The Garden School Tattler

Friday was a truly wonderful day, filled with emotion and children's pranks, and anticipation and just about every passion I can think of.

When you think about it, we're really blessed. The little Thanksgiving play Miss Stacey and Miss Rachel wrote, designed, directed and made costumes and backdrops for was delightful. I was so proud of them. It takes a lot of affection, not to mention the work to get a children's play off the ground. It's a huge undertaking and I can say, it's always worth doing.

I was doing crowd control, and I didn't hear Seth, who got out of the stage curtain and took one look at the audience said, "I'm not doing this." What a lark. Kids are so funny.

I want to thank parents for bringing all the food. It was a delicious spread. I don't think I've seen such a feast for a long time. We still have a huge cake that we will use for treats this week.

Getting together with parents every month during the school year is important. It's a time when we can get to know some of the families. When grandmothers, and grandfathers visit the school, it means a lot to the children and to the teachers.

Next week the children will attend regular classes except on Wednesday when they will bake cranberry bread for their families as their contribution to Thanksgiving dinner. We have been practicing several Thanksgiving songs, and working on some art work.

We will be out on Friday.

Aidan's grandmother asked for the cranberry bread recipe:

2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
salt
2 tablespoons oil
1 egg
2 oranges ground up (cut the orange slightly askew of the center all four cuts, and you can easily remove the webbing.)
2 cups cranberries raw
1 cup+ nuts - I used walnuts
1 cup raisins
1 can fruit - I used mandarin oranges, but pineapple would be good too.

Any dried fruit works. Coconut makes the muffins lighter.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.