The Garden School Tattler

Today we're off to Lincoln National Park. It's about an hour from the school by school bus. It will be hot today, but under the wonderful canopy of trees, I think we'll enjoy the whole woods experience.

Yesterday, the children chinked their cabins with salt clay. It was an experience. Salt clay can be made at home: 1 cup salt, 1 cup warm water, 1 tablespoon oil, 2 cups flour. The clay lasts weeks in the fridge.

We spent about half an hour talking about what kind of things we would take out to the wilderness if we were going to set up a home. The children have learned their lessons well over the years. Austin decided that an ax and a saw and a milk cow would be good things to take. When I asked why they would take a milk cow, one of the children said for eggs, but most said for milk. Some of the children were surprised at all the food you can get from a cow.

Hadley said a chicken, but soon added to her flock. We decided on several chickens and rooster to take care of the chickens!

We talked about clothing, light - candles and kerosene, and lanterns.

We talked about sewing, and other household chores we would have to do because stores would not be available.

The children were all interested and gave wonderful thoughtful answers. The whole idea is to show them the limited space of a wagon and think about all the things they need in their daily lives and figure out what is most important and then fill the wagon.

We also had an academic bowl at school today. The first round included a number dot to dot from one to one hundred. About half the kids completed this project. Then we moved on to a crossword puzzle. All but five of the half completed this, then we moved to a word find and that was successful. We thought there would only be one winner, but we had eleven who finished all the work successfully so there were a lot of prizes.

Thinking is a skill we try hard to encourage children to develop.

At the conclusion of the day we saw one of the old silent cartoons. Does anyone remember Flip the Frog? It's a silent, black and white cartoon, and the children really did laugh out loud.

We'll be back to EVV about 2:00.