Today we will celebrate Valentine’s Day. We will tell the story of St. Valentine, the early Christian martyr, and then pass out our Valentines. The children love this. We have decorated bags to collect our Valentines cards and today we will “fill ’em up.” It’s a nice kind of fun.

We’ve made all kinds of Valentine’s Day hearts, valentine’s and glittery stuff. There has been a lot of creativity out there this week!

Later today we will enjoy our dance. Parents are welcome to join the dance. First couple to dance wins a box of candy!

The children have been practicing a ballroom box step and the bunny hop. Miss Leigh has been teaching them the bunny hop and the kids have really loved this. Miss Elise has tackled the box step and the pairing up has been really funny. I met a certain grandmom at the grocery store who told me that her grandson comes home absolutely dreamy eyed over one Phoebe! It’s too cute for words.

Another little guy was caught dancing with his dream date and we have the picture to prove it!

The party starts at 3:00 and continues until 4:00. Can’t wait to see you all.

The Price of Children

This is just too good not to pass on to all. Here is something
absolutely positive for a change. I have repeatedly seen the breakdown
of the cost of raising a child, but this is the first time I have seen
the rewards listed this way. It’s nice.

The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from
birth to 18 and came up with $160,140.00 for a middle income family.
Talk about price shock! That doesn’t even touch college tuition. But
$160,140.00 isn’t so bad if you break it down. It translates into:

* $8,896.66 a year,
* $741.38 a month,
* $171.08 a week.
* A mere $24.24 a day!
* Just over a dollar an hour.
Still, you might think the best financial advice is; don’t have children
if you want to be ‘rich.’ Actually, it is just the opposite.
What do you get for your $160,140.00?

* Naming rights. First, middle, and last!
* Glimpses of God every day.
* Giggles under the covers every night.
* More love than your heart can hold.
* Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs.
* Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies.
* A hand to hold usually covered with jelly or chocolate.
* A partner for blowing bubbles and flying kites.
* Someone to laugh yourself silly with, no matter what the boss said or
how your stocks performed that day.
For $160,140.00, you never have to grow up. You get to:

* finger-paint,
* carve pumpkins,
* play hide-and-seek,
* catch lightning bugs.

You have an excuse to:

* keep reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh,
* watch Saturday morning cartoons,
* go to Disney movies, and
* wish on stars.

You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator
magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand
prints set in clay for Mother’s Day, and cards with backward letters for
Father’s Day.

For a mere $24.24 a day, there is no greater bang for your buck. You get
to be a hero just for:

* retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof,
* taking the training wheels off a bike,
* removing a splinter,
* filling a wading pool,
* coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs, and
* coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to
ice cream regardless.

You get a front row seat in history to witness the:
* First step,
* First word,
* First bra,
* First date,
* First time behind the wheel.

You get to be immortal. You get another branch added to your family
tree, and if you’re lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called
grandchildren and great grandchildren. You get an education in
psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human
sexuality that no college can match.

In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there under God. You have all
the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed,
patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and
love them without limits, so one day they will, like you, love without
counting the cost. That is quite a deal for the price!!!!!!!

Love & enjoy your children & grandchildren & great-grandchildren!!!!!!!
It’s the best investment you’ll ever make!!!!!!!!!

Letting go is one of the most difficult things parents have to do. It begins with handing over your baby in the hospital to the nurse who is only going to …. And it strikes again the first time and then subsequent times we let someone care for our little person while we… And then again the first time our toddler goes off with a friend’s child or goes to school or day care. As for me, I had panic attacks being on the other side of the door from Miss Molly when she was an infant. Letting go and trusting is a terribly difficult thing for some parents.

Every time parents leave their child at the Garden School, I should doubly realize the trust parents are offering to us as we take the children here and there, teach them this or that and feed them many meals. It’s an honor and a privilege to embrace that trust and come through for parents.

Today I am letting go of my daughter Anne who is moving to Chicago. Anne is my 23 year old baby, and I will miss her terribly. But every fledgling must fledge, and this is her time. Anne is an interesting young woman. She has a degree in Political Science and is fluent in French and hopes to be fluent in Arabic one day. She has her father’s interest in the Middle East and has gone both the feminine and masculine way in bridging the gap between the two cultures. Anne has taught herself these languages the hard way. She has worked her way through high school and college by “cheffing” at Angelos in downtown EVV. Her picture was in December’s issue of Evansville Living Magazine, although they misspelled her name. She is a fine young woman.

No matter how accomplished or worldly your child is, it is always hard to let go. Having Anne at home these years has been a real treat and a blessing to our family. It will be interesting to see what she accomplishes out in the bigger world.

Letting go reminds me of all the times in my children’s childhood when I let go. I remember handing my second child, Katy, over to Mrs. Baxter as I ran out of the room and Katy ran after me. She told me later, “If I made it to the outside door before Mom, I can go home and I won’t have to stay at school.” I beat her.

I remember leaving Katy at the University of Dallas. We were all sad. Katy was lost and the struggle ahead at the Catholic Harvard was going to be fierce. She did fine and graduated with a degree in History.

I remember letting go of Katy to boot camp when she was 18. We had spent the day in Indy at the museum with the two younger children and when we got home, Katy’s hair was cut short, her braces had been removed and she was packed and ready for a surprise leave the next day. I threw up. She did fine. Broke her ankle and kept on running.

The next time we let go was during that horrific snow storm when most of the US was shut down back in the early 90s. She drove through that snow storm to get to her first post in Staten Island.

Katy has left town and returned on several occasions for work. Each time it makes me sad. Now, she is happily living in EVV and doing a job she loves – yeah!

I remember sending Brendan off on a camping trip to Canada with the Scouts. He came back with blood poisoning, and shook it off with the usual bravado. Brendan was a whole other story. He once swam the Ohio from the banks of the river down in Newburgh just to see if he could. Daily letting go of him was more than letting go– it was more of a wrenching.

I remember a voyage to the North Pole Brendan took as a submariner. I didn’t get to talk to him for three months. When the Russian sub went down, I needed a big shoulder to cry on.

Molly was my third child, and you know what they say about #3! Letting go of her was probably the most difficult. I’m glad she is doing what she is doing – raising her children here in Newburgh. Molly took off to Texas 7/8 ths through high school. That was tough. She returned to graduate.

Letting go of the grandchildren was tough as well. But good things happen when people go to do the things that will make them grow. Letting go does not mean we don’t care. It means we care so deeply that our little people get something new that is good and beneficial to the whole picture of life. We can’t do it all by ourselves. We need one another to help us rear the very best people possible. Good people come from good situations.

I can assure you that the Garden School teachers are determined to make your child our first priority. Good starts mean children can grow and delvelop and add to their experiences in a safe and loving environment. A good example now will make their expectations higher and their life better later.

I’ll get through today, and there will be more letting go as my children and grandchildren do the things in life they were meant to do. But it makes me reconsider what our parents have to do every day, and that’s tough.

Happy Monday! It’s a great week to be alive and kicking. It’s Valentine’s week and we will be sharing a lot of love! It’s an outdoors week as well. Although it was sloppy and still icy and snowy outside last week, the kids loved being outdoors.

This week we will share the story of St. Valentine an early Christian martyr from the the first century. We will talk about sharing and the affection we have for one another. We will make oodles of Valentines and on Friday, share them with an all school “post.”

Your child needs 40 Valentines that are signed but not addressed. They can be fancy or plain, homemade or store bought. Your child should bring these to school in a ziplock with his name on them. They go into his folder until sharing time. This is a really fun day for kids.

At 3:00 Friday afternoon, we will have a Valentine’s dance and party. Parents may come and dance, but all children must have an attending adult. We will dismiss at 4:00.

Please bring a treat to share. Treats should be a plate of cookies that will feed 4; a bag of chips; a simple before dinner treat or fresh fruit. Candy will be put aside for later.

Love it up this week – it’s your week!

Vitamin D linked to girl power: Study

By Stephen Daniells, 04-Feb-2009

An interesting article from Food Navigator at foodnavigator-usa.com

Low levels of vitamin D may reduce the muscle power and force in adolescent girls, according to a new study from the UK.

The Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library and the Evansville Area Reading Council are co-sponsoring a Young Authors Event on Saturday, March 7, 2009 from 10 am to 2 pm. The event will take place at Central Library.

The guest speaker that day will be Award Winning Author Patricia MacLachlan.

Ms. MacLachlan is the author of the Sarah, Plain & Tall and Skylark series as well as picture books such as All the Places to Love and Once I Ate a Pie.
She will speak at 11 am and 2 pm in Central Library’s Browning Room.

Today is Pajama Day. Children wear their pjs to school. Please let them wear their shoes today, so we can go outside! It will be in the fifties today, so we are looking forward to some outside activities. It’s been such a long time since these children have played outside. They are so restless!

It’s been a good week until yesterday, and suddenly, the kids got tired and cranky and apparently had a really bad afternoon. We were short Miss Amy yesterday who has been ill, and struggling along without her is not fun. Miss Judy opened school with Mrs. St. Louis and we combined classes in the AM. Miss Judy took the kids for a couple of math games. Most of the kids listened and did very well. I was stunned by Scotty’s ability to keep up the count with all of Miss Amy’s older children.

Mrs. St. Louis and Miss Elise did a really cute Chinese New Years project that is hanging in the library. The children colored – and very nicely, I must say – Chinese New Year creatures, and then painted a red backdrop for good luck. Miss Elise combined the effort in a really cute display.

We had Chinese food yesterday and the children really liked it. It was chicken and shrimp and vegetables on brown rice. We ate with chopsticks. Today we will have pizza.

I knew the kids were out of sorts yesterday when geography was such a difficult thing. The places we have worked on so hard were simply out of their reach yesterday. We will work on those things together again.

Please get your summer registration back to school ASAP. We are trying to put the summer program together and we need some numbers.

Have a great weekend!

‘Green’ Classes Flourish in Schools

From Education Week. This is an interesting article worth reading.

Solar-powered cars have barely begun to inch out of test laboratories onto the difficult road to commercial viability.

But miniature versions of that technology are already being churned out at Whitmore Lake High School.

Students at the Michigan school have designed shoebox-size cars, made of foam board, toothpicks, and solar panels, as part of a new class called Green Tech. It’s just one of the many courses focused on renewable and alternative energy that are taking hold across the country as educators seek to channel students’ concerns about the environment and conservation into classroom lessons.

For more of the article go HERE.

These are Molly’s puppies. Aren’t they cute?

Not everything you read about children is true. Most of it is either “duh” or “huh?” When people don’t trust themselves they fly to the authorities and read, read, read in order to understand the child. They gather a lot of material, and then try to apply it to their child like an over sized plastic orange raincoat. At best, it’s an over sized plastic orange raincoat.

Understanding a child – almost any child – means observing the child. But just watching won’t cut it. One has to watch a child with an eye to having watched the parent of the child. Apples simply don’t fall far from the tree. It’s an old saying that means children are very much like their parents.

My husband always laments the fact that our children are quite odd, often don’t seem like other people, don’t do what other people do, and aren’t satisfied with ordinary things and activities. The comeback to that is: So are you, dear. And so am I.

The plain truth is, hyperactive people breed hyperactive children. Introverted people breed introverted children. Artists usually have artistic children; innate traits are passed down from generation to generation. It’s the same way with personality traits. So when you want to figure out the child, just observe mom and dad, and most questions can be answered.

Understanding children in general is another question. One of the things we don’t hear very often is “the age of reason.” That got thrown out with the land line. The age of reason is simply the age when children start to become responsible for what they say and do. Some kids hit it early and some late, but mostly it’s about age seven. By about age seven, a child knows exactly what he’s doing and is liable for the consequences. The problem is, many of the adults in charge of problem children’s lives have not emotionally hit the age of reason, so foisting it on their child seems a bit daunting.

So with difficult children, we need to ask ourselves if mom and dad have hit that critical “age of reason” and if parents are willing to admit that they are responsible for anyone in sight including themselves. And the answer is: probably not.

So we hit the books – and we develop all kinds of pretty names that describe a child’s nasty behavior – Oppositional Defiant is my favorite. Hyperactive with Attention Deficit is another. Bi Polar has a nice new heap of bodies. And at this point nobody would dare say, “knock it off, kid.”

Understanding the child means to look beyond this heap of nonsense and figure out just what has gone wrong in a child’s life and to get to the starting point of that wrong, and fix it. Instead of going to the drugstore and pumping the wronged child with lots of narcotics and spending hours talking about him as if he’s not in the room, perhaps it’s time to look in the mirror. Apples don’t fall far from the tree, remember?

Failure to address problems is a personality trait. Many people hide problems under the carpet until there is a mountain of hidden treasures. Hiding problems, failure to address problems, and failure to act on problems only means the problem will continue and continue and could destroy a child’s life. Many parents enjoy problems with children because it allows the parent to stay at the center of everyone’s attention.

Understanding the child is really a matter of introspection. It’s a matter of coming clean with yourself about your own failures and about your own abilities.