What a fun week we had at The Garden! Our first full week of classes! The kids are folding into their new routines nicely and taking on the responsibilities of their new ‘grade level’. The Honeybees have started their poetry recitations and writing their names in upper and lower case, the Crickets have learned the guidelines of sitting at circle (eyes watching, ears listening, mouth is quiet, body is still), and several of the Crickets have started saying some of the phrases from our Opening Circle Poem of Intention and the Ladybugs separation routines are getting shorter and shorter. After just one week! 

Apple Fest is tonight and we hope to see you all there! Join us for this fun, old-fashioned potluck gathering where you’ll have the chance to meet new families, reconnect with familiar faces, press some fresh cider, and enjoy a sing-along out on the playground. Please park in the lower lot — a staff member will be at the driveway to help guide you. Apple Fest usually lasts about an hour, and we aim to wrap up promptly so everyone (especially the kiddos!) can get home for a good night’s sleep. Thank you for helping us keep things running smoothly — and see you tonight!

You may have noticed on Garden campus grounds, that we have apples, plums, and other fruit bearing shrubs. We also have mountain laurel, blackberries, salmon berries, and oregon grape. We teach the children that we do not eat anything from the grounds, without talking to their parents, or a grown up, first. We want this to be an important lesson for our students, that they should never eat something without checking with a grown up first. Please reinforce this at home. 

We have noticed that several parents and grandparents have been showing up early for pick up and sitting in the gazebo. This is one of our favorite things that happens at this magical Garden. People are loving the community building and seeking it out. The gazebo is such a wonderful place to do so. In our gazebo, friends discuss recent tv binges, kids sleep habits or lack of same, nanny shares, potty training, football game scores, or future vacations. It is such a mainstay of The Garden experience. We are happy you guys are enjoying your Gazebo time!

Next Friday is our Homecoming celebration! Adults only, and a fun night of games, delicious desserts, and celebrating our Garden alums who are graduating from high school this year. We love to see the friendships develop and the community forming as we celebrate the history of the school, the amazing program that we are a part of, and share a laugh or two with parents who are going through the same struggles and wins that you are going through! Please RSVP and plan on attending! 

Ladybugs

It was fun introducing the Bugs to our friend, Nigel, to get their pictures taken. Some of them thought he was hilarious, and others didn’t know what to think of him! They all did a great job and our class picture was so easy! We can’t wait for you to see their adorable smiles. We had our first birthday circle on Thursday for Alder, and the children loved meeting our birthday friend, Parsley Flakes, who made a beautiful crown for the birthday boy. 

Parsley Flakes is a unicorn puppet who loves peace and quiet. He only whispers, but makes beautiful sparkly crowns and leads us in rousing birthday songs. When our birthday puppet was first introduced to the children, back in the early 80’s, his name was “Percival”. Every birthday circle after that, one little girl kept asking if “Parsley Flakes” was coming to circle! That name stuck and that is the story behind our birthday puppet’s wonderful name. 

We painted apples on Thursday to decorate our classroom for the Apple Fest tonight. We hope you get a chance to step inside to see the beautiful apples hanging in the classroom hallway. 

Crickets

Our Crickets had fun making ‘houses’ for little Belleamie, pretending to be Applemouse. Applemouse is a classic Children’s Garden storybook that is about a sweet little mouse who finds an apple and after taking a lot of bites, realizes the apple would make a lovely house for himself. Later, he eats some more of the apple and puts a hole in the roof, right before a big rainstorm! It’s a cute book with black and white photographs. The children love it almost as much as the staff does! 

Addy brought in the sound basket for the letter “A”, with an antler, appaloosa horse, anchor, and other items that start with A, and we practiced writing slanted lines and letter A’s on lined paper. 

We made little ‘peek a boo’ books for the song, “Way up High in the Apple Tree”, and had fun with Teacher Cari covering for Cara.

We are excited to see you tonight at The Apple Fest! 

Honeybees

Oh! What a fun week for these Bees! Everyone received a star on the “Poems We Know” chart for “Way up High in the Apple Tree” poem, and we learned a new poem, “Silly Snake”, which we will check for stars on Monday. 

We are learning about upper and lower case letters, and had fun finding upper and lower case “S”. Sloane brought in the sound basket with several ‘s’ items and next week, we will have Max bring in the “M” basket. Our poem, Silly Snake, has so many s words in it, and we invited the children to find an “s” and put a sticker on the “s”. They know the sound of the letter “S”, and every time that they saw a sticker, they would say the ‘s’ sound. 

The kids had a great time writing their name on apples above their picture to replicate the “Ten Apples Up on Top” book that we read, and we did our first ‘stamper book’ of the year based on the same story. We hope you take the opportunity to have your child ‘read’ their stamper book to you. This is a wonderful and powerful step in their literacy journey. Their ‘reading’ might not be an exact copy of the words that they dictated on the page, but that is okay! It is their story! 

Emily brought in red, yellow and green apples from Trader Joes on Tuesday, and we had a wonderful ‘survey’ where each child tried all three apples and then chose their favorite. We made an apple graph of everyone’s favorite and Red apples won the favorite by a slim margin over yellow. We had one vote for green!

Next week, we begin our study of salmon and get ready for Issaquah’s celebration of our favorite fish! Look for a text early next week to remind you to bring in rubber boots for some creek exploration. 

The first word that we are going to learn next week is ‘am’ as we write “I am…” sentences. Our poem will be “I am a Salmon” and with the letters, A, S and M, we are well equipped to begin reading “I AM…” Exciting times for these Honeybees!

Hope to see you all at Apple Fest this evening!