The Garden School Tattler

I haven't posted for a few days to give my cousin's children a chance to be seen. When young people stretch and do something worth while, it's always a good idea to help where you can.

So much...

Monday we started the Advent Box program. It's a set of drawers over by the piano, and each drawer contains a prize with a date on it. The prize goes to the best child that day. Camryn won it for Monday and Justin won it for Tuesday. We haven't chosen one for Wednesday. We'll do that tomorrow.

Advent angels are up. Children who are beautifully behaved during the day will get an auto angel. Those that rise beyond the good and are exemplary and do something really good will get another angel. Angels are collectible, and the child with the most angels on December 21 will get the Santa Prize at the party. Children losing their stars are no longer eligible for the day.

The Christmas decorations started going up today. We scatter them around the school and children are encouraged to look and to touch what they like. We did a fine arts program on the many faces of Mary through the years. Kamden was especially interested. He's three, and often he's just bored with things like this, but today he was mesmerized by the art. That's always interesting.

Miss Gwen and Miss Hazel came to school today to make sugar cookies with the kids. They seemed to enjoy the project. We baked all morning. The kids ate the cookies for snack. It was a lot of fun.

It's going to be very cold in the next few days and children ill go out if it is 32 or above. Please send your child with "child sized" mittens and a hat. Hoods don't work. Please send your child in a coat that is heavier than a light jacket!

We've had a great start with the Christmas ornament project. Most of the ornaments are gone. It's just fine to go in on an ornament with another family. This will help us come back to school in January with a whole new set of learning toys. Thanks so much for your participation.

Fund raiser stuff is in now, and so is the bill. Please make sure your fund raiser money is in!

Food:

Monday we had lasagna, orange, mixed vegetables, whole wheat crackers and milk. I made the lasagna from shells and each child got two filled shell.

Tuesday we had piggie pie, macaroni and cheese - homemade, apples, oranges, rag bread and milk.

Today we had 15 bean soup with ham, mixed vegetables, oranges, apple sauce, soft rolls and milk.

Tomorrow it's baked chicken, rice, mixed hot vegetables, apples, raisins and cheese biscuits.

We've had waffles, chocolate chip muffins, sticky buns this week. Coffee cake tomorrow.

Snack has been homemade cookies and cold cereal, cheese and crackers.

On Friday, we will have a visit from the new Childcare Coalition team. They wrote to say they had always been curious about the GS, and it was time to come and see. So we cleaned - you know what it's like to clean for guests! But we got carried away and started moving things around and doing a bunch of new stuff and the kids got involved and the whole thing has meant a very busy few days!

I have been asked by some of the big girls, "Can I do something for you?" You can't imagine how much that means to us. Abby and Hadley are the ladies most often asking. What I want to say is "Here are my car keys. Go ..." Then I remind myself, "Not yet, not yet. They are too short to drive!" This particular group is simply too old. They are mini-teens. They laugh at our jokes, they remember things for us, they help without asking, they know where everything is and how to work just about all the machinery... What a glorious group.

The boys are fabulous too, and have taken the younger children under their wings and are teaching them all kinds of things. Today Adyson had Phoebe in his lap at Circle Time. She was tired and she was very comforted by his loving attention. At the same time I see a lot of the bigger boys letting the little boys look on at their projects and take a turn and do. It's a really nice environment. Many times this week I've stood and watched the play and thought, this is just a giant home and every child is the brother or sister of the next child.

We've been working on the hemispheres and the continents in Geography class, and Miss Kelly has been teaching more and more Christmas songs. She can actually sing "I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus!"

Well... It's been fun and yes we have a Santa! An old friend has agreed to play the part.

It seems like this half of the year has gone so fast.