What Does Love Mean?

From the point of view of children:

‘When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore.
So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love..’

Rebecca- age 8

‘When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different.
You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.’

Billy – age 4

‘Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.’

Karl – age 5

‘Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.’

Chrissy – age 6

‘Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.’

Terri – age 4

‘Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.’

Danny – age 7

‘Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more.
My Mommy and Daddy are like that.. They look gross when they kiss’

Emily – age 8

‘Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.’

Bobby – age 7 (Wow!)

‘If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,’

Nikka – age 6 (we need a few million more Nikka’s on this planet)

‘Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.’

Noelle – age 7

‘Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.’

Tommy – age 6

‘During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling.

He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.’

Cindy – age 8

‘My mommy loves me more than anybody You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night..’

Clare – age 6

‘Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.’

Elaine-age 5

‘Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.’

Chris – age 7

‘Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.’

Mary Ann – age 4

‘I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.’

Lauren – age 4

‘When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.’ (what an image)

Karen – age 7

‘Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn’t think it’s gross.’

Mark – age 6

‘You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.’

Jessica – age 8

And the final one

The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife.

Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there.

When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said,

‘Nothing, I just helped him cry’

Good Morning!

Another great week at school. This week we are focusing on our entries and exits. We will assemble in the classrooms and learn to be quiet and listen to the play and know when it’s our turn to come out and act. It’s a cohesive building tool. Curtains up, costumes ready, and it’s “Lights, action!”

Children are getting chilly in short sleeves. It’s a good idea this week to dress children in long sleeves. During the winter our thermostats are low because of the activity in the building and the ability of the sun to really pump up the heat inside. But sometimes a short sleeve is not enough. We do not raise the heat because someone is dressed for summer.

Now is the time for parents to teach children to put on their own coats. We go out every day unless the temperature drops below 32 degrees. A thirty minute recess in the morning becomes five minutes when every child needs to be “dressed.” The theme song runs something like, “Your coat, your body…”

Getting children ready for the independence of big school is one of our jobs. Please help make your child independent by allowing him to dress himself.

Please instruct CHILDREN to put hats and mittens into his or her coat sleeve and hang the coat by the tab. If there is no tab, by the curve of the opposite sleeve. Why? Because it works.

Today we will be enjoying steak, potato wedges, big bread, oranges and frozen grapes.

Our Thanksgiving Play is on Friday at 3:00 p.m. Every child is expected to have someone there for him. Please plan to bring a snack to share for the party following. School dismisses at 4:00.

Introducing new foods to kids is tough. Sometimes I think it’s just the expectation that makes kids shy away from new possible yucky stuff.

With Thanksgiving approaching, we will do our best at the Garden School to teach the kids what Thanksgiving food will be like. Next week we will have a full Thanksgiving practice meal with the kids. We will bake a traditional turkey, stuffing, homemade and canned cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and the general works. Kids can sample everything and be ready and waiting for their family’s version on Thanksgiving.

One of the things we will do is to bake our own cranberry bread to take home and share. This has always been fun for kids. More about that later.

Making food fun is part of the art of eating well. The simple fact is, it’s not the organics, the naturals, or the store where you buy food that makes a healthy body, it’s the fact that we eat as wide a variety of foods as we can that makes us healthy. And that variety can be daunting to kids.

One of the things I did as a young mother that seemed to work, and I still do it today at school, is to build menus and meals around a schedule that takes in all the various kinds of meats, fish and other proteins.

On Monday, I try to serve beef. Doesn’t matter if it’s ground, roast, steak, or ribs.
On Tuesday, I try to serve pork. There are dozens of varieties including snausage ;-} chops, roast, piggy pie, ham, ribs, ground patty, tenderloin – you name it.
On Wednesday, it’s a non meat day. It’s breakfast food sans meat, eggs, cheese, beans. I have to serve 2 ounces of protein at every lunch, so our menus must include an alternate protein on non meat days.
On Thursday, I serve chicken. This week we’re having chicken legs.
On Friday, I try to serve fish, but sometimes we resort to another pizza day.

This allows children to sample the basics, and still not have too many red meat days. This schedule has served me for thirty years, and it encourages children to eat different things as they come on the table.

Taped to my desk, I have a list of twenty possible fruits and vegetables that we serve in a kind of rotating menu plan. I add things on sale, strange and interesting things from the Asian market, and weird stuff I find at Schnucks. All in an attempt to bring to our children the widest possible menu plan.

By eating a wide variety of food, children’s bodies are taking in a wide variety of vitamins, proteins, and minerals that they would not get by eating the same thing every day. As a workshop giver, I have many times been met with the statement by a day care provider who will tell me, “I don’t cook, so my kids get boxed pizza, French fries and applesauce every day.” No wonder children are constantly ill.

Monday at the Garden School, we will have marinated baked steak, potato wedges, big bread, frozen grapes and oranges. It will be a plate beautiful to look at. But I wouldn’t serve beef again that week, because the body can only use so much beef at a time. Too much beef is not good for anyone, so we limit it to one day.

So next week when we serve the turkey and trimmings, we will set up the round table with all the food and serve buffet. I hope it will look like what the children will sample on the big day. Buffet means the children can choose the food they want. The turkey will be there in all it’s glory and we will ask, “Would you like white or dark?” And we’ll put on a nice show and carve right there for them. It should be fun.

Next week: How to bake a turkey.

It was a wild and crazy week! The kids were on fire! We practiced the play every day and did some class work, and on Thursday, we had our pictures taken by Miss Beve Pietrowski. She’s a marvelous photographer and makes it so much fun for kids.

The children all know most of their lines and this coming week we will practice from classrooms and learn how to be quiet while the other children perform. Costumes will be given out this week and backdrops finished. It’s a process, and the kids have been great.

We experimented with one of our fall specialties from the kitchen this week. It’s baked squash with rice and cheese sauce. This week we may try it again with bacon added.

It’s time to think about getting candy money turned in.

Please set your calendars for this coming Friday – it’s the PLAY — Yeah!

Some special attention goes to some of the kids who have been outstanding with lines:

Garrett, Makenzie, Reese, Phoenix, Jill, Michael, Avery, Logan, August, Alex, Annie, Hailee, Jack HA, Alexis. Great job.

Early one morning I heard a short homily, “If the only religion you know is the one you learned as a child, no wonder you left your faith.” It made me want to shout out, “Foul ball!”

It made me cringe until I picked up William Bennett’s book The Educated Child, 1999 and was reminded how the early years are the most critical period in a child’s formation.

From Part One, The Preschool Years, the first paragraph includes, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it,” Proverbs.

And, “The most important part of education is right training in the nursery” – Plato.

Reaching into my own Catholic tradition, I recalled, “Give me a child before he is six, and he’s mine forever.” The Jesuit who said it knew first impressions are lasting.

Making lasting impressions in any of life’s disciplines is a teacher’s struggle. Getting children to love the arts and sciences, languages, history and geography and especially religion is a matter of presentation.

The arts, after all, are the many languages of the heart. Without a working knowledge of music, art, and literature at a teacher’s fingertips, an emotional void darkens any classroom and the languages of the heart fail to materialize.

On the other hand, the simple acts of turning on first class music and drawing children’s attention to certain pieces welcomes the curious child; music is easy and delightful and lifts the heart.

Reading poetry is another fundamental fine art that children love and sadly miss because the timidity of reading something more elevated than directions confounds a lot of adults.

Capturing a child’s curiosity about the world around him is early childhood science. Bring science into the classroom in the form of a hedgehog. Children will fixate on a rather dull creature whose primary interest is in going forward. That says something about children and the ease of presenting childhood science.

Add a new interest in clouds, shapes and patterns and movement, include a kite, and again the captive audience will remain for weeks, fixated on looking up.

Presenting history as a story is early history. “Matthew was a pilgrim boy; he lived in a place called Massachusetts. Let’s all say Massachusetts. Five times every day, Matthew carried water in a wooden bucket, just like this from the stream near his house (now show a bucket, let the children try to carry it). He fed corn to his pet goose. Matthew wore a big white shirt and pants with buttons.” And that’s how it starts.

Religion captures the heart when it is taught from the heart. But don’t tell me; show me.

Pick up an art book and ten children will come to see what’s in it. Turn on music and the desire to move to the music is nearly unstoppable. Read a story about God to children and they begin to explore in their minds. Bring life into the classroom like plants and animals, and the delight will astound anyone.

Give me a child before he is six, and he’s mine forever. It says it all.

My Trip to San Francisco in 1940. It’s a little dated, but fun to see the changes.

With ten snapshots.

1. The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

Dear Friend,

Arrived in Oakland a few hours ago and finally we’re on our way to SanFrancisco .

We paid 25 cents at the Toll Plaza to enter this wonderful bridge that was opened four years ago. It took me awhile to get used to the traffic.

The bridge has two decks. The top deck is for automobiles and the bottom deck for trucks and electric trains. You can see the tracks at left. The trains are run by the Key System and Southern Pacific. They can take you all over the East Bay to wonderful places like Neptune Beach in Alameda .

2. The Yerba Buena Tunnel

We have just passed through the Yerba Buena Tunnel and can finally see San Francisco in the distance. Notice that the traffic has thinned out. Many of the cars got off the bridge at the island to go to the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island . The fair opened last year and will close for good later in 1940. I’m going to try and go there.

Right now we’re heading for the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Nob Hill for cocktails. It’s a great place to see San Francisco .

3. Top of the Mark

Isn’t this a great view of San Francisco ? We’re at the lounge called the Top of the Mark. The Mark Hopkins Hotel is one of the city’s great hotels.

The Russ Building , by the bridge tower, is the biggest office building on the Pacific Coast . It’s 31 stories high.

Near the Ferry Building is the Produce District made up of small beautiful, old brick buildings. You can go there early in the morning and watch the grocers come in to pick out all kinds of vegetables.

4.Chinatown

After leaving the Mark we walked down California to Grant Avenue . Here is San Francisco ‘s world famous Chinatown . There are wonderful shops and the best Chinese food anywhere… and so reasonable. You can get a large bowl of pork noodles for 35 cents.

Do you see the Shriner’s Flags at the top of the picture? They are having a convention in San Francisco . There is a Shriners Hospitals for Crippled Children on Nineteenth Avenue . It provides treatment for many children ever year without charge.

Every New Years Day the famous Shrine East West football game is held in Kezar Stadium.

5. Flower Stands on Powell

After leaving Chinatown we walked down to Powell Street . Around Geary Street there are wonderful flower stands.

San Francisco is sure a different place.

6. The Cable Cars

We’re at Powell and Market where the cable cars get turned around to go to Fisherman’s Wharf. There is a great cafeteria just a few feet from the turntable. It’s called Clinton ‘s and I hear the food is great… but we plan to have dinner at Fisherman’s Wharf and that’s where we are heading.

7. Fisherman’s Wharf

We walked along the docks to look at hundreds of fishing boats. The one coming in here is a crab fisher. They are all painted wonderful colors and the fishermen are all Italian. They are very friendly, and we watched them sitting on the docks mending their nets and singing.

8. Dinner at Fisherman’s Wharf

Fisherman’s Wharf has to be one of my favorite places in San Francisco . The men who do the fishing bring them back to the restaurants and outdoor stalls. People can pick out a crab and it’s cooked right there for you to take home.

One night we went to a great restaurant a man told me about. It’s called San Remo ‘s, near Fisherman’s Wharf. You can get a wonderful Italian dinner for $1.00 from soup to dessert. Another dollar gets a bottle of house wine. You go into the bar to pick it up.

Our waiter was very friendly. I think he had been sampling the house wine.

9. Playland at the Beach

San Franciscans love the beach. The water is too cold to swim in but Playland at the Beach has everything else; a wonderful roller coaster, the Fun House, Shoot the Chutes, and great food. A favorite is Topsy’s Roost for delicious fried chicken and dancing. If you’re eating on the balcony you go down to the dance floor on a slide!

My favorite was the Pie Shop… the best chicken and beef turnovers imaginable… fantastic crust and a wonderful gravy. San Franciscans take them home for dinner.

10. The Golden Gate Bridge

We left Playland and drove through the Presidio to the Golden Gate Bridge . The Presidio is still an important Army Base and has been on active duty since Spain built a fort there in 1776.

The Golden Gate is my favorite bridge. We parked the car near the Toll Plaza and walked across the bridge for 25 cents. You can’t walk on the Bay Bridge .

Our trip to San Francisco is over too soon. I hate to say goodbye to this beautiful city. The people who live here are sure lucky.

Hope you enjoyed my letter and the photographs.

Say hello to everybody.

Picture Day today! We will have pictures all morning with Beve Pietrowski. She is a wonderful photographer and the pictures will have a beautiful black background and be ready for Christmas. If you will be dressing up your child, please send play clothes along. It’s a dirty dirty world…

Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds

Comment: I thought this was hilarious for all you guys who love your snack cakes! Go for it!

(CNN) — Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts.

For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.

His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most — not the nutritional value of the food.

The premise held up: On his “convenience store diet,” he shed 27 pounds in two months.

For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub’s pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily. So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned.

His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.

But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so.

Haub’s “bad” cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his “good” cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent.

“That’s where the head scratching comes,” Haub said. “What does that mean? Does that mean I’m healthier? Or does it mean how we define health from a biology standpoint, that we’re missing something?”

Despite his temporary success, Haub does not recommend replicating his snack-centric diet.

“I’m not geared to say this is a good thing to do,” he said. “I’m stuck in the middle. I guess that’s the frustrating part. I can’t give a concrete answer. There’s not enough information to do that.”

Two-thirds of his total intake came from junk food. He also took a multivitamin pill and drank a protein shake daily. And he ate vegetables, typically a can of green beans or three to four celery stalks.

Families who live in food deserts have limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables, so they often rely on the kind of food Haub was eating.

“These foods are consumed by lots of people,” he said. “It may be an issue of portion size and moderation rather than total removal. I just think it’s unrealistic to expect people to totally drop these foods for vegetables and fruits. It may be healthy, but not realistic.”

Haub’s body fat dropped from 33.4 to 24.9 percent. This posed the question: What matters more for weight loss, the quantity or quality of calories?

His success is probably a result of caloric reduction, said Dawn Jackson Blatner, a dietitian based in Atlanta, Georgia.

“It’s a great reminder for weight loss that calories count,” she said. “Is that the bottom line to being healthy? That’s another story.”

Blatner, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, said she’s not surprised to hear Haub’s health markers improved even when he loaded up on processed snack cakes.

Being overweight is the central problem that leads to complications like high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol, she said.

How well are you managing your diabetes?

“When you lose weight, regardless of how you’re doing it — even if it’s with packaged foods, generally you will see these markers improve when weight loss has improved,” she said.

Before jumping on the Ding Dong bandwagon, Blatner warned of health concerns.

“There are things we can’t measure,” said Blatner, questioning how the lack of fruits and vegetables could affect long-term health. “How much does that affect the risk for cancer? We can’t measure how diet changes affect our health.”

The ultimate Twinkie diet

On August 25, Haub, 41, started his cake diet focusing on portion control.

“I’m eating to the point of need and pushing the plate or wrapper away,” he said.

He intended the trial to last a month as a teaching tool for his class. As he lost weight, Haub continued the diet until he reached a normal body mass index.

Before his Twinkie diet, he tried to eat a healthy diet that included whole grains, dietary fiber, berries and bananas, vegetables and occasional treats like pizza.

“There seems to be a disconnect between eating healthy and being healthy,” Haub said. “It may not be the same. I was eating healthier, but I wasn’t healthy. I was eating too much.”

He maintained the same level of moderate physical activity as before going on the diet. (Haub does not have any ties to the snack cake companies.)

To avoid setting a bad example for his kids, Haub ate vegetables in front of his family. Away from the dinner table, he usually unwrapped his meals.

Study: U.S. obesity rate will hit 42 percent

Haub monitored his body composition, blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose, and updated his progress on his Facebook page, Professor Haub’s diet experiment.

To curb calories, he avoided meat, whole grains and fruits. Once he started adding meat into the diet four weeks ago, his cholesterol level increased.

Haub plans to add about 300 calories to his daily intake now that he’s done with the diet. But he’s not ditching snack cakes altogether. Despite his weight loss, Haub feels ambivalence.

“I wish I could say the outcomes are unhealthy. I wish I could say it’s healthy. I’m not confident enough in doing that. That frustrates a lot of people. One side says it’s irresponsible. It is unhealthy, but the data doesn’t say that.”

It’s another Monday in Play Week! We’re going to do some class this morning – some reading, writing and arithmetic. Then we will do play practice until recess. We will try to do this all week.

Please review your child’s lines. It’s important to the whole group that he or she really knows the lines. Then we can have some fun with the lines and the movements and the inflection.

It will be quite nice this week. It’s supposed to be in the 70s most of the week.

We will be enjoying lasagna for lunch today, and later this week we will have pork tenderloin sandwiches, breakfast for lunch, baked chicken and on Friday, fish.

There is nothing special going on this week. It’s a real “Ordinary Time” week.

Blessings to you.

One of the things that has been hot and heavy in the news recently is the San Francisco action of taking toys out of Happy Meals when the calorie count is higher than 600 and there are no fruits and vegetables offered.

I have mixed emotions about this. Personally, I regard fast food as a treat not unlike a candy bar, ice cream sundae or a big piece of birthday cake. It’s a particular kind of treat. Not good for you because of the high fat content, but seriously people, that high fat content makes it taste good – same with birthday cake from the baker – no nutrition – just junk yummyness.

To take away the toy is silly. It’s a government big head screaming in the wrong direction. If they are taking toys away from children and at the same time trying to legalize marijuana for adults, that’s a truly conflicting message… and San Francisco is my birthplace, so I’m not a left coast hater! Just an observer.

At the same time, I’m a grass roots person. I believe if you want a job done, don’t ask your neighbor, husband, or the government. Do it yourself.

So putting the grass roots thing together with the persistent health game, I’m always trying to come up with delicious treats that are actually the healthiest thing you ate today…and it’s fun.

What’s the problem with the happy meal? It’s fried beef on a white bread bun served with fried potatoes. It’s farmer food because people who work in physically demanding jobs need lots of calories quick. Kids who play outdoors hours a day can certainly handle a Micky D.

But many of our children don’t play outside much at all and spend an enormous amount of time sitting, and for them, a Micky D simply makes them fat and clogs arteries.

Making the hamburger or cheese burger or chicken nuggets healthier would be simple. If you baked the burgers and chicken so the fat separated from the meat, and you used whole wheat buns and baked the potatoes, it would be healthier, but we’re talking time and it’s supposed to be fast food – it’s a treat, and like ice cream or candy bars, it’s supposed to be fun, and delicious.

For about two years I belonged to the Evansville Coalition on Early Childhood Development. My goal was to unify childcare places on the matter of feeding children healthy foods. My ideas were grass roots, and I was tabled so often, I finally decided it wasn’t worth my effort through the coalition, but soon, I will be meeting with other people who create and cook for some of the largest childcare centers in the Evansville Area to discuss this very issue.

When we cook at the Garden School, Miss Amy and I go over recipes carefully. How much sugar can we remove from cookie dough to make it healthy, but keep the flavor of cookies. Mostly it’s half. We are currently discussing milling beans into flour to cut the carbs down for one of our children who is a diabetic. By using whole grains, half the sugar, and many spices with antioxidants, we are enhancing our recipes to make even our baked goods a health part of our day.

When we make Italian food, it’s strictly whole grain. I hand pick all our meat. Our fruits and vegetables are whole and mostly fresh. We do use an occasional jar of applesauce. And I hand pick all our meat. When the inspector came in, she couldn’t find our pantry. “Oh,” she said, “I understand. Your food is in the refrigerators. And you don’t use canned products, so you really don’t need a big pantry.”

And what do the kids think? They eat just about everything. Even our picky eaters are eating. It’s a blessing.

So what for the occasional treat? Life would be dull as gray paint if there weren’t treats. Treats make me hum. Maybe Monday will be a fudge day – it’s pure fun and a pure treat, but the kids will have eaten well, so what the heck?