The Garden School Tattler

It's been just beautiful outdoors and we've been spending a lot of time outside. It's going to get hot quickly, and we want the children adjusted to being outside.

I posted a political thing yesterday that amounts to 4-K. We are the only place in our city that does a 4-K. Because we don't use an age cut off for our classes, we have changed our structure in the past few years to be something other. We offer a preschool program for the child who knows nothing including sitting and listening. You can't teach a child who is not ready to listen. We read a lot, look at things, and talk a lot - ask questions, have the young child respond, and let them play between projects. Yes, it's teacher led, but too often children don't know how to play, and their play is destructive, so we teach them that too.

We offer a 4-K for the child who is ready to learn numbers and letters and put some thinking to use. This is the "figure it out" class. We start to draw our letters and our numbers and learn concepts like the numbers that go from 0 to 100. We learn about spacing words, reading number and color words and some more art concepts. We learn about choices - this, but not that. What fits - what doesn't.

Then we offer a K-1 which is advanced Kindergarten with first grade concepts integrated. Most of these children learn to read. Then big school is a breeze. That's what we are about. To launch our children as the top children in any class.

We are not in competition with anyone. We are completely autonomous. That's why these politicos who storm the news with 4-K; 4-K; 4-K make me laugh. They don't have a program; they just want the money to do it. Ask anyone screaming what a 4-K means and they won't know. 4-K is a concept that takes children from the earliest learning into an environment where they can learn to read. Reading is one of the great emancipators of the human condition. It's along the lines of toilet training and driving a car.

Getting a child to read is not easy when you have a concept of day care that is child led and not teaching. Anyway - I've expounded for the day. Thanks for reading.

Next week is our graduation.