The Garden School Tattler

Lots to report:

Last week the totals on the Hop'ining for Easter Seals were announced. We won a $75.00 prize for collecting the biggest sum after 3 k-8 schools with 250 or more students. Our school has fewer than forty students and that's quite an accomplishment. Thank you parents for your support for this worthy cause.

We took the gift card from Easter Seals and went over to Walmart and bought some of our summer equipment. As I went through the line, the price was exactly $75.00. We had a good laugh. We bought a big water barrel for dunking for apples, a bunch of swimming noodles, some "go fish" for the pool. These delightful 8" fish are battery operated and are turned on and they swim around the pool, and the children discover them as they swim. We bought a rope for tug of war which the boys and girls will just love. We bought relay equipment for races, diving weights and goggles. Swimming is a most enjoyable and educational activity.

Summer is developing nicely. We are searching for some good local alternatives to long distance travel. I think parents will be surprised. One of the things we want to do is to take the children to an Amish farm. We are searching the possibilities. As ever, all parents are welcome to come as our guests.

Parents are welcome to talk to Molly about summer Garden School T-shirts.

This week we've been studying insects. The kids have had some fun with discovering hundreds of insect names and identities. They are particularly interested in spiders and the habits of spiders. And no, I don't think we will get a tarantula for the pet room.

And speaking of things that could be pets, we've had five little guinea pigs born this week. The kids discovered some of them and were delighted.

Justin and Taylor have been putting a rather advanced King Tut puzzle together. There are five puzzles in a big book, and the children discovered they could clamp the pages shut until they had put all the pages together. These boys are focused on completion; it's hilarious and heartwarming. Our next project is the five hundred piece!

We had a call today from a woman who had an abandoned child. She wanted to bring the child to the Garden School because the parent had not picked up the child last night and she needed to get to work. The bells and whistles went off on that one, and I suggested she call the sheriff's office as her only legal option. Childcare is not a last moment, drop in idea. Childcare is a safe, loving chosen environment that encourages children to grow, not scare them to death because adults have been abusive.

Abuse is a common thing in today's world, and children suffer as much today as ever. It's sad to think that someone has a child and then finds every possible surrogate care option they can so that they are literally never with the child. So many of our parents lament too many hours in childcare, but we're a family, and the children have bonded with us, and it's a chosen understood option. I always know because I rarely if ever miss work, and today I had a check up and when I got back to school, the children all ran up and hugged me. It felt good. I get multiple hugs all day, and so do our other teachers. I count on those hugs.

Today we had breakfast for lunch. We had polish snausage, egg pie or quiche, taters, honey dew melon, cinnamon toast, a big salad with tomatoes and cheese, and milk. Then because the children were so quiet, we had Sunshines on the patio - 75% orange juice and 25% sprite. It would have been elegant if the plastic cups had had stems.

Tomorrow it's pancakes and strawberries, and we bought the most wonderful cookies! Prizes for bug identifications and bug modeling. You can't build enough bugs!

Life is a beautiful thing when it involves children. I'm a most blessed lady and my life is complete.