Friday's Tattler

"See what you find in the water when Mommy isn't looking!"

It was a slow end to a very peaceful week. It was good to have this kind of week half way through the summer. It gave the children a chance to relax and recoup from a very busy march march march beginning to the summer. Five weeks left, and we will embark on Monday with a great week swimming and going on a new field trip on Friday.

Please make sure your tuition checks are in on Monday. The bank is holding our ability to pay our bills until all our clients' checks clear. That takes two days. That means our fund availability is limited until your checks clear. That means teacher's paychecks cannot be issued until the available funds are posted. When clients checks are late, we are stuck. If too many checks are late this week, we will have to cancel the field trip on Friday. It's super expensive. The Garden School's ability to go on the field trips planned requires that everyone pay. We understand when there are late checks because everyone falls into this category eventually, but when half the school is paying "whenever" we can't balance the checkbook and do all the things we want to do. We operate on a shoestring, and the field trip fees, although large to parents are really bare bones to us. We thank our parents for their cooperation.

Please make sure your children get enough rest. We are noticing many children dragging. Part of this is the heat and the sun, but children who go to bed at or before 8:00 will do much better than children who go to bed "whenever."

Last week, Miss Nila cooked with our older girls. This was exciting for the children. We found an angel food cake and a pineapple cream filling we thought the kids would love. They hated it. Isaac was the only child who liked it. Congratulations Isaac, you win a treasure box pass! We are going to try this cooking class again, even though the result was a kind of failure. Next week it's fresh fruit, cereal, and cool whip. Getting the older girls to be familiar with the kitchen is a big big green light.

Miss Julie helped with the spelling words this past week. It was better. This week the words will be super simple.

July's focus is on swimming. We want to get as many children in the water and really swimming as possible. This is not only a discovery, and exploration, and an "I can do" it's a safety matter. We have had super luck with this this year, and we are really excited. I'd like to see every single child do his best to be unafraid of the water.

We will not be going to Pounds Hollow Beach for the last picnic of the summer. We are trying to change this to Scales Lake in Booneville. If you have any connections or information that might make this easy, please tell Miss Judy.