Monday's Tattler

This is the first day of a three week play extravaganza. Every child will participate in the play, have lines to learn and lines to offer at the play. It's a wonderful fun play about St. Patrick...a musical comedy with singing and snakes and lots of fun lines. We hope the children really enjoy this. We do the same spring play every year and make a lot of changes in lines to suit every year's group of children.

Play lines will go home this week once we have chosen the leading rolls.

Congratulations go to our newly elected President, Alexis, and Vice President, Logan. Good choices. These are really great kids who will really add to our year.

As our health game finishes this week, we will add some self discipline activities. These are part of good mental health.

Please continue to watch for ill children. Children who need OTC medication in the morning should not come to school.

Have a great week!

Monday's Tattler

It's President's Day and we will be in school. We are hoping that every parent checks their child's throat this week BEFORE coming to school. We have had several cases of strep throat. Some children breeze through this as if there it is nothing...and some people become very very ill. Miss Lisa was so sick, her health was compromised for two weeks. It's simply a matter of looking at your child. If your child is puny enough in the morning that he or she needs over the counter medication, he is obviously not well enough to come to school.

A headache in the morning means something is incubating. A child should not wake up with a headache.

Profuse green mucus running from the nose means your child has an infection. Keep him home.

If your child has a rash around his mouth, it could be impetigo which is caused by either a Strep infection or a Staff infection...he needs to be seen by a doctor.

A fever at 10:00 a.m. means he was given medication when he awoke and is ill and mommy knew it and sent him anyway.

If a child becomes ill by 10:00 a.m., there will be a school safety fine of $25.00 and your child MUST be seen by a doctor BEFORE coming home.

This is your duty as a parent. Your child's health is your responsibility, and illness is not one of those things that we share.

This week at school, we will be talking about what it means to be the President. We will talk about the great presidents. We will talk about what a president does. And then we will give the children an opportunity to run for Garden School President. The campaign will be this week starting on Tuesday, and our vote will be on Friday. Your child is welcome to bring campaign posters and give-a-ways like pencils and candy.

On Wednesday, Mr. Terry will turn 70. We will have a party for him on Tuesday p.m. at snack time.

Wednesday begins Lent. We will have the children make a "bona opera" which is Latin for a good work. This good work will be sent home and parents are encouraged to support your child's good work the forty days of lent.

If you do not have a red sweatshirt, please let Miss Judy know because I have ordered them and they will be in on Tuesday.

Have a great and healthy week.

Possibilities by Judy Lyden

What makes a restaurant great? A zoo great? A town great? The managers all see the endless possibilities and work to bring about those dreams until they are not dreams but realities. As I watch Newburgh get bigger and bigger, I remember it as a population of 500 and much of the downtown abandoned. But in the thirty eight years we have lived here, the population is probably 10,000, there is a cancer center, a hospital, a strip shopping center with a Walmart, the old part of town is vibrant, there is the largest concession of baseball in the country, and the school system is outstanding...because people brought the possibilities of their hearts and minds to Newburgh.

Dreaming is a great past time...I fully recommend it. But dreams should never stop with a passing thought. Dreams need to be worked on until they are reality.

I once thought it would be a wonderful life to own a bed and breakfast retreat way out in the country. Just think of all the possibilities... a hobby farm where people could come and live the life...gardening, breeding and raising animals, putting food by as an art, cooking, quilting, knitting in the winter, building things, walking and exploring nature, riding animals... beautiful occasions...the list just goes on and on. Wrong house, wrong location, wrong husband...so there had to be a compromise.

I once thought it would be fun to have a little boarding summer camp...same possibilities with more sports and more work! So the compromise was the Garden School.

When I wrote my first novel, I wrote it for college. My professor was very happy with the first chapter and told me that I had fulfilled my senior thesis obligation...five hundred pages later, I agreed. There were these absolutely wonderful characters...John of Gaunt, third son of Edward III (1350- 1399) and I had traced his life for fourteen years. I even got his household journals in Middle French and poured over them for weeks. Then I created Anne...the perpetual thorn in his side...now was I going to just abandon them on page 22? What WERE the possibilities? Thousands...so five hundred and 25 pages later...it was finished.

There are possibilities in every possible dimension of life. Look at your closet, at your refrigerator, your living room, your next occasion...the possibilities are astounding. As I walked by the river this p.m., I realized all the possibilities of having my very small front garden have the addition of carefully picked driftwood so that certain plants would be shaded when necessary, and have things to grow near, in and on. Not too much...just a piece at a time...can't wait to see the possibilities.

Raising children is no different. What are MY child's possibilities. What are his or her interests and how can that be guided toward the endless possibilities that mean productivity in their adult lives. My own son was interested in lots of things like stamp collecting, soccer, dangerous activities like swimming across the river...and then the love of his life took hold in high school...physics.

"Mom, I'm going to build a nuclear accelerator in my room."

"Go ahead."

"I need lots of copper."

"Go to the hardware store, but if you plug it in and my house explodes, I will kill you."

"Mom, it's perfectly safe."

It was extremely safe aside from the copper wires I've pulled out of the carpet for twenty years. But the possibilities were all there to offer him an opportunity to grow as an inventor, a developer, a man with ideas who was not afraid to try.

"I'm going to learn Arabic," said Anne at age seventeen after informing a restaurant owner that she would be cooking for him. He said he would give it a week, and she lasted seven years.

"Go ahead."

"I will need books."

"Get them."

And she did get the books and she does...know Arabic.

Providing opportunities to children begins with Legos, with glue, reams of paper, colored pencils, dolls, trucks, sand, fabric, sports equipment, lessons, books, and so many things we take for granted as everyday childhood supplies that find their way to the bottom of the toy box.

Remember, these ordinary supplies are new to children, and children need to have an abundance of them be able to explore ideas and possibilities that will make their dreams come true. So make a place for their supplies and encourage your child to play, create, invent, explore and develop.

And while you're at it, don't forget to ask questions, and give those special words of support.

"You did what?"

"I swam across the river and back."

"You idiot."

Monday's Tattler

This week is Valentine's Day on Tuesday. We will need for you to send forty Valentine's Day cards that are signed but not addressed on Tuesday morning.

If it is snowing, and schools are called, we will do Valentine's Day on Wednesday.

There will be a party for the kids on Tuesday at 3:00. Parents are welcomed but it's not mandatory. If you are coming, please bring a treat to share.

School will dismiss at 4:00 for everyone.

We will be continuing our health game this week. We will be studying fruits and vegetables as our "energy foods."

For school closings, go to WFIE channel 14.

Have a great week!

What Have We Lost and Gained? by Judy Lyden

As I was taking a nice long walk by the river today, I started to think about things and came back again and again to how much things have changed in my remembered years. As I thought about conversations I've had with my young teachers and some of our parents, I see a really see saw of good and not so good in the lives we all live.

I remember a time when you went to the library to look up information you wanted to know because it was interesting to you. You borrowed a stack of heavy books and dragged them home for two weeks and poured over them and made notes with a fountain pen and binder paper. Then you dragged them all back again for another stack.

We now have an ability to get information from the Internet at a moments notice. We can find out just about anything from who bought a certain piece of property, to how many calories there are in the chocolate covered beetle we ate at the last fair. We can find out who is who and why they are who. We can find out the answers to our children's homework, why you can't go to Saudi Arabia if you're Jewish, and what it means to be a Catholic...

But what have we lost? In the grand scheme of information, have we lost the ability to be educated and only "informed?" Have we lost the desire to read whole books in our wild scramble to collect what is essentially useless information? Do we know more or less? Is our Weltanuchaung wider and more complete, or sadly lacking?

I remember twice a year, I would put my best dress on, my Mary Jane's, my dress coat and go with my mother down to the ferry and ferry across to San Francisco for a day of shopping, lunch out at Blum's with both my parents, and ended the day with a huge Golden Gate Bridge dessert made from ice cream and wafer cookies. Sometimes we would go to a very very rare movie; it was a vacation day and treasured.

Today, we can shop on line, buy nearly anything we want, and we can have it delivered overnight. We can pay with a card, get deferred payment on money back cards that earn us vacation dollars by punching in a number or even clicking once to buy. We can watch any movie we want anytime we want.

But what are we buying? What are we watching? And are these things treasured? Has the joy of Christmas buying and wrapping only turned into a mind boggling chore? Do we dread someone's birthday because it means endless shopping for something they "don't" have? Have we lost that human contact with local shop owners? Do we know from whom we are shopping? And do we actually "watch" a movie or just have it on for the distracting noise?

I remember eating out a lot as a child because my parents were very modern. We ate abalone and whole jalapeno peppers, and tiny bay shrimp. We ate Polynesian food at a place called Tiburon Tommy's and it included tiny sweet spareribs and egg rolls. Every year we waited for strawberries, peaches and grapes to come into season. You got cake on your birthday, and ice cream as a really special occasion treat, and soda pop was a Shirley Temple at the restaurant. We ate pizza once a week at another place and few of my friends knew what a pizza was.

Today, people can and do eat out any night of the week. We can have out of season food every day. We can eat, chocolate, ice cream, soda, chips, pizza and strawberries every day.

But what have we lost? While we take grapes for granted as a year round fruit, we have lost the ideal of cooking and have substituted carry out as the ideal for food. We have gained weight, lost general good health, lost the desire to try new things, and have decreased our longevity. We are the first generation who will not outlive our parents.

We can travel anywhere with a click of our mouse. If you even said those ten words to someone I grew up with back then, he or she would have thought that you were telling a story filled with imagination. Today I heard from Facebook that my son is going to Saudi Arabia. He travels all the time. He was in Switzerland last week, and he will be in Southern California by the end of the month. He lives in Germany. Travel is instant, and people do it all the time.

In a George Bernard Shaw production years ago, I heard a statement, "Travel narrows one." Terry and I laughed at the statement years ago. How funny that someone would even say something as completely stupid as "travel narrows one." But has it become narrowing? Is it as exciting today as it was years ago? Or has travel become a chore, an invasive, abusive chore that is dreaded by those who have to do it over and over again.

I'm a writer, so I "rarely take my body with me when I travel..." and for many who do travel, they would laugh at that statement today much more readily than "travel narrows one."

When I was a little girl, I had a doctor who was kindly, cared about us, made house calls, and chatted with my mother for what seemed to be hours. When I was a young woman, I had a doctor I adored. She was, for me, my safety zone. She is still a friend.

Today, I put off going to the doctor as if it's a death sentence. It takes years to make those appointments. Only the bitterest and most sleepless nights will drive me forward...and what have we lost? Routine medicine has taken over personalized medicine. The idea that we are being lined up like cattle to be shot, wormed, numbered, and stamped sends chills up my spine. One must have the doctor read your name on the file before you can be confident the doctor even has the right patient.

In the gush to have everything done now, have we lost the personal touch? Have we lost that "wait and see" kind of medicine that got you through without a pill and without a quick fix that takes the rest of your life to repair? Are we saturated with medication? What happened to a hot bath and a nap to fix a headache? What happened to a little brandy and someone to talk to to save you from taking a Xanax? What happened to the idea that we can fix type two diabetes with diet and exercise? What happened to building a body that could withstand chronic illness?

With all the marvelous developments we have been blessed with over the years, are we really taking the best advantage we can and benefiting or are we grabbing defeat at the hands of victory? It's probably a crude combination. Personally, I love the Internet, my Kindle, buying all those out of season foods, and shopping on line...I just hope I don't take those things for granted.

Brain Food

By Alan Greene from the Center of Ecoliteracy:

(This is an excellent article and well worth reading.)

What's on your child's plate today?

It is my strong conviction that children deserve a healthy breakfast to start the school morning right and a healthy school lunch to fuel their growing and their learning. I have come to believe that nutrition plays a key role, by providing them with a critical physiological foundation to help them succeed in school. Behavior and academic performance are significantly affected by the quantity and quality of the foods we provide children during the school years.

Today in the United States, one in six children suffers from a disability that affects their behavior, memory, or ability to learn. We spend more than $80 billion each year to treat neurodevelopmental disorders. Diagnoses of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) alone up are up 250 percent since 1990. How much of a role does modern food play in this increase?

Children's brains are built differently depending on what they are fed when they are rapidly growing. Healthy brains are about 60 percent structural fat (not like the flabby fat found elsewhere in the body). As the brain grows, it selects building blocks from among the fatty acids available in what the child eats. The most prevalent structural fat in the brain is DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), one of the omega-3 fatty acids. DHA is also a major structural component of the retina of the eye. A large number of studies have suggested that low DHA levels are associated with problems with intelligence, vision, and behavior.

DHA is the most prevalent long chain fatty acid in human breast milk, which suggests that it's intended for babies to consume a lot of it. Studies have shown that babies who have not gotten DHA in their diets have significantly less of it in their brains than those who have. My point here is not about the superiority of breast milk, but that growing children quite literally are what they eat. When you think about this, you begin to feel differently about "cheap" food.

Iron is another nutrient that is essential to optimal brain function. Here's a very interesting study reported in the December 2004 Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine – the first to connect children's iron levels and ADHD.

Between March 2002 and June 2003, 110 children from the same school district in Paris, France were referred to a university hospital to be evaluated for school-related problems. Researchers analyzed blood samples from the 53 of these children who met the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, and from 27 of the children who did not. The average ferritin (iron) level in the non-ADHD kids was normal, but the average level in the children with ADHD was about half that of the other children. Fully 84 percent of the children with ADHD were iron deficient. And the lower the iron levels, the worse the ADHD symptoms – worse hyperactivity, worse oppositional behavior, and worse cognitive scores.

The stunning part of this study was that none of the children had iron levels low enough to indicate anemia. The iron deficiency was subtle enough that all tested normal on the hemoglobin or hematocrit blood tests used in doctors' offices to screen for iron problems. I suspect that inadequate iron in the diet is also affecting the attention, focus, and activity of many children who don't meet the full definition of ADHD.

When other researchers fed appropriate iron to children with ADHD, their test scores and ADHD symptoms improved.

Kids need more than isolated, individual nutrients to boost their brains and school performance. There are big-picture benefits to eating a balanced diet rich in fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and fiber.

Antioxidants include a large variety of compounds found in a large variety of whole foods. Antioxidants in foods have been linked to improved memory and brain function.

Even in the same food, antioxidant levels can vary depending on how the food is grown. Organic foods, on average, are about 30 percent higher in antioxidants than are their nonorganic counterparts. That means each organic serving may be packed with more valuable nutrients. Talk about extra credit!

Organophosphates are the most commonly used insecticides in conventional, chemical agriculture. These chemicals act as nerve agents, and have been linked to neurodevelopmental problems. Organically grown foods are produced without the use of toxic pesticides such as organophosphates. Choosing organic foods for children can immediately and significantly decrease their exposure to organophosphate pesticides. That's good protection for the developing brain — it's elementary.

Some are afraid that school children would have to eat unfamiliar or unappetizing foods in order to make a difference. Not so! A February 2006 study conducted by Dr. Chensheng Lu and colleagues demonstrated an immediate and dramatic ability to reduce organophosphate pesticide exposure by making simple diet changes in elementary school children.

The researchers conducted this study with typical suburban children. The elementary school kids began eating organic versions of whatever they were eating before. For example, if they typically ate apples, now they got organic apples. Only if there was a simple organic substitution available for what the kids were already eating, did they make a switch. The kids didn't have to learn to like any new foods. Within 24 hours, pesticide breakdown products found in the urine plummeted! They continued this way for five days, with clean urine samples morning and night. Then the kids went back to their typical, nonorganic diets, and immediately the pesticides returned.

Researchers at the University of Southampton studied over 1800 three-year-old children, some with and some without ADHD, some with and some without allergies. After initial behavioral testing, all of the children got one week of a diet without any artificial food colorings and without any chemical preservatives. The children's behavior measurably improved during this week. But was this from the extra attention, from eating more fruits and vegetables, or from the absence of the preservatives and artificial colors?

To answer this question, the researchers continued the diet, but gave the children disguised drinks containing either a mixture of artificial colorings and the preservative benzoate, or similarly colored drinks from natural food sources. The weeks that children got the hidden chemicals, their behavior was substantially worse. This held true whether or not they had been diagnosed with hyperactivity, and whether or not they had tested positive for allergies.

The Journal of Pediatrics reported that there is a more pronounced response to a glucose load in children than in adults. In children, hypoglycemia-like symptoms (including shakiness, sweating, and altered thinking and behavior) may occur at a blood sugar level that would not be considered hypoglycemic. The authors reason that the problem is not sugar, per se, but highly refined sugars and carbohydrates, which enter the bloodstream quickly and produce more rapid fluctuations in blood glucose levels.

Kids' brains are high-performance engines, and if we want them to do their best in school, we need to provide them with clean, high-quality fuel. For growing children this means a balanced diet of delicious whole foods, grown in a nutrition-enhancing way without toxic pesticides, and prepared in an appealing manner that also preserves nutrients.

Solid science has shown that food affects kids' memory, attention, and cognitive skills. Even whether or not they eat breakfast changes their test scores. What they eat, how their food is grown, and how their food is processed can all help their brains to operate at their very best. Let's give our kids the edge they deserve.

Wednesday...and its Wonder

Having a lot of fun with the health game...so far, we have jumped three feet, caught a ball, and today we are hula hooping! The kids are doing a fabulous job and we are really pleased. We had 13 children who could hula hoop. Kayla was our all star for the hoop! Tomorrow we are thinking of hopscotching...

Today our first food awareness lesson was on milk as brain food. Our theme for the week is "Don't let an opportunity for brain food go by...drink it all now!"

Parents of children at the GS can look at the game boards to see where your child stands in the game.

Monday's Tattler

Good morning to all you sleepy heads! Brave New Week starting...please please please keep an eye on your child's throat this week. We have had ten cases of Strep, and it's a bad one.

If your child is behaving strangely...sleeping too much...not eating...puny...and muley...check his throat...he may not be able to tell you, and even if he or she does not run a temperature, he is in danger. Strep can drop into the kidneys and cause permanent damage. Please, please, please be aware!

This week we begin a week of science with a new health game. We will be playing the game for six weeks. The object of the game is to bravely try new things...jumping, swinging, climbing, eating new things, speaking up, answering a question, and many more. Every day, we will present a new challenge. Every child will be issued a game piece - a clothespin with his name on it. This clothespin will move around the game board. If a child does not make the challenge, we will try again in a couple of days so that everyone is fully engaged in the game.

We hope this is a fun activity for the kids and that they learn a lot about being independent.

We will be keeping a health book along with our game to be taken home at the end of science.

Have a great week!

Efficiency in the Home by Judy Lyden

I was talking to one of our beloved parents the other day about kitchen efficiency, and I got to thinking about what it means to be efficient anywhere in your life, and how some people are efficient and some people just make any job six times harder and anything difficult a one time gig.

I can't tell you how often I have watched while a job is being done and a mess is being made at the same time that is so deep and so tall and so wide and not small! It always makes me cringe.

I've heard dozens of "helpful hints for harassed housewives" over the years that advocate ways and means of cutting down on time, energy, and mess in the daily stream of life, and these suggestions are wonderful...They have helped me become an ultra efficient person. But being that person means I have to actually look for easier routes in life, and then practice the steps it takes to make life easier, and that's where people go astray. A person who is interested in making life corrections and slips back into a bad habit again and again, isn't climbing out of the dumb.

This past Christmas, my wonderful son thanked me for all I had done for him and for his family during their time with me. My usual response was a smile and a reminder that nothing I do is hard. He carefully told me that it was a lot and that I had made it look effortless, and that splendid compliment got me through Christmas with a smile.

My life is fairly effortless, and that's because I work at it. Little things really do add up. I think you have to ask yourself where you are most inefficient, and tackle those places first. With some people it's a basic mess of things. There are simply too many "things" in one's life that have no place and consequently are unmanageable.

I have a small kitchen and very little counter space, so when I turn out a dinner for fourteen, there are going to be pots and pans at the very end of the cooking just before it all goes on the table. So after dinner, when the mess is there, do we really want to empty the dining room onto all that mess and make a bigger mess, or should we clean up the first mess to make space for the next mess? Washing the pots and pans and putting them away along with any garbage that has collected is the smart thing to do before any of the plates come into the kitchen. I wash all my dishes by hand because I find it quicker than a dishwasher. Once the kitchen has been cleaned of all the cooking mess, the dishes are a ten minute gig and it's done.

Clothes, I hear, are another mess agenda that baffles most people. I've been up and dressed before anyone else in my family all my married life - 42 years this year- and so I've always dressed in the bathroom. My closet is nowhere near my bedroom and I use a tiny dresser on the top shelf of the bathroom for underwear. I have five huge dressers at my house, but you won't catch me using one. Folding clothes and shoving them into a drawer means two things: wrinkled and lost clothes. Hang them up. It's easier to keep track of what is there, and you never have to iron.

Children will always wear the first thing they see in a set of drawers, plus, dressers take up a lot of space, and most of what they are holding is useless and unworn. Use the closet and every time you buy a shirt, skirt, pair of pants, take something out that doesn't fit, is torn or worn, and put it in your "poor" basket.

I have a "poor basket" by my front door. I use those Schnuck's reusable grocery bags. They cost $1.25. When it's full, I drop it by my closest charity which is on my way to work. It's neat, easy and simple, and doesn't require hours of cleaning, or storage.

And never leave hangers in the closet; it's a huge mess maker. Always take your clothes out of the closet on the hanger, and leave the hangers someplace to collect, so that you can take them to the wash room and have them there ready and waiting when you need them. There is nothing like groping stuffed closets for hangers to create a miserable laundry time. Laundry should take minutes a day. With a family, every child should have a hamper and there should be a towel rack in every child's room on the back of the door. That towel rack can be made from a toilet paper roll and a doweling rod. This will cut down on laundry.

One load of one child's laundry when you first get up can be dried when you first get home and folded just after dinner when the child can put it away if he or she is old enough. If you only have one hamper, you need two so that people can put their whites in one and color clothes in the other. Individual hampers mean less sorting and less time doing.

Always keep your wash area neat and clean.

There are dozens of kitchen helps like never put a spoon down and always put everything away the minute you use it. That way, you'll never have a mess, and you'll always know where things are. Establish places in the refrigerator and on the shelves for all foods so that you can know at a glance what you need at the store. Milk goes here; bread here; sandwich material here; left overs here; condiments here; vegetables here; what ever your needs are, and every week while you are making out your grocery list, wipe out your fridge, that way, you'll never have to clean it; it's always clean. Years ago, I started using index cards for notes, lists, and things I didn't want to lose. These cards sit in my phone box - yes I have a rotary in a box - with a cup of pencils near by.

I wear a watch, and although I have absolutely no sense of time at all, a watch helps me keep an eye on times when certain things must be started in order to get them done on time. Knowing how much time certain jobs take helps in the streamlining of life.

I cook for fifty every day, and it takes about 1.5 hours to have a relaxed, easy time of it. Like any of life's routine jobs, making a dinner for 50 is really a formula. I have to serve so much protein, bread, veggie and fruit and milk to so many children. You do your formulas ahead of time and have the stuff bought for the maximum number of children. Then it's a matter of getting the meat cooked on time and adding the other foods in an order that makes them all come out together. Serve.

Organizing life is simple and easy if you think it through, balance your time, wear a watch and not get distracted doing things that are not on the agenda.

Then, when you've got your life by the tail, teach your kids.

Saturday's Tattler

It was an incredible week from the inside...Strep really took hold, and there wasn't a day we didn't send someone home with Strep. On Tuesday, Miss Lisa went home and was terribly sick and is only now beginning to recoup. During most of the week, Miss Amy was battling something that even threatened the ER at one point. Miss Dayna had the exhaustion, "I'm fighting for my life" blues, and even Miss Judy was not herself on one day. I was hoping I'd be someone about twenty years younger, but had to settle on a space head from Mars for about four hours. I am very blessed with good health and great energy, and only get sick about four hours at a time. Miss Molly had a day when she couldn't come in because her entire sewer system backed up into her house. It was a neighborhood event, but settled on her home as the "guest house" lucky dog Molly! Typhoid or diphtheria anyone?

But if you consider it to be a "sick week" we did manage to get a lot accomplished. We had a luau on Tuesday, and the children enjoyed finger pork, a big fresh fruit salad and egg rolls made by yours truly.

We talked about the world's islands and what it might be like to live on an island. We talked about Egypt and about the pyramids, the Nile and mummies! We talked about India and reincarnation, rice mosaics, and the sacred cow. We tried on a sari and added it to dress up.

I was thrilled with our geography "final" on Friday morning before the trip to Yen Ching.

I asked every child to point out something they knew about the map, and all but about five children could point out a specific place. We got some incredible answers from our very young children. We pointed out the poles, the equator ( Edan), both the Southern and Northern Hemispheres (Jil), the Indian Ocean (Alexis) , the Pacific (Kayla) , and the "Dirty Little Pond" known as the Atlantic (Connor D). We were able to identify Australia (Connor H), Where the Tree People live in New Guinea ( Josiah), the African Continent (Kinsley), Europe (Levi), South America (Kaelin) North America, the USA (K'Mya), Canada (Madison), Brazil (Fallyn), Alaska (Josiah) Greenland (Jacob) Madagascar (DeAsia), China, Asia, Mexico, Egypt (Josiah) the Panama Canal (Jil) and more I can't remember. It was such a wonderful morning.

Then we went out to lunch to Yen Ching, and had a delicious ten course meal and then home for play outside to see if we couldn't keep the bug under control.

It's always a pleasure to have children learn, remember and be proud to tell us what they know. This has been a really good geography session. I hope the children remember what they know because a knowledge of the world is an important part of being in the world.

Onward to Science with a slight detour to dancing and courtship and the Middle Ages...lots of fun ahead...

Friday's Tattler

Today at 10:45, we will be leaving for Yen Ching to have our traditional lunch out at a restaurant. This year we chose Chinese food. We hope the children will enjoy this treat.

Children must wear their school shirts and school hoodie.

The cost is $10.00.

Parents are welcome at the same fee.

We will be returning to school after our lunch.