The Garden School Tattler

I haven't stopped writing the Tattler, I just didn't think it was popular. Thanks for telling me. If you look back a few articles, the article "Teaching Africa" has been changed to a Garden School Tattler. There's a picture of a giraffe.

School has been a little like a roller coaster lately -- with big peaks and long declines. The weather hasn't helped. I think a lot of children are really tired by the freezing one minute and the coat-less sunshine the next.

We've had a lot of trouble with a few children and that always makes the day difficult. It's hard to write about a difficult day. The one little boy who was not really suited to school yet has left for more toddler care, and that helps a lot.

Plus, the last couple of weeks have been tense to say the least because we've been waiting for the end of the "erroneous complaint" filed against us with Child Protective services. We met with our case worker last week who told us that we were indeed doing a splendid job and one well worth doing. It's a class A misdemeanor to use the state in a revenge plot. It's a felony to do it twice. We've all felt really bad about all this, and it takes its emotional toll.

But things are surfacing nicely and even the cat has been cleared of all his charges, and we're good to go. It's hard to take a humiliating accusation with a smile on your face and wait to be exonerated by a public agent.

Some good news! We are entering into a new "Town Meeting" honors behavior system at school that's just as funny as it gets. It's serious too, but the kids are all enjoying playing "Town Board."
Here's how it works. Every child begins every day with a smiley face! Miss Kelly spent her snow weekend working on this most delightful system which is up in circle time. I will take a picture for all the parents and grandparents out there who don't get to visit regularly!

There are only three ways to lose a smiley face - disobedience, disruption and making another child cry on purpose. So get the picture -- we all pass quietly and not so quietly through the morning and then assemble for one thing or another, and we bring up behaviors without naming names. "What do you think of this," I asked yesterday? The children decided which behaviors broke "their rules" and which ones didn't. Turning the behavior over to the group is a marvelous inclusive help.

Then, on the higher side, we are rewarding the best listener at story time. Abby won the award. She listened nearly without moving - mostly because she was listening - to "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." It's one of my favorites.

We are also studying weather this week, and four children won the "Good Egg" award for excellence in "theory" at Scholar's Club. That's a big way of saying "I listened, I understood, and I followed directions." The winners were Justin, David, Madison, and Logan. Parents who look at the "Town Meeting" board in circle time will see yellow smiley face stickers on the winners.

We are always so excited to offer prizes and rewards to children who behave so beautifully. Behavior is the key to success in big school. The excellent, non demanding child who sits for a teacher, knows the answer, can cooperate with any question, duty or charge is a child who will be the golden child in any classroom, and we want all our children to fit this bill.

Otherwise, things are progressing at school. In my class, we are trying to put words together. I'm not sure just how much they understand. The children are writing a statement every day - Name and the ___. It's a story starter. Once they have mastered the spacing, they can make up their own statements.

We're making words out of what we call air sounds (vowels) and mouth sounds (consonants). We use mounds of purple mouth sounds and yellow air sounds and put the air sound between the mouth sounds with purple and yellow paper squares. Then we sound them out. If the child can sound out his word, and he knows what it is, he gets a penny. When he earns a dollar, he can take it home.

We started equations in the Kindergarten yesterday. Zero plus one is one. "Why?" I asked. You have to have a reason in math to do anything, so why not start in kindergarten? "Because if you add nothing to something you won't get any more." The response was somewhere between "Huh?" and "Can I have some candy?"

It's really a funny morning. The kids are all so eager. We had four Bingo winners yesterday. I went really fast, and the "I can't be quiet" kids got frustrated, but the listener kids won. Abby, Taylor, Logan and Justin all won a game.

It's late - must go. Will write again soon,

Love, Judy