The Garden School Tattler

We had another "inside" day, but the kids were great. The longer we are inside, the bigger the buildings get and the more engineers we claim for the good of man.

We accomplished a lot today. We've been talking about volcanoes from the infamous iron center of the earth and the kids are all ears. We talked about how the rest of the planet worked - water cycle, plants and animals, air, etc, and then we went "down, down, down," to the very core of the world where the hot stuff is and then we talked about how the earth belches and then throws up. They all thought this was hilarious, but it's an image that works. We watched a movie on volcanoes put out by Nova.

The bigger kids played a game of fill in the squares which means they took a blank 100 square number chart sheet and filled in the numbers as I called them out. They needed to figure out in 100 squares which one was the 66th square, the 37th square, the 54th square in fifteen seconds. They did a miraculous job. I could not have been prouder of all of them.

We painted today - hearts and flowers in the form of coffee filters. The kids seemed to enjoy this. I sat with they little kids and had time draw people which I promptly hung but the front door. They are wonderful and fun. I especially like Ian's. Emma had a grand smile on her face as she began to discover that her person had shape and form. She is such a delight. Cole was just as excited. That's why I love the threes. They always are so lively about discovery and they never say, "I can't do that," they just plunge into the task and do it.

Abby and Aidan discovered that the gerbils who have escaped their box love tissues. So they were offering the gerbils tissues this afternoon to see where they drag them to see where they are living in the pet room.

We had kiddie-wiches and teen-wiches today and the kids got to choose between soft wheat bread and more adult wheat bread, and most plates were pretty much emptied into hungry kids. I always double my cheese and of course I use real cheese. We served fresh green grapes and carrot sticks and dip and chips for fun, and of course milk.

I really stretched for snack today. I'm trying this golden mean thing. I read about bread all weekend and the ideas out there are nearly preposterous - whole wheat bread causes pancreatic cancer; white bread causes bowel cancer; sandwiches are bad because we shouldn't mix carbohydrates with protein, sour dough bread is the only... so what to think. Well, ideally, I suppose we should be grazing, but most of us can't bend that low comfortably, and we don't have a long enough digestive tract, so we're stuck using our brains to figure all this out.

I think the golden mean is using both whole wheat and white flour and creating a wide variety of recipes the kids like and offer a variety of tastes as well as a wide variety of nutrients.

Today I put some dark chocolate into a baking dish, melted it in the oven while I made caramel on the stove, and then over the melted chocolate, I put a box of Kashi, and then dribbled the caramel over that to make the whole thing stick. Jana cut it in bars and the kids loved it; it was good for them and also had a modicum of sweet they crave.

By using the worlds goods with a positive sense of joy and fun, we can eat great stuff, be satisfied and be well fed with grace and ease.

Caramel:

same amounts (1/4 cup, 1/2 cup, 1 cup - depends on how much you want or need) of the following: brown sugar, white sugar, Karo syrup, cream, butter and milk. Boil until thick but not burned.

Moving off food and onto more fun:

Miss Beve brought an album of candid pictures of the children she's taken the last few visits. They will be on sale at the Valentine's Day party. Each picture is $3.00. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do. Beve is a fabulous photographer and we are lucky to have her.

We will have a Valentine's Day card swap on Wednesday morning. Your child will deliver his cards to every child a la musical chairs. It's a lot of fun, and the kids love opening them. We will have our party at 3:00 with a 15 minute dance and a table full of goodies.

All in all, a great day!