Our Friday Report

It's a been a great week! The kids have been great about the play and many of them have learned at least some of their lines. We are encouraging parents to read the whole script with them so that the children will know when to come in with their line or lines. It should be a wonderful play.

I'm really impressed with the children's ability to color this year. We have been working with the little kids and teaching them to think first before they color. They have begun to understand what it means to turn out something they can be proud of. My best colorers are Zoey and Trevor.

We've talked about the Pilgrims this week, and we've read the lives of Sarah Morton and Samuel Eaton. The children are impressed with how much the Pilgrims had to work. They are interested in what it must have been like to wear lots of petticoats. Meme remembered that one of the household jobs Sarah Morton had was to scoop the animal poop and put it in the garden. Luke remembered that there was poop, but he couldn't place the importance. Addie remembered that Sarah had to milk the goats.

We played the old "name game" that we've played for years at the GS. We choose a category, like animals, and go around the circle of kids and each child names something in the category without naming something someone else has named. If you can't think of one or if your repeat an animal, then you have to sit out. We had Andrew, Isaac, Nathan, Alex W, Alex H, win today. It's a fun game and the kids like this kind of thinking and storing knowledge.

We started two adorable twins this week. They are the cutest kids. They are really enjoying themselves at the GS. We also started a little girl in Miss Kelly's class whose mother pulled her after two days because Mom didn't want to come to any of the parties or participate in the life of the school, and because she worked, thought she should be excused. Also, she thought the very idea of field trip was endangering the lives of the children at the Garden School. She said she really liked our program, but...

If you really like the Garden School program, then you understand that the life of the school depends on the extras, the parties and the trips. It's a whole child program; we are not a day care, and we care about the development of the entire child. The trips help teachers teach, and offer something special that allows kids to think about more than the four walls of the building we attend school in. The parties are celebrations around celebrating times. We have eight parties: Grandparent's Tea; Halloween; Thanksgiving Play; Christmas; Valentine's Day; The St. Patrick Day Play; Spring Sing and Book Fair; Awards Day. These events are 45 minutes long and can be a lunch break.

We had some regular meals this week: today we had homemade pizza, yesterday we had roast chicken. The kids liked the bean and sausage soup on Wednesday. We had hot dogs on Tuesday and chili on Monday. They seem to like fruit salad in a cup served with a pick. Most of our problem eaters are simply in the habit of not eating. It's not that they can't or won't, but that they simply have never really had to eat anything, so they have habitualized not eating.

Please look at the wonderful art work accumulating for Thanksgiving. The kids do such a nice job.

Have a great weekend!