The Garden School Tattler

Everyday I post articles I find from around the world, from next door in the nation and stuff I get from distributors because I think these things are interesting and keep readers abreast of the face of early childhood. Who is doing what, thinking what where and why. It all helps to understand children and the people who care for them. I want to reach out to every corner of the interested childcare world.

Yet part of the personal drama goes on during every teacher's day. What I do for a living that enables me to write this takes place between 6:15 a.m. and 3:15 p.m. – my school hours.

For those of you first reading, my partner and I own a little school in Southwestern Indiana – about two - three hours from anyplace you'd recognize like Louisville or Indianapolis or Nashville or St. Louis. I work with Mrs. St. Louis, Miss Molly, Miss Rachel, Miss Stacey and Mr. Tom. We have somewhere between thirty and forty children who come to play at our place – The Garden School.

I’m going to try to write a new little addition on the kids at play. It might give some parents a laugh, and some parents an insight into what we, as teachers, see during a full day at school. Be prepared for naming names!!!

I think we will call this “The Garden School Tattler." Here goes:

The day opened with breakfast on the patio – donuts and apple slices and milk. The kids think they are very grown up to do this. After breakfast, we had circle time and we did yoga and tried to do the frog and we had a balancing contest. The kids love yoga.

One of the joys of early childhood is the hilariously funny antics of very young children. This morning I went into the kitchen which is a nook about 10X10 - just beyond art – and there was Triston three feet in the air clinging to a shelf while he helped himself to a box of candy. “Get down,” I bellowed, and he gave me a chocolaty grin. Was he in trouble the rest of the day!

Dawson bit his brother because his brother bothered him, so Dawson lost his medal and got scowls from his brother. We use a medal on a chord that signifies good behavior. If you lose it for making another child cry on purpose, disrupting a class or if you are chronically disobedient, you don’t get treats when the treats are passed out. Most kids work hard to keep their medals especially on fudge days. We have a few kids, like Hadley, who never lose their medals.

Class time went uneventfully.

We had tacos and cheese and sour cream and salsa for lunch with beans and rice and bananas and apples that I bought yesterday at the orchard. We had cherry-pineapple critter and a salad too and milk. The kids ate it all. They usually do, including Aidan who eats nearly everything for us. He tried critter today and asked me to give the recipe to mom. I'll post it this weekend with some other Garden School recipies.

One of our more creatively disobedient children, Ty, ate lunch near the biter and the rock thrower and the candy snatcher, and while the three of them were doing acrobatics at noon prayer, he was reverently saying his prayers - a feat of personal engineering. He was well rewarded, needless to say, and enjoyed a super sized piece of cake later at the party.

We had birthday. Brian is four. He’s a sweet child who mostly zero’s into life from a very right brained point of view. He used to carry a green teddy bear, but now he’s decided that it’s too much trouble to bring him, so bear stays home. Brian is tall with huge eyes and a smile the size of Pittsburgh.

We had a cake at 1:30 on the playground for Brian. We usually avoid “frosting lick” by using 6 oz Dixie cups and a popsicle stick. We put a small piece of cake frosting side down into the cup with a pizza palate and we’ve found the child actually eats the cake and enjoys the trouble of scooping with the stick. Works for most.

After that I taught geography to fifteen of our bigger kids. Dhezmond knew you can’t live in the ocean. You have to live on ground. Geography kind of goes over the little kid’s heads, so I took a crew into Miss Rachel’s room and we talked about the World and the United States and how one fits into the other. The kids colored parts of a map and then we adjourned to the playground.

We ended the day catching a thief. We have a donation envelope at the front of the school for a family who used to attend the GS. Daddy had a bad accident last week and died, and we are taking up a collection. Someone reached in and took the cash. But today we caught this parent on video camera.

It’s all in a day’s work.