Monday, April 16, 2012

Monday's Tattler...

This week...our book fair arrives. Parents and children will be able to view and shop for books this week. These are reasonably priced books and will make an excellent addition to your home library this year. Your children have learned so much this year, they are more than eager and able to do some reading for real. Please think of buying some books for your child this week.

Miss Judy is teaching reading now. Our main focus is on knowing letters, phonemes or sounds, vowels or air sounds from consonants or mouth sounds. We will be reading, recognizing words, reading books, making words, spelling words and having war games to see who is getting the most.

I need to know from the eleven children who have not turned in their summer forms. We need to know for field trips and swimming.

The weather this week will be beautiful. Please send children in light weight clothes they can really play in.

Have a great week!



Sunday, April 15, 2012

Sunday's Plate...Cooking for a Crowd.


Just read a nice facebook post from a lovely friend who is grateful to her mom for teaching her to cook for lots of people cheaply. I herald this teaching because sooner or later, we will want to have a party and it's not cheap!

We cook for a crowd every day. Recently, Miss Molly and Miss Lisa have taken on the measure of lunch and have enjoyed doing all kinds of creative things with our food budget to the delight of the kids. It has been so successful, that we have empty plates at nearly every lunch.

At home a cook can make what she wants, but at school, we have "component" issues that have to be met. The USDA rule is two fruits and veggies at every meal along with protein and a bread product. We double much of what we are supposed to serve. This past weekend while shopping, I purchased forty pounds of fruit and veggies for the ladies to choose from to serve. I'm wondering if this will make even stronger meals. Hoping it will. Instead of reading and following a menu, Miss Lisa will be inventing from what is in the fridge. She will learn what spoils quickest, and what goes with what.

Miss Molly must choose her own entrees. As she makes the main course with Lisa's help, Lisa builds the fruit and veggie tray. The problem comes with budget and added extras. It all needs to be planned and executed without a million runs to the store. That's how you keep the budget down.

Taking advantage of the sales is always smart. Having a "general" idea of what the meals will be this week according to the ad that comes out mid week is an important part of making the budget go a little farther. Our budget is 31 cents a meal.

Making things stretch and still taste good depends a lot on creativity. Making something wonderful out of left overs and having the extras to do that helps. Three "free" meals from leftovers include egg rolls, quiche and soup. I can't imagine buying food to make any of those three things! When I make a quiche, whatever we've eaten during the week goes into the belly of the quiche. Egg rolls are chopped leftovers rolled in a shell and fried. Soup is anything at all put in a pot with a quart of strong chicken or beef bouillon.

Today I had two tiny pieces of left over chicken breast...I sliced them into fine strips and added some hard cheese and put that in the micro to melt the cheese. You wouldn't know that those sandwiches were made from less than two ounces of chicken.

The whole object of crowd pleasing and crowd feeding is to make it fun and have something most of your crowd wants to eat. With little kids, that often means finger foods. When most of what they are eating they can pick up like carrot sticks, apple slices, oranges rings, you can offer a little stranger variations like thin sliced turnips and dip. Turnips are cheap and they make a lot of chips. When the kids find out they are fun to eat, it allows the budget to stay firm and the eating to be plentiful.

Baking is a great way to keep a budget down. It would cost me $40.00 for muffins if I bought them, but I can bake them for as little as $1.00. Baking from scratch keeps a budget way down at home as well. It can all be freshly baked if you remember that batters hold for days. Making a dozen corn muffins on Monday will hold for two days, but the batter refrigerated will hold for a week. When it's time to start dinner, turn on the oven and make one muffin each. You can repeat this as often as muffins will go with your meal and each night they are fresh and warm and yummy!

It's the same with making cookies. Make one huge batter, roll the dough into tubes and freeze, and when you need a dessert, chop off as many cookies as you need just for the evening or afternoon. Always fresh, and not so many as to cause a weight gain....

The other side of the coin is not making the whole recipe at once. Tonight I'm trying a new leek, bacon, bread crumb casserole. It says use a pound of leeks...three halved...but that's too much food for Terry and me, so I will use half of that and make a much smaller amount. If we like it, I will do it again this week. Food waste is a real issue in today's home and in our American way of life. We must always be careful of wasting...we might want it tomorrow...

So I'll report back later about how this leek thing turned out...

Have a brilliant Sunday!




Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Teaching Again

So this week I've started teaching reading again. We have an excellent program for the very young child. Every child gets thirty minutes of reading, writing and arithmetic every day - Monday through Thursday. Our teachers each have a specialty: Miss Dayna is our arithmetic teacher; Miss Lisa is our handwriting teacher; and now, Miss Judy is our reading teacher.

So what does it mean to teach a three, four or five year old child how to read?

The first job of any reading teacher is to start at the beginning...a three year old child may not know that there are such things as letters or care.

You have to make "lettering" fun. So for a long time at the Garden School, we've developed very very short stories about each letter that really lets a young child wonder, think, laugh and enjoy that little squiggle on the page. Turn an A on it's side and you have an Airplane! a B looks like a Butterfly! Mr. C Clam lives under the sea...and so go the stories.

Many parents say, "My son knows all his letters."

And I always ask, "So if I show him a lower case q, he's going to know what it is?"

"Oh, no, I don't think so. But he can sing his Alphabet Song!"

Singing the Alphabet Song and recognizing all the letters are about as far from one another as having a dog and having a picture of a dog.

Getting three year olds to recognize letters is really far easier than most people imagine. Children are not visual learners...they are auditory learners becoming visual learners, so repeating something about four times usually teaches a child whatever you're trying to teach him. If you tell him about what he is seeing...it's a bingo right away. So when you turn that A on it's side...few children won't remember. It probably takes a month to teach eager children the alphabet letters and another month to teach the sounds.

The big sellers of "age appropriate" nonsense always cringe when I talk about three year olds learning letters and making phonemes for fun. It's as if I ran over their dignity with a truck. The truth is that three year olds WANT to know, so why not teach them? If they don't remember; they're not ready. If they don't pay attention; their minds are still with the angels, so try again next month.

Interestingly enough, children who are potty trained at a decent age - 18-26 months - are actually more eager to learn letters than children who are left in infancy through the third and fourth year. And it makes sense when you think about it. Children who become independent, and there are three big childhood independences: potty training, reading and driving a car, are keen to forge out on their own little life paths more readily than the child whose independence is repressed in a diaper.

By age four, most of our students have learned all their upper and lower case letters and know what sounds, or phonemes, these letters make, and they are putting sounds together to make words. This is the bridge to reading.

By five, our kids are reading and finding their own books and exploring new words and how sentences are structured. It's fun to make up a story, and by five, the cognition is ripe for invention, story telling, story inventing...it's called creative writing.

Teaching reading is a matter of consistency, repetition, and doing. New games and new activities stimulate the child towards bigger and wider goals. That's why I hate text books. Text books are a school aged diaper. They are repression in a stack of paper... I mean have you ever read a text book that is interesting? It doesn't take a Rhodes Scholar to come up with thirty minutes worth of reading work for a three, four or five year old child. It takes a sense of this then that then this then that kind of mind set.

I've written several little texts for kids using our own choice of words and kids eat them up. They are very time consuming to produce, but the product is fun and rewarding only because they are personalized and aimed at OUR children's lives.

And practice always makes perfect. Children need to practice something in their own space and time. It doesn't have to be a huge copy assignment or even take very long. Homework for a very young child should be more of an independent study...what can I do all by myself...so that I can proudly show my OWN work to my mom or dad.

I like to send a new book home every day so that their little homework bag is inviting and calls them to WANT to open it at home. Once they see the book and look at it even for a minute, might make them take out their little sentence building words long enough to play a "how can I make this sentence longer and longer" game. That might make them want to write down what they built with the word cards. Then they might want to illustrate the picture.

Reading is a process, and families who turn of the TV in order that a nice little period of work-study can be achieved at home are blessed and will encourage early readers to read all their lives. Children will not read into adulthood if adults in the home never pick up a book. So find a little space with a little space and do a quiet independent study...only has to take about fifteen minutes.







Monday, April 09, 2012

Monday's Tattler

It's Monday again...time to get back to work...only seven weeks till summer!

Some changes at the GS...Miss Judy will be taking the reading classes for the next seven weeks. It should be a lot of fun and we are going to do some different and new things. I'll be working very closely with Miss Lisa for some interesting projects!

Miss Amy will be taking the afternoon Science class with the Kindergarten. This should be a wonderful experience for the children.

We have a few summer spots to be filled. If you have not filled out a reservation form, it's time!

The weather is changing again...and this week we could see some cooler days. Please send your child with a jacket this week.

If you need to fill out a new information card, please ask for one. If your phone number has changed or if there are other changes you need to make to the emergency card, it's time to fill out a new one.

Tomorrow, April 9, is our school's birthday. It is sixteen years old. Miss Judy will also have a birthday tomorrow. I have asked for a new kitchen gadget called a "vitamix." Looking forward to playing with it!

Have a great week!

Monday, April 02, 2012

Monday's Tattler

This week is a regular school week. Lots to do as spring weather continues to lure us outside and away from the books!

Lots of things in the hopper this month...a book fair in late April...field trips to work on...new schedules lurking...kids learning so much...experiencing great afternoons with Miss Amy. So delighted to have this project!

Garden is growing...and the fruit is set on the trees.

I will be gone from school Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday as I visit my baby Anne in Chicago. Remember we are off on Friday for Good Friday.

Have a great week!


Sunday, April 01, 2012

Sunday's Plate - Summer Salads

Every year people ask, "What do you do to your egg salad that makes my child crazy about it>"

Parents rarely believe that it's all about simplicity.

I use chicken eggs and real mayonnaise, and I do it in the food processor.

First you boil the egg about 20 minutes. Then you soak the un-pealed eggs in ice water. Then you peal and drop them into the food processor. Turn it on for maybe six "pops." Remove and add enough real mayonnaise to allow the egg salad to stick to bread.

Real mayonnaise has a cleaner taste than Miracle Whip or salad dressing. When you begin to "doctor" what you think is bland food with spices, vegetables, pickles or a dressing that has "real taste" to you, you lose kids. Miracle whip makes everything you use it on taste like Miracle Whip.

Eggs are a bland food. They have little taste, so when you "doctor" them you lose their taste in favor of whatever you put into your egg salad.

With other salads, it's always best to go plain with kids.

Children love pasta, so make summer salads with multi-grain pasta. Whole wheat is too heavy for kids.

To your pasta add things your child likes in large enough pieces that they can either eat the noodle or the extra. Most children like ham, bacon, hot dogs, chicken nuggets...so start your salad with one or more of those meats. Even if that's all you do, pasta and meat and mayo, it's a start.

If your child likes pickles, throw in a pickle that has pieces the size of an olive. It's the same with celery, carrots, olives, rasins...when pieces are too small, the child becomes suspicious...just like a man....so keep the pieces large enough to identify.

Keep adding new things to your salad and serve it once a week. Use it as a side dish.

Try tuna, sausage, raw zucchini, yellow squash and anything you think your child would eat. Salads are an easy evening's fare.

Happy Salading!