Our Inservice Day

Pauline and I had an enjoyable and productive inservice day last Thursday. It is so helpful to have an uninterrupted block of time to get a project not just started, but completed! We worked on our baking curriculum. We selected three recipes for cookies, muffins and a quick bread and cut down the proportions to very small batches. That math class I took this summer really paid off there! We went shopping for ingredients and materials. We began our search at Goodwill, hoping to economize and be green, but only found one item there. The rest we found at Bed, Bath and Beyond and Fred Meyer. Then we returned to the school to organize our pantry and learn how to use our convection oven. We love the heavy-duty pull-out shelves we are asking Bryan Irwin to install in our pantry. They will make accessing items from that deep, deep cabinet much more manageable.

Baking will be an activity done independently by a child who can read the recipes. We have set some reading standards that a child must achieve to be allowed to bake here at school. Kids love to bake and cook. It is especially meaningful for them to cook with you, their parents. Find tasks they can do on their own and let them help you with the trickier aspects that require close supervision. I really encourage you to make them a part of the set-up and clean-up, too. That is good for lengthening the period of focus and activity, letting them see the entire cycle and teaches responsibility. Food preparation is so basic to life. Let's share it with our kids.

On another note, Pauline filled me in on all the wonderful ideas that the Recruitment Committee came up with at their meeting last Wednesday. That is a group with their thinking caps on. One bit I will share with you is that the committee felt speaking to like-minded groups, such as parenting classes, was a focused way to reach our target demographic. They also felt that parents heed the words of other parents more than those of teachers or other representatives of the school. Perhaps some of you could begin pondering the idea of doing a little public speaking on behalf of our school. The experiences you and your children have had would be invaluable for prospective parents.

Best Regards,
Doni