As we arrive at the beach, I’m thinking about you guys back in Indiana. It’s always hard to leave the school. This was a much needed vacation for me. Last break was a year ago when we drove to Florida for my son’s MA graduation. We spent five days out and four were on the road. It was hectic to say the least. This vacation is especially nice because we were invited and because I will get to spend real time with my grandsons.

This week at school should be a review week. Children are reviewing what they have learned this week. It’s a time to get summer organized as well. It’s hard to believe that summer is almost here.

Summer is a very busy time at the GS. Our summer month of June is going to be all about travel. We will study the whole concept of travel and look at different kinds of travel, travel manners, travel consequences, travel in history and talk about what travel might be like in the future.

Please remember that sandals are only for pool days. Children are just not comfortable on the play ground with pea gravel between foot and shoe!

Please switch to shorts and short sleeved shirts now. It is too hot for long sleeves and long pants.

Please consider putting sun screen on your children before they come to school. This is the parent’s responsibility. We will put sun screen on children before going to the pool.

Have a great week!

Snackers seek to balance indulgence with nutrition

By Caroline Scott-Thomas, 04-May-2009

From Food Navigator

Comment: I think this trend is true. There will always be the junk eaters – people who cannot be without their sodas, their fast food and their junkie junk like snack cakes and cardboard box food, but as the push for nutrition and health fully engages the edified world, the hope is that food options will become healthy.

Related topics: Financial & Industry

Snacks are becoming healthier and more upmarket as Americans increasingly turn away from the idea of three square meals a day, according to a new trend-mapping report from Packaged Facts.

Now that I have your attention!

I got this back in February and it got lost in my email – oops. It’s a new English clothing outlet for kids. It looks interesting and the clothes are cute. To shop go HERE!

Good morning –

Today is Awards Day at 3:00. It should take about 20 minutes to award awards, and then there’s a picnic following on the playground. Please bring a covered dish or something to go with hot dogs!

I thought this was interesting. Anyone want to take a shot at this?

What it took to get an 8th grade education in 1895…

Remember when grandparents and great-grandparents stated that they only had an 8th grade education? Well, check this out. Could any of us have passed the 8th grade in 1895?

This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina , Kansas , USA . It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina , and reprinted by the Salina Journal.

8th Grade Final Exam:
Salina , KS – 1895

Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of ‘lie,”play,’ and ‘run.’
5. Define case; illustrate each case.
6 What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.
7 – 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time,1 hour 15 minutes)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. Deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. Wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3,942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1,050 lbs. For tare?
4. District No 33 has a valuation of $35,000.. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find the cost of 6,720 lbs. Coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft… Long at $20 per metre?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance of which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton , Bell , Lincoln , Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865.

Orthography (Time, one hour)
[Do we even know what this is??]
1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals
4. Give four substitutes for caret ‘u.’ (HUH?)
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final ‘e.’ Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis-mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane , vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10.. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)
1 What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas ?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia , Odessa , Denver , Manitoba , Hecla , Yukon , St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco
6.. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.

Notice that the exam took FIVE HOURS to complete.

Gives the saying ‘he only had an 8th grade education’ a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?!

Also shows you how poor our education system has become and,
NO, I don’t have the answers!

Good Morning!

It’s going to be a beautiful day. It was gorgeous yesterday, and I think today is going to be a repeat!

We are hoping for a little climb in the weather by the end of the month because the pool needs to heat up a bit before the kids have a rollicking good time in it. Alternate plans if the pool is too cool are in the making.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day.

This week we will be working on phonemes (sounds) and counting both in French and in English to 100. We will be working on handwriting and games of “What do you know.” This seems to fascinate the kids. They love knowing and they love hearing new material. This week the bigger questions will be on geography. Children should know their oceans and their continents.

Awards Day is this Friday at 3:00. A little ceremony for parents will commence at 3:00 and be done about 3:20. A picnic will follow out side. Please plan to bring your child’s favorite “side.” Good suggestions are mac and cheese, baked beans, green beans, salads, etc. The GS will be furnishing hot dogs and buns compliments of Carolyn Shapker. The GS will also supply a big graduation cake and drinks.

Please remember that every child will need to have an adult with him. If you are having trouble with supplying an adult, partner up with a friend to attend for you. Ask that someone at the GS take your child. We are not concerned with the fact that parents attend. We are concerned with the fact that the child is left alone. It’s a very busy time for teachers, and children left alone and crying is not the way a celebration or a holiday needs to go. So if you are having trouble finding an attending adult, ask someone to help you.

Have a great day!

Just a wee bit for today from Kids Lunch Box Cards.

Tip: Empty your cupboard and mix a snack! Bite sized cereal, dried fruit, pretzels, crackers, popcorn, M&M’s, shredded coconut– anything goes when you are creating a homemade snack mix. It’s a great solution to small portions at the bottom of the box!

Comment: We do this at school with whole packages of different snacks, and the children just love it. You need to buy whole grain snacks. Still looking for a whole grain Cheetos.

Friday was a tired day at school. The kids all seemed tired and ready for a break. We even had a couple fall asleep.

We are working very hard in the K-1 to catch up. We were delighted with our little guys approach to learning. Children are always keen to learn, and when a teacher just doesn’t teach – especially for selfish reasons – the children miss out. Never before has the Garden School been put into this situation – where a job was simply not done because one of our teachers spent her time texting and playing on the phone at the children’s expense. This kind of dishonesty is not what we have ever been about, and we are trying to remedy this as quickly as we can. It puts everyone in a terrible situation.

Teaching very young children is supposed to be like a peaceful ocean. You spend a lot of time enjoying the gentle waves of education. Your boat becomes like a home, your skies are blue, your sun is strong and lively, and then suddenly, the child comes into port, his voyage over, and he knows everything there is to know about his trip. He knows the material presented in the classroom and can report it all to anyone he meets.

There are two things that prevent a child from learning. One thing is certainly a teacher who doesn’t know anything, and secondly a teacher who just doesn’t teach. There are lots of teachers who claim to be educated, and truly they are not, and many would say it doesn’t matter, but it does. Education is not a thing that can be presented to you on a slip of paper because you manage to sit through four years of college. Education is an individual effort to gain knowledge and be able to use it effectively to teach others. You don’t need a college education to do that. But if you have that, it’s not a pretty bauble to be put on a shelf. It’s a tool for life.

The real question about being educated is: “Do you read books?” Answer reveals a lot. A book is not a magazine. A teacher who does not read does not progress past college. College is only a start in one’s education – it’s an invitation to learn, that’s why they call graduation “commencement” because it’s only a beginning. If you quit at the starting gate, then what’s the point of the race?

Fully engaging the world begins with a knowledge about the world, and that knowledge is ever increasing and also something that can be passed down to the children. If teachers don’t care enough to know the basics, they fail to be able to teach effectively. So what is the bank of knowledge that is the basic requirement for teaching in my opinion?

I think teachers should have a basic knowledge of grammar. Speaking well means you have the dignity of at least paying attention to our own language and understanding the structure and the sense of words. Learning the right way of using the past tense, comparatives and superlatives and understanding words is something that children should expect in daily speech because that is their example. Speech patterns and patois immediately places a person.

Teachers should have a basic knowledge of history so that there is a sense of what happened when when children ask. Being somewhat sure of the last thirty years of history is not really enough history to know. An ignorance of history kind of leaves a person without a sense of place in the world. If you look at history as a story about man, you come to understand that we have become what we have become because of what has gone before. In the Common Era, we have Rome, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Age of Science and the Modern Period and they are not all the same lengths. Each age has given man something. Government, language, religion, economics, architecture, medicine, agricultural techniques did not suddenly develop in the late 1950s.

Reference to the arts is dying among education bound students. The ability to draw a reference to characters from the great classics is no longer possible and that’s a shame. To call someone a Shylock or Tom Sawyer or a Tess is about as lost today as referring to Steve Reeves as Superman. To know nothing about fine art is startling. To compare Precious Moments to a Chagall window is disheartening.

Science is another part of the teaching puzzle, and so is geography. To be completely ignorant about the world is a shocking revelation about what a $60,000.00 education is really giving our young teachers. Not to be able to pick out China, India, the continent of Africa or know that the Antarctic is south and the Arctic is north is a tragic flaw of education. Not to know why we have not run out of water yet is pathetic.

So now I’ve given my rude opinion about education and what I expect at the Garden School. I expect teachers to know about the world they live in. It’s important because the children want to know and you can’t tell them if you don’t know. It’s a kind of a duh.

This past weekend some of the faculty met to discuss summer and next year’s calendar. This will be a learning summer from start to finish. Everything we do will be aimed at learning and speaking. If you can’t talk about what you know, and do it with good grammar, you don’t know it. We expect a lot and children love it, and that’s the goal.

Today is supposed to be an article about teaching, but I did that on Sunday, and on Sunday it’s supposed to be a thing on food. So today, I’m posting a recipe for pancakes or waffles for 40, because someone asked…

Making waffles for 40 allows the cook a lot of room for additions. Here’s how you start:

I use 5 cups of regular flour and 5 cups of whole wheat pastry flour. You can use all 10 cups whole wheat pastry flour and that is super, or all 10 cups white flour, but the waffles would have little if any food value.

There is about a cup of canola oil you add next.

I use about a 2 teaspoons salt and 10 teaspoons baking powder.

I put in 5-6 eggs, and mine are beautiful blue or brown. Color doesn’t make a difference.

Now here is where you can add your extra stuff. The combinations are infinite. You can add oats,
cinnamon – I usually add about 2 tablespoons. You can add pumpkin pie spice, coconut, raisins, nuts, wheat germ, cranberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries or what ever and then enough milk to make the consistency about the same as a light cake batter. It might take as much as 8 cups with heavier flour. I rarely ever measure anything because I do everything by how it looks.

I use 2% milk at school – about 5-6 cups, and soy milk at home because soy milk makes the waffles really air light.

You mix this up in a big bowl and then pour it in a pitcher. Your waffle iron should be red hot and have been sprayed with pan coat. Cook waffles until the light changes or until the steam stops – about 3-4 minutes.

Here’s the recipe for a regular family of four:

2 cups flour
1/4 cup oil
2 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups of milk

Here’s a recipe for home made syrup:

1 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water. Boil for three minutes.

To the syrup you can add jam or fresh fruit, maple flavoring, butter, raisins nuts, etc. Make it fun. My daughter in law once told me that waffles were junk food, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how that could be ;-)))