Here’s an article from Food Navigator about water guidelines. the article talks about obesity and it stresses getting all the junk drinks out of the schools. Water is the glue for all metabolic functions in the body. It’s a good article and well worth the read.

Go Here.

There is an excellent new book out by Ruth P Newton entitled The Attachment Connection – Parenting a Secure & Confident Child Using the Science of Attachment Theory.

This book sorts out the facts from the fiction about parent-child attachment and shows how paying attention to the emotional needs of your child during the first five years of development can help him or her grow up happy, secure, and confident.

The book talks about brain development at each stage of growth. It helps parents use reasonable, easy to implement guidelines based on sound science to foster secure attachment, healthy social skills, and emotional regulation.

It begins before the child is born and carries the reader through age five.

The book is easy to read, and offers parents lots of scenarios to make points and to illustrate, through exceptionally good writing, the mistakes we all make as parents. It’s upbeat and positive. I really like this one.

I’ve had the book on my desk four months and have read parts of the book on and off for those four months and can’t put it away. It’s really quite good and well worth buying. For anyone interested in how children grow, develop or how the brain develops, this is the book for you.

The book is published by New Harbinger Publications and can be seen at

www.newharbinger.com.

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!

From Education Week:

Here’s an article about what the Democrat’s agenda includes: expanding preschool, recruiting teachers, increasing funding for charter schools, and amending the No Child Left Behind Act.

For the entire article, go HERE.

Dear Parent,

On February 6, 2009, the Indiana Dental Association, in partnership with the American Dental Association, will host the 7th annual Give Kids a Smile Day. Dentists across the state are
opening their offices to donate dental care to children from low-income families.

To participate in Give Kids a Smile, the child must meet thefollowing requirements:

• The child must be 16 years old or under.
• The student must not have access to dental insurance and be unable to afford regular dental care, OR if the child has Medicaid, the family must not have a dental provider.

If your child is in need of dental care and meets the requirements mentioned above, please
follow the directions below. This is a one-day only event. Appointments are required
because many offices cannot accept walk-in patients.

Scheduling an appointment for Give Kids a Smile is as easy as 1, 2, 3

1. Call (800) 680-9302 and an operator will confirm your eligibility, and take the
following information to provide to a volunteer Give Kids a Smile dental office:

• Name
• Phone number
• City where you live
• Number of children who need treatment

2. A local dental office will call you to set up the appointment time.

3. Show up at the scheduled appointment time. Appointments are on a first-come
first-served basis and cannot be rescheduled.

Sincerely,
The Indiana Dental Association

Good morning!

It’s play season! Yeah, and to ad to that a yet bigger yeah, Miss Kelly is directing it! This is probably the most difficult thing we do at the Garden School. But that’s an opinion based on doing plays for years. The most difficult thing to accomplish is coordinating all the scenes and getting the kids to remember the dialogue and not letting frustrations claim your mood.

Miss Kelly is digging in and making it her own. She is such a good teacher and such a delight to have at the GS. Her work is so careful and deliberate. I know this play, like everything she does, will be outstanding. I am delighted to delegate this task to someone I have complete trust in. Her exemplary work makes it an easy hand over. I really feel the young teachers should have the experience of doing this because it adds a special something to ones teaching strategy.

My own personal appreciation goes out to her as well because the anxiety of performing is really tough on all the senses. You wake in the middle of the night for days wondering if it will work, remembering lines in your sleep and having that awful restless sense that somehow something is missing. As I mentioned, it is probably the most time consuming project we handle, and it takes all of us, but at the center is the teacher who is directing the children. It’s really her work that makes or breaks the play.

This year, yours truly will be tackling the backdrops and set; Mrs. St. Louis is adding to her costume collection; Miss Amy is doing crowd control and working on fund raiser; and it goes oh so well.

Most of you have received a copy of your child’s lines. Please have your child memorize his or her line or lines and know what comes before those lines. Please read the whole scene to your child so he knows when to say his line or lines. This would be an immeasurable help.

Costumes will be provided.

I’ve been thinking a lot about hyperactivity these days. Perhaps because I see the hyperactive in a different light than most people. I see hyperactivity from the inside rather than from the outside. The question of hyperactivity begins with the question itself – what is hyperactivity?

When you read about it, the experts say, “It’s a disease treatable with certain mind altering drugs.” That’s a bit far to go for someone like me who is as hyperactive as they come. I don’t believe I’m mentally ill nor do I believe I need mind altering drugs! So I have to go back to the question of precisely what is Hyperactivity?

Suppose we take a different road into the whole meaning of hyperactivity? Suppose we legitimize hyperactivity for a few moments by saying it’s a personality type much like other personality types. Let’s look at some other personality types to compare:

There is a personality type of the quiet withdrawn person who rarely speaks and spends a lifetime letting others take the lead. This person rarely starts a conversation, has few friends, and spends a lot of time alone. Would you find this person mentally ill and needing medication? Probably not because this person does not bother anyone.

Let’s look at the artistic type. This person is often up and down like an umbrella. They are always finding some weird quirky thing that they talk about with great interest. They constantly produce little craft items with their hands or with their minds. They often make nothing into something. They save and display all measure of things because of the shape or the color or the shadow that the object casts. Would you find this person mentally ill and needing medication to change his or her personality? Probably not because he or she produces interesting things to look at.

What about the athletic type? This person is always thinking about movement and going. This person runs, jumps, lifts, and exercises for full pleasure of the movement. This person is often competitive, arrogant, off putting when it comes to strength and energy or the shape of his or her body because it’s the whole focus of every conversation. Is this person needing to be slowed down by medication, and can you call this person mentally ill? Probably not because we get a lot of pleasure from sports and the heroes we call sportsmen and women.

The comedian is always trying to get a laugh and will often disrupt conversation, will disrupt a whole room and draw unnecessary attention to himself and his own brand of the funnies. He will do nearly anything to make people pay attention to him. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but we wouldn’t medicate him because sometimes he makes us laugh.

Now let’s look a the hyperactive personality. Hyperactivity is just that – a body that is most comfortable when it is moving. Unlike the athlete who desires movement to hone his body and to become more skilled, the hyperactive is uncomfortable when his motion is stopped. Sitting for any length of time will often make the body cramp and tingle and ache. When you direct the hyperactive in competition or the movement of any sport, the product is superb. It’s a match made in heaven.

At the same time, the hyperactive is often artistic and often creates whole worlds for himself because he has the energy and interest in “doing.” Most hyperactives will create and recreate their worlds with anything that’s near just to have something to do. Sitting or doing repetitive work is as alien to them as creating is to most non- hyperactives. That is unless they can do two things at once like making and watching, or singing and dancing, or doing and talking.

Many hyperactive people are comedians and want the attention of others. They are driven to “do” and make people laugh and cry by their never ending actions.

And last but not least, the hyperactive can be very lonely and keep to himself because there are few others who really understand the intense drive inside them that is screaming for others to turn up the crank. Hyperactive personalities view the world in high speed much like a 78 record. Unfortunately, the world’s record turns in 33.

So why is the hyperactive regarded as mentally ill and needing medication?

There are two types of hyperactive personalities: directed and non directed.

The directed personality is well formed by parents who understand their multidimensional child and who direct that child every day to make sure that ALL his talents shine every single day. They don’t give the child a break in their demands to do, do, do, and do more until the child drops. Lots of chores, lots of responsibilities very early, and lots of sleep. Lots and lots of calories are served and lots and lots of hours of sleep are mandatory for a directed on target hyperactive. It’s a matter of getting up every day charged and ready for a day of go, go, go, do, do, do! As long as there is “production” there is no problem, but then there is the other side.

The non directed personality has been ignored, denied, disliked and suffocated by a well meaning parent who only wants his or her child to “be like everyone else.” What these parents don’t understand is that their super child will never be “like everyone else.” The hyperactive personality is many personalities in one, and the overriding need to do, do, do, will make the suffocated child a mess if he is not directed by the parent. Without direction, the child has no boundaries, no scheme, and ultimately a life filled with chaos. All his energy goes to distruction and disruption.

It’s an exhausting job to direct such a personality. The worst thing a parent can do is to medicate one of these personalities and try to force his elephant personality into a nice kitty or a nice doggie. He is and will always be an elephant, and an elephant needs room, food, and a place to roar. Medication makes a child feel lost and alone. He is frightened by his parents inability to regard him with the esteme he deserves. Hyperactive children see their young worlds in a very different light than other children. They are keenly aware of the differences between what they are and the next child.

What most hyperactives think is that most normal people are dullards and lazy. A well formed hyperactive will be bored by most people and will go quiet after a while simply because the communication track has no value to him. A good comparison is sitting a hungry person in front of a slice of pizza and 4 ounces of milk. That’s fine for most people, but the hyperactive needs the whole pizza and the whole gallon of milk!

Put two hyperactives together in a room and you have a whole new set of rules. Ever listen to two or three hyperactives talk? It’s like a playing two or three records all at once and everyone knows what everyone else is saying and it all makes sense. The non hyperactive goes home sick with a headache, and the hyperactives all go home supercharged and ready to rake six acres of leaves.

The theme songs for hyperactivity are: energy begets energy; the more you do the more you do; nothing is too hard, to long, to much; tired is for sissies; is that all there is?

And the sad thing is, none of this is acceptable to the non hyperactive. The personality type is considered obnoxious and arrogant and much in need of slowing down, so we medicate him into normalcy. Thank God we didn’t medicate Alexander the Great, or Theordore Roosevelt, or Davy Crocket or St. Paul.

Good morning!

We had a delicious day last Friday. We had our breakfast and climbed aboard the bus early and left for Boonville and the nursing home we visit there. The residents just loved the visit. We sang and sang and sang, and the children were so animated; it was adorable. The songs were precious and the delivery could not have been better.

Our costumes were delightful – lots of fairy princesses and Spidermen; a football player, a zooologist, a cheerleader, a zombie, and dozens of other wonderful make believe characters. It’s always so much fun when parents get involved and help a child with a costume.

The party was fun. It was short, as it should have been. This is a time for kids not adults. It’s important for the children to have lots of time to trick or treat when they get home. Having them in costume and something in their stomachs is important.

All our teachers dresssed up and so did some of the parents. The kids loved it. Five children, however, had no accompanying adult at the party. Two children were in tears because nobody was there for them. Teachers are very concerned about the failure of these families to appear at the party. Party days are part of our curriculum. In a culture of “reduction” for suitable children’s activities, it’s important to salvage what we can and include a party once a month to exercise celebrations and make the child the focus of the day. These parties are 45 minutes long. Is that too much time to spend on a child? Feedback is appreciated.

This month, our focus is on the big Thanksgiving play. Children will be given lines to learn and costumes will be provided. We will practice the play two hours a day. The play is on Firday, November 21 at 3:00.

The play allows us to learn about the life of early Americans and the Native Americans who came together to share what they had. Plays are great fun and the kids learn to cooperate with one another in whole new way. It’s a great learning experience.

This week out theme is Pilgrims. Please ask your children what they have learned about Pilgrims!

I like to browse the Food Navigator’s articles every week. This week I found an article on the Campbell’s company. The article is about changing their formula in order to make it available to school children. Right now, the regular Campbell’s soup formula does not have enough nutrition to serve in early childhood places. I can’t serve their soups and have it count as a food.

The new formula still includes transfats and has a high sodium of 480 mg per serving.

The other foods I am not allowed to serve are boxed macaroni and cheese and canned spaghetti. These foods do not have enough nutrition to count as “food.” Mostly they are bulk calories and contribute to obesity in children. One parent told me once, “But she will eat it.” This is not a good reason to serve a non food item to children. Years of eating these kinds of foods will increase holes in the intestines which is called diaviticulosis. This increases the cause and potential for bowel disease.

For more on the article go HERE.