The Garden School Tattler

With Halloween over, it's time to seriously move into the family holidays - Thanksgiving and Christmas. Between Halloween in Thanksgiving, it's probably the busiest time of the year. It's play time, which is a very important part of sharing - sharing the stage with friends.

This year, Miss Stacey and Miss Rachel are writing, directing, and costuming the play. It's an enormous help. It's a surprise, and it sounds like a lot of fun.

Because last night was Halloween, and the kids had bellies filled with junk and some were absent, we had a light day. We watched the Wizard of Oz - part of it. We watched it as an intro to watching "films." Too often kids use TV as a background for life, and at it's best, TV is a means to present a craft in a comfortable mode. We first talked about the film first produced in 1936. We talked about black and white movies, and TV, and we talked about finding the characters of the farm hands in other roles in the movie. We talked about the little actors and actresses they would see in Munchkin land. We talked about good and evil, and about listening skills.

The children were marvelous. They got it right away, and Ty was especially bright to say in the Munchkin scene there were three witches. He saw right away that Ms Gulch was the Witch of the West.

Helping children understand what they see and helping them to understand that what they see is only part of what watching is all about is important as early as three. When TV becomes a soma type drug, it should be turned off. Enjoying anything, even some dreary commercial is fine if there is a purpose. Too often what kids do has little purpose, and it's a waste of some very precious time.

Asking questions like: What was that!? Who did ______? What was so and so doing when _______? Was so and so good? What made so and so good? Did you like ______? How would so and so change ______?

Why questions are shoulder shrugging moments. Getting children to think is not a natural thing. It never occurs to most people who have not been asked or trained that there is a reason for most things.

We did some portraiture from natural substances, and we practiced our play. It was a fine day. We dined on sausages, applesauce, bread, carrots, broccoli and cauliflower and dip.

The weather was shiny and bright. God bless the weather.

Tomorrow is back to class.