The Garden School Tattler

Several parents have asked about our summer in school program. Here's how it works. On Mondays and Thursdays, we're at school. We'll have breakfast as usual, and then recess, because the temperature will rise and make it too hot to go out comfortably much later.

After morning recess, we will come in for some kind of class time. We will use the classrooms for smaller groups and the children will do science projects, geography, spelling bees, writing competitions, puzzles, maze races, math bees and anything we can find to continue classroom learning.

We'll have play time and lunch and then try a brief recess out doors again so we can indulge in Popsicles. There could be water play as well. Then in the later afternoon, we'll come in again and break into smaller groups again for more projects.

I will be at school on Monday and Thursday afternoons, and I will be taking the older girls and those girls who are interested for domestic arts. We'll learn cross stitch this year and do a lot of baking. If they were older, I'd teach them traditional English smocking, but we'll see. I think some flower pressing and some sewing and perhaps some lace making will fill the ticket. These are all the things I'm good at and want to share with the kids.

Mr. Tom will be taking some of the kids into the garden with him this summer. But because of yesterday and all the apple bud picking, that number has been dramatically reduced!

We will focus on geology, and horticulture, and drama. There's a neat combination.

I'd like to do some in school plays this year - sort of work out what we are reading.

Every summer is different because every summer there is a different set of kids, so accomplishing anything fits into the general profile of the kids. This is a particularly young group with some older kids thrown in. The younger kids will get mostly play. But they love indoor play, so that's not a problem. That leaves teachers free to really teach the older children.

Yesterday we had a call from a lady who loves our program and called to ask if we still pray. Edith said that we "still pray" as if our prayer time is a momentary lapse of some kind. All the things we do, we do as an attempt to well round a child. Children exposed to every kind of thing know more, can adapt better to new situations, and are more mentally elastic than children who are separated from the world and left in a mommy and daddy pristine box that is only exposed to "the right things."

I always gave my grade school children the option of participating in those activities the school offered that some parents found questionable. I trusted the school and the good sense of the educators I found there. I also trusted my children. As a Catholic, we are taught to revere all that is true and holy. That means stretching sometimes. I neither encouraged nor expected nor refused nor negated these events. What we did do was talk about these things after, and we as a family came to understand the truth from the fictions in the world.

New places offer new ideas, new topics, new ways of thinking. If a child is forbidden or does not have these opportunities at the early childhood stage, he does not learn how to learn. A child who does not learn how to learn early will not learn to learn well and could be a real blockhead. That means he will always fumble and stumble with new ideas and that's a shame.

A good foundation comes from home, but at the same time, offering ideas, new things, new concepts, new subjects is the job of good teaching. We hope parents will love our in school summer program this summer. We hope that children will be able to take home much of what they have learned.