The Garden School Tattler

It's Friday and that means fine arts, shopping, and a day of treats and games. We often suspend the regular school day on Friday to introduce extra studies the children need to be well rounded and there isn't time for in the regular school day.

We've been reading a little novel called Whitefoot the Woodmouse published in 1922. "Where are the pictures," they asked on chapter fifteen. "In your mind. Can't you imagine a rabbit and a mouse and a weasel and an owl hunting one another?"
"No," said the kids.
"Close your eyes and think of Big Carl out in the woods." (Carl is the name of our ten pound white rabbit.)
"OK."
"Now think of a white mouse ready to jump into its hole out in the same woods."
"OK."
"Now think of a weasel."
"What's a weasel?"
"It's a long slinky thing with legs and a rat face."
The kids laughed.

We read these little books so the kids will develop what we call a "mind's eye." It's been hard for kids to do since the invention of TV. The pictures they need come from the visuals in their lives, and the real world doesn't have nearly the impact to remember. Remembering takes a lot for a little child. So we take the stories slowly and encourage the little mind pictures.

When a school has as disproportionate number of fine artists as the GS, it would be wasteful not to use the talents in favor of worksheets, so Fridays when the kids are tired, we drag out the artists and we put them to work.

One of the things we see at school is that children just don't know how to do a lot of art. They can color a picture already printed ie a coloring book, and they can manage to scribble on a blank sheet, but they don't yet know, because they haven't done it, how to manage the idea in the head onto the paper. Developing talents in art is more important than nearly any other thing in school because art is the food for the heart that actually allows children to do the "disciplines" like math and reading with more interest. Math is a beautiful work of art, and if the children can learn to regard it that way, they will fly through math. When a subject is considered dull or too hard, like chopping wood, the struggle often ends in an "I quit."

Last week, we used finger prints to make things - animals, little character people and flowers. The kids all loved it and had a ball using ordinary prints as the basis of great art. This week it's separating sky from earth with paint. Easy? Not if you've never thought about it before. Clouds are one of the most difficult things to paint. So we will start with blue and green paint and go from there. We will first introduce the lesson with some great artist from our huge library. Mrs. St. Louis will go through different periods to show the children how great artists have depicted clouds over the centuries, and then we will do that ourselves. It's always a delight to see what the children have made.

We will listen to some water music today by Handel. We will see what we see in our mind's eye concerning water through the music. This intro to Baroque music may be the only time these children hear this.

Then it's mind over to body with a ghastly child invented game of football. They have finally stopped throwing the ball over the fence. Here are the kiddy rules: You throw the ball into the crowd and someone catches it and runs the little fence. If they get caught, they get tackled and three kids cry - mostly from frustration. If you make it around without being caught you hold the ball up and there's no tackle. Tackling means throwing your body into a pile but not knee first or head first. If you bite, you get suspended. The boys are having a ball, and the girls don't want to play, they think it's silly.

We'll make it a fudge day today. I'll make five pounds of fudge for them this afternoon.

If you need yard work done, if you need clean up done, let me know.