Happy Rosh Hashana to all who celebrate and happy first week of Autumn! 

Wasn’t the Apple Fest so fun? We had a wonderful turnout, with 35+ families represented. It was great to see so many alums enjoying the Fest as well! 

We are starting a special season here at The Garden, that other preschools around the country don’t typically have in their curriculum, Salmon! We love our hometown celebrity animal, and we celebrate the ‘homecoming’ of this beautiful species to Issaquah! We enjoy learning about the lifecycle of the salmon, along with some fun salmon and fish songs and poems. 

Speaking of  Homecoming, we hope to see you (adults only) at The Children’s Garden Homecoming tonight! We have a bumper crop of “Garden Grads”, our alum students who are graduating from high school this year, and very fun games and activities lined up. There’s always delicious food and bevvies to enjoy, and we can’t wait to taste and vote on all the entries for the dessert bake-off! 

Parents, we have full enrollment this year at The Garden, and our parking lot is over taxed. Please mind the yellow stripes, back in, and take the spaces closest to Luna’s Forest first. Please pass the word on to nannies and grandparents. We’ve had a few unknowingly take up more than one spot. When you are racing to get your kiddo into the classroom, and then off to work or errands or appointments, it can be frustrating to be trapped in a space, or unable to get close to the Gazebo. We appreciate you helping us make this as smooth a process as possible. Thanks guys! 

Next week we have our first “Coffee Talk” of the school year, and our October Coffee hour will be hosted by the teachers as we will be discussing the curriculum of the The Children’s Garden. We hope you can join us for this informative hour. 

Ladybugs

The ladybugs started off the week celebrating Emery’s birthday circle! It was so fun to watch him bang the birthday drum three times! We also started learning the words to the closing circle song, and decorated the words with some beautiful sunshine colors.

We decorated the words to our closing circle song. The children drew a circle with a yellow pastel, and then squirted some sunrise colors and spread them around with a scraper. We hope you enjoy these beautiful works of art. 

Next Thursday, at drop off, we have an hour long ‘coffee talk’, and this one is hosted by teachers to discuss the curriculum of the Ladybug class and The Garden. We hope you can join us for this informative hour.

Crickets

We had our first birthday circle of the school year last Friday for our friend, Riley, and then we celebrated Canyon on Monday! Birthday circles are so fun! 

This week we started our study of the Salmon. We will be learning about the parts of the fish, the life cycle of the fish and some fun songs and stories about salmon. Next week, our friend and Garden alum Dad, Larry Franks, will visit the school and bring along a male and female salmon from the Hatchery. Larry is a F.I.S.H. docent and we love his annual visit to let the kids see these Issaquah celebrity fish up close. They can even touch the fish if they choose. We finish our Salmon unit just in time for Issaquah Salmon Days Festival. The songs that we learned this week are “1,2,3 4 5, once I caught a fish alive” and “I am a salmon”. We read some stories about the salmon life cycle and cute Northwest stories about bears learning to fish and we have all the Northwest stuffed animals in the Critter Corner that the kids can act out the salmon life cycle. 

We talked about the letter “B” this week and practiced writing our A’s and B’s.This allowed the teachers to check out right or left handed kids and how their pencil grip is shaping up. We also heard from several of the parents how they loved hearing their Crickets ‘reading’ their peek a boo books at home. We encourage you to sit with your child and let them ‘read’ their booklets to you. It is a wonderful step in their literacy journey. They are learning to turn the pages, to use expression in their voices and they love reading to you just as you read to them. We call them ‘peek a boo’ books, and while making them, we practice scissor skills to cut on a line, we fold the books to make them a half page and then when the teacher squeezes the paper together, it makes a diamond shaped hole where the teacher peeks through and says..”There you are!” . The children use a hole punch to make a hole in the corner of the book, they frame the front page, color the pictures and lace a ribbon through the hole that they made and help the teacher ‘curl’ the ribbon and then they love to wear the booklet home on their wrist. 

We spent a lot of time on Monday helping kids use a tissue properly to wipe their own nose, throw away the tissue and then get some hand sanitizer. We’d love it if you continue this lesson at home. The cold season is here, it seems, and we’d love to minimize the spread of germs as much as we can. With that in mind, please keep a child at home if they have a lot of green stuff coming out of their noses. If it’s clear, we chalk it up to allergies and chilly morning air, but if it’s green, we are pretty sure it is contagious. 

On Wednesday, we reviewed good circle behavior: And we sing it to the tune of “Are you sleeping?” “Eyes are watching, Ears are listening, Body Calm, Voices Quiet – This is how we learn at school, This is how we learn at school, Everyday. Everyday.” These little crickets are named aptly; they are jumpy, they are excited, they chirp when we are looking for quiet…We met Impulsive Puppy, our puppet friend who is so excited to come to circle, that the children need to teach Puppy how to take three deep breaths to calm down, sit quiet, turn your eyes to who is  talking, listen with your ears and keep your body still. It’s always fun to see the most ‘impulsive’ crickets instructing our puppy puppet how to sit calmly at circle time. 

Next Friday, we hope you can join us for about an hour, right after drop off, for the first “Coffee Talk” of the school year. This one is hosted by the teachers and we discuss the curriculum of the Cricket class and The Garden. We hope you can join us for this informative session.

Honeybees

We started the week with a beautiful day on Monday. Max brought in the sound basket with 7 items that start with the letter “M”. Sana took home the sound basket for the letter “I”. With the letter A, from last week and I and M, the children learned how to write and read “I am…”with their name. We are learning about sentences, spacing between words, and a period at the end of the sentence. It is so fun to see their eyes light up when they realize that they are ‘reading’! This was a great set up for our next poem, “I am a Salmon”.

We kicked off our study of our famous fish this week, learning about the life cycle of the salmon and the names of the 6 fins on a salmon’s body. We will finish our study of the salmon just in time for Issaquah’s Salmon Days Festival! Next week, our friend and Garden alum Dad, Larry, will come and visit the Cricket and Honeybee classes. Larry is a F.I.S.H. docent from the Hatchery and each year brings a male and female salmon (deceased) and the kids can touch the fish, the eggs and the milt. We nicknamed our friend, “Larry the Fish Man” years ago, and each school year, we have one or two students expecting to see either a half man/ half fish creature, or a man in a fish costume!

The afternoons were sunny and warm so we opened the gate to the creek and had some fun exploration of the salmon habitat! Most of the kids ventured into the creek for at least a few minutes. Thanks for sending spare clothes. They absolutely loved playing in the water. 

Almost everyone stood up at circle and recited last week’s poem, “Silly Snake”, and got a star on the “Poems We Know” chart! Yay Bees! Most of the students already know this week’s poem/song, “I am a Salmon”. We’ve been practicing keeping a steady beat on different parts of our body and chanting the song at different speeds. 

Next Thursday, for the first hour after drop  off, we will hold our first “Coffee Talk” of the school year. This one is hosted by the teachers and we will discuss the curriculum of the Honeybees and The Children’s Garden. We hope you can join us for this informative session.