our Honeybees also began to learn about a ‘job’. What is a job? What does it mean to have a job? What jobs do we know about? We introduced the class to our “Hivemate” chart, where we team up each student with another Honeybee student for the week. These ‘Hivemates” will be assigned a job that they will be responsible for during the week. The hivemates might also be called out as a team to work on poetry recitations, or an art project together. We find this a wonderful way to encourage the children to team up with other kids that they wouldn’t normally wind up with. We’ve experienced several friendships that have been born by the Hivemate partnerships, that have lasted long past the Honeybee class!

Our poem this week was “Mice” and we had fun thinking about our classroom mouse friends, Belleamie and Apple Mouse. 

Emily started our Social Emotional curriculum with the Bees, called “Second Step”. This curriculum is also used in many of the elementary schools throughout the Issaquah School District. At this level, the children are shown ‘situation pictures’, and learn to understand by facial expressions or body language, what the people in the pictures are feeling, and what a friend might do in that situation – check in, invite to play, offer to help, etc. 

We continue to work our way through the alphabet, learning about the letter “I”, and reviewing M and S, playing a fun game of pictionary and sorting out small items that start with the “I’ or ‘insect’ sound. 

We had a great Curriculum Coffee Chat on Thursday afternoon at drop off to discuss how we use our play based and social emotional curriculum throughout the year through seasonal themes and emergent topics. We look forward to chatting with you all during our Zoom check-ins to discuss how your kiddo’s school year is going at home and at The Garden.

Honeybee Picture Day is Tuesday, October 13 during class. Drop off as usual.