The Garden School Tattler

Picture the day: ten little boys have thirty bean bags and three empty planters and are taking aim at what seems a real target. They line up taking a shot. The hilarity raises the mood of the room. Five other boys take 100 box blocks and build a round tower. The girls dress up in long skirts, high heels, crowns and totter around the building making girl comments about the boys' aim, their round towers, and the general mess. The bell rings. The children clean up the playroom and go to circle time when one child asks about the guillotine. With truthful answers that cause wide eyes, the children eagerly listen to all the neat stuff about "what they used to do." It's all very impressive.

After a grand pull bread, apples and milk breakfast, we all gather for another meeting of the minds. "Embroidery or shields," I say, "Your choice." As I predicted all the girls eagerly approached the art table and eight girls begin a morning of embroidery. It's very successful. It's so successful, and they like it so much, I show them how to do french knots. Hadley understands and actually makes one. They also learn how to bead a garment. "Would you like an embroidery corner so that you can make stuff all the time?" They squeal with delight. When they have learned not to round the hoop, I show them some famous embroideries. Out comes the Bayeux Tapestry and the Unicorn Tapestry in pictures. "I can see the stitches," says Faith.

Meanwhile out in boy land, the boys have colored some nasty looking dragons and the teachers have carefully cut them out. The boys have gone through some wonderful donations of damask and silk swatches, and have chosen one that amuses them. We mount the dragons on the silk, and the silk on cardboard and cover the whole thing with contact paper and we have a reasonable shield.

It's close to lunch. For lunch we had the spirited piggie pie, noodles, apples and grapes, oranges, turnips, carrots, radishes, celery and dip, begets and butter. Then it's outside to fight a dragon. Now picture the children excited about the impending piggie pie. "Get your embroidery off my raw meat," I said out loud. "Only at the Garden School," commented one of the teachers.

After lunch we celebrated Aidan's fifth birthday. He's a marvelous child. He brought the most wonderful gummy worm chocolate cupcakes - the mixing of worm and chocolate was endearing. The children just loved the party.

It was a very creative day. It was a block day. That means we have discovered yet another thing children like to do - embroider.

Teaching children about real stuff like tapestries, food, guillotines and dragons is important.

PS - We have a bad case of pink eye. According to one doctor's office, there have been 65 cases of pink eye in his office today. Please be aware for some children it is extremely contageous and it can cause blindness. Please treat a child right away and don't bring him to school until after he has been treated. If your child wakes up with crusted eye - he's contageous and needs drops. It's not hard to do, but he or she should not be around other children.

For adults who get pink eye, you need to discard your present contact lenses and treat the infection without contacts or it will continue to infect your eyes. It's not only unpleasant, it could be dangerous. Please see that your infected child is treated until the redness is gone and the eye is normal. Remember to wash your hands after treating your child.