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SECTION 2 • PAGE 2 - PLAINDEALER-WEDNESDAY, MAY 1». It7« District 15 Perspectives Every Place Is A Learning Place! Every place is a learning place! Every kitchen, for example - with its sink, stove, refrigerator, dishes, pots, cans, and boxes - has the necessary ingredients to become a miracle place for learning. This is learning that extends from, builds on, reinforces, but does not duplicate the school. " THE KITCHEN READING ° Hidden Letters. All around the kitchen, from the cupboard to the refrigerator, from the stove to the sink there are Letters: A's, B's, F's, P's, etc. On the soup cans, on the cat food, on the cereal box, even on ihe soap -- there are letters. Make a game of finding these letters: ask children (without tearing up the place of course) to find five A's or three C's or any number of letters, or combination of letters appropriate to the child's background and current skills. Start easy and build up to harder and harder letters to find. Children can then write the letters found on paper or just share the objects on which the letters had been "hidden". You're building reading observation skills as well as having fun together. Telephon-itis. Even very young children can learn to dial a telephone. This is number and reading practice - left-to-right reading of numbers. Make a list of the numbers the child can read and dial on his own: weather, grandmas, friends who will listen and whose kids you're willing to hear from, too. Cooking Up Directions. You don't just cook a "dish" - you have to read directions to know what comes first, second, and so on. Select a simple recipe with the child, perhaps jello, instant pudding, or canned soup. On every package is a set of directions: either read them aloud to the pre-reading child or ask the young reader to do it on his own. Follow the directions step by step - enjoy the joy of cooking, coming up with a product and reading at the same time. WRITING The Grocery List. Everybody has to eat. Preparing for a trip to the supermarket is a writing adventure. Work together to prepare the shopping list with the child. Check the shelves: what do we need? About how much will it cost? Help children learn to spell words: chicken cheese, bread, etc. Making a list can take time, so don't try to do this for every trip to the store - once a week is fine. Day-by-Day Calendar. Personalize any calendar - be it store-bought, give-away, or home-made from scratch. Have children fill in the blanks with notes on the weather, who's going where, birthdates, even send morning messages on the calendar - notes to one another in the family on what to do today, or just to say "hello". Subject Bounce. Over a fast breakfast or a sit down dinner, play this "talk" game that prepares children for putting their thoughts into writing. Toss out a subject, start with simple ones that children know about - summer, friends, breakfast, school. The child then comes up with a statement about it: examples, "Summer is the best season" or "Friends like the same things you do". As children build sophistication their subjects and statements get more sophisticated, too. These are what we call "umbrella" statements for essay writing because they have to cover all the material that comes underneath them. MATHEMATICS Can-Can Numbers. Save those empty, clean soup cans. Strip off the wrappers and paste number labels on different cans. You can have a row from 1 to 10. Now you're ready for anything from just identifying the number itself to more complicated adding and subtracting games. Some people like to paste macaroni on each can to match the number to make the game more "tactile" for young children. Egg Carton Counter. Take an old egg carton and in the bottom of each section, write in numbers. Use anything - little pieces of paper to pennies - to match the number in the section with the right number of papers or pennies. Use for straight matching or pitching games. Napkin Fractions. Paper towels or napkins can be folded into all kinds of big and little fractions. Start with easy halves and move to eighth^ or sixteenths. Use magic markers to label the parts. N u m b e r s , N u m b e r s , Everywhere. Just as with letters, numbers are all around , the kitchen, too. Adapt the letters game to use with numbers and find them hidden everywhere! SCIENCE Ice Is Nice. Here's a freezing and melting experiment that's nice and cool. Do this while preparing cold drinks or setting out the family meal. Put water into an ice tray and set into the freezer: how long does it take to freeze? Try this with different levels of water in different sections of tray. Set out ice cubes on the table: how long do they take to melt? Why are they melting? Put them in different places around the room: do they melt faster in some places than in others? Ice offers up lots of good scientific thinking and questions. Hard to Soft. Bring together boiling water on the stove and hard macaroni. What happens? Why does it happen. Ask children to carefully check time it takes for water to boil and watch the boiling process; plunge in macaroni and watch what happens next. Listening Ears. Kitchens make noise: what noises do you hear? List them all and identify them - the refrigerator's hum, the stove's hiss, the sink's drip. Listening is good concentration practice and good science observation. Mailbox Improvement Week Traditional Observance Mailbox Improvement week, a traditional Spring observance which contributes to improved security and appearance of the nation's nearly twenty-four million mailboxes, will be held May 17-22 this year, Postamster LeRoy Smith said Monday. Held annually, this event has long served as the starting signal for community efforts to repair, repaint and make other improvements to the nation's approximately 24 million rural, curb-line and star route mailboxes, 8,113 of which are served by the McHenry post office. Postmasters in many communities around the country have led civic groups, the press and municipal governments in the Spring campaigns to "spruce up" the mail receptacles often damaged by severe winter weather. "Because more Americans receive their mail today on rural routes than ever before, 'Mailbox Improvement week' is more important than when first observed generations ago in rural areas and small communities," Smith said. Postal service rural carriers serve approximately 13.5 million families along some 32,480 rural routes. Rural mail service began in 1896. In those days many makeshift receptacles were used as mailboxes. One favorite was tin can nailed to a tree. Today, manufacturers provide a variety of modern mailbox designs for use with decorative posts in cooperation with the postal service. "Customers may check with me for a list of manufacturers making approved designs," Postmaster Smith said. Dollar or Two The divorce court judge lis­ tened intently as the distraught wife charged her husband with nonsupport. After the testimony, the judge told the husband: "You obviously haven't taken proper care of this woman and I'm going to give her $250 a month." The husband, beaming, re­ plied: "That's great. I'll give her $20 or so from time to time myself " 0 The Fresh Idea Company . . . HOURS DAILY 9-9 SUN. 10-6 RTE. 47 & COUNTRY CLUB ROAD WOODSTOCK, ILL Choirs Of Saint John In Bicentennial Concert The choirs of Saint John the Baptist church, Johnsburg, will present their Bicentennial concert Thursday evening, May 20, at 8 p.m. in Saint John the Baptist church. This final concert in the series is open to the public without ticket and without charge and all are cordially invited to attend. The Concert will be conducted by John R. Heidinger, M.S.M., organist-choirmaster of the church. Four settings of "America" by Heidinger will form the framework for the program of sacred music by American composers drawn from the nation's two-hundred year history. Following the opening stanza by the combined adult and children's choirs, he will play Charles Ives' "Variations On America" for solo organ. The choir of Saint John's will then sing two settings of texts by famous American writers: the "Prelude" of William Schuman with a text from Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel and the Randall Thompson "The Testament Of Freedom," Parts I and IV with its text selected from the writings of Thomas Jefferson. Soprano Judith Oeffling will be the soloist in the Schuman "Prelude". Following a performance of the second stanza of "America" for combined choirs, Part Two of the program will include a montage songs, hymns and spirituals opening with the solo ensemble performing "Sing God A Simple Song" from Leonard Bernstein's Mass. The choir of Saint John's will follow this with two other works by classical American composers, "Serenity" by Charles Ives and "When Jesus Wept" by William Billings. The combined children's choirs will sing two spirituals to continue the program, "Go Down Moses" and "Jesus Walked " This Lonesome Valley" as representative of America's rich heritage of sacred song in the folk idiom. American hymns on the program will include the Pilgrim hymns, "His Voice As The Sound" and the modal setting of "Psalm Four," both set for unaccompanied voices by Heidinger and sung by the choir of Saint John's. More recent American hymn writers will be represented with the combined children's choirs singing of William Walter's "Rise Up O Men Of God" and George Warren's "God Of Our Fathers," the latter work accompanied by brass and percussion. The concluding portion of the concert program will again open with a setting of America for combined choirs and feature the premier performance of John R. Heidinger's "A Collect For Our Country" composed for this concert and set for the choir of Saint John's with brass and percussion. The beautiful text from the "Book Of Commen Prayer" is given a contemporary treatment in this anthem with themes used antiphonally between the brass ensemble and choral forces. The combined choirs and brass will close the program with the first stanza of the National Anthem, the sounding of taps in memory of those who died that this may still be the land of the free, and the performance of the final stanza of "America" for combined choirs and brass with percussion. * * • * Give the other man cred­ it for some sincerity of purpose and you might be able to understand him better. CARPET REMNANTS Tidy has more carpet remnants than anyone in Northern Illinois. . . and we're over-stocked! So this weekend you can enjoy fantastic savings on a tremendous selection of carpet remnants. 4 DAYS ONLY-MAY 20, 21, 22f 23 OVER 1,000 REMNANTS ON SALE (This is only a partial listing) Spvari Rimnanti 8 ft. x 12ft. to 12ft. x 30ft. (11 sq.yds. to 43 sq.yds.) Tidy has approximately 100 remaining... nylon shags and nylon sculp­ tures. Some of these remnants would sell for as much as $8.00 sq.yd. on a cut-order basis. 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