The Garden School Tattler

This is a picture of JFK's grave.

Mondays are tough on little kids. Whatever the mood at home was over the weekend is left over on Mondays in the child's mind. It's the cat herding game. We read books in our class again today and it was a slow go - like they had never done it before - until I got the candy box out.

We did a math thing I had to ask Miss Kelly about because it was such a slow go, I thought perhaps it was way way over their heads. Mrs. St. Louis has a number chart to 100. It has columns and rows. The numbers go left to right from one to 10 and then left to right 11- 20 and all the way down to 100 in the right bottom corner.

Because it begins with one at each row, the columns are also identifiable as 4's, 5's, 6's, etc. 26, 36, 46, 56, are all in a row going down, so asking the group what 26 is, and then the next 36 should have been a fun game, but even when I got their attention, it was a slow go. Abby won an egg because she was the only child in the class who could match a flashcard with a space on the chart. We will play with this again today.

We will be sending home a list of words to play with. The children should be able to read some words we have studied in the classroom. It would be fun to let them build sentences at home.

I'm writing a series for WFIE on the state of childcare locally. If anyone has anything to add, please let me know. Part of the problem of staffing locally is the inability to pay. Paying an employee is a matter of respect. Who do we respect and what are we willing to offer? What do you think your childcare provider makes and what are her expenses for working? When you think of the money poured into early childhood and you look at the toy status, and you look at pay and you look at food, where is the money going? Is it going to the children via good care or is it disappearing into the "programs" no child ever sees?

I'd like to get two baseball teams started at school. We need a T. I think a rubber plumbing pipe sunk into a bucket with concrete ought to do it. Anyone volunteer to make one? I have the baseballs. We need a few mitts and some giant beanbags for bases and some pennies. Kids will play so long as the game moves quickly and they understand what they are supposed to do. This is something we could do all summer.

This month is spring sing and the kids have chosen a lot of the songs. The ones they have liked this year are the songs we are singing. I'm sending home some parts to work on.

We're still working on the summer program. Gas is really rising, and that's a problem. One of the things we thought of was to add some fun to the children's day were some "in school" activities we haven't done for a long time like pulling taffy and making boats to sail and then sailing them in blow up pools. We're putting our heads together to make this an outstanding summer. Please offer ideas as they come.