Visit the Edna Maguire website

View the complete calendar for the 2007/2008 school year.

Volunteer Work Day This Saturday
Come help with Edna Spring Cleaning! Please join Bruce Berlinger and the Beautification crew to clean our campus before the end of the school year. We’ll be there on Saturday, April 19th from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. No experience necessary! For more information, please contact Bruce Berlinger (blshell@pacbell.net). See you there!

K/1 Grade Play Structure Update
Many thanks to Ed Faubel (father of Erin and Amanda) and his crew for working to ensure that the demolition of the outdated play structure was completed on time!

We are thrilled to let you know that the K/1 play structure is almost complete! Installation crews worked throughout the Spring Break and are now putting on the finishing touches. Unfortunately, the initial measurements taken by the play structure vendor were inaccurate, so the retaining walls surrounding the structure on one side need to be expanded by nine inches. The crew will work this week to complete this work, and the final delivery of wood chips will take place over next weekend.

The hanging bars and the balance beam from the K/1 area were removed, and we had hoped to install them in the 2nd-5th grade area. Unfortunately, the space required for safe fall zones is not available, so these items have gone into District storage.

Thank you to everyone for your efforts and support throughout this process; whether you offered your ideas, time, or funds, we appreciate it all!! Please join us on the last day of Earth Week, Friday, April 25th for a short ribbon cutting ceremony before our school picnic lunch.

Frequent Rider Miles Contest Starts Today
Don’t forget to walk/roll/carpool to school starting today! It’s time again for the ever-popular Frequent Rider Miles Contest. This is a chance for each student to win awards for walking, biking, or carpooling to school. If you need help finding other Edna families to SchoolPool with, see the MVSD Directory on page 13.

Your child received a card in last week’s Wednesday folder for keeping track of how he or she travels to school. Record travel each day, and turn in the card to the office on Fridays starting April 25 for prizes.

At the end of the contest, all cards that are turned in with at least 20 points and a parent signature will be entered into a drawing for larger prizes, such as a new bicycle, Razor scooter, backpack, or bike lock. Be sure to fill in the entire card with room number when you turn it in so we can find your child if he or she wins a big prize!

Edna Celebrates Earth Week!
Earth Week starts next Monday, April 21 and culminates the following Friday with the Garden Sing, picnic, and K/1 play structure dedication. To celebrate, we have some great events planned for the week. Download the Earth Week flyer (pdf) to learn more.

• Clean-up contest: Classes will compete to clean up the most litter around our school and city. Using trash collection bags donated by the City of Mill Valley, students will have one week to collect as much litter as they can find around school and their neighborhoods. When the bags are full of trash, students will return them to school where the Green Team will tally bag totals for each class. For each grade, the class that collects the most trash will get a class party.

• Book swap: Bring in one used book to trade with classmates in your grade level. Get rid of one you don’t read anymore and trade for a new (to you) book. Save trees while reducing waste going to the landfill.

• Found materials art projects: Students will be reusing plastic bags and other found materials ordinarily destined for the landfill to decorate the K/1 play structure and garden fence.

• Garden Work Party! Come out and help in the garden on Wednesday, April 23rd from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Refreshments will be served.

• Second Annual Ladybug Release: On Thursday, April 24th, at 8:30 a.m., 120,000 Ladybugs will be released in our organic children's garden. Ladybugs are natural predators. We are teaching our children "Ladybugs, not pesticides!”

• Garden Sing and picnic: Beginning at 11:15 a.m., students will sing songs about our wonderful planet and garden. Following the Sing, there will be a ribbon cutting ceremony for our new K/1 play structure. Parents, bring a blanket and a waste-free lunch to picnic with your child. Revolution Foods, the new PTA hot lunch provider, will have a have a table at the play structure dedication with pizza tastes for everyone to try.

Garden News
A big garden thank you to Ken Campbell for fixing our broken fleet of wheelbarrows. It is very much appreciated.

Guess what? Some of our lettuce and radishes will be ready this week or next! We have purchased salad bowls and salad spinners for those wonderful salad days. Just bring the dressing and your camera to take pictures of the kids eating greens and loving it.

We earned $111 in daffodil sales and profits went back into the garden. Thank you all for your purchases!

Mill Valley Children’s Garden Facts
Did you know that the Mill Valley Children’s Garden at Edna Maguire provides a unique outdoor, environmental, hands-on classroom for your child?

Did you know that our garden provides organic healthy nourishment for your child, year round? Our garden produces an abundance of sugar peas, lettuce, and radishes in the spring, and pumpkins, zucchini, tomatoes, apples and pears in the fall.

Did you know that our amazing garden and all its wonderful educational and nutritional programs are 100-percent volunteer operated? A paid staff does not exist and that the many parents you see in the garden, including Garden Coordinator Lee Budish, are volunteers.

Did you know that our garden does NOT receive any funding from the School District, KIDDO!, or the State?

Did you know that operating costs for the garden are funded by parents, PTA fundraisers and community support dollars whenever possible? These support dollars cover the cost of seeds, tools, gloves, fertilizers, plants, trees and our spectacular Ladybug Release.

Did you know the garden tries to sustain itself financially with the produce and flowers sold after school, and with our Spring and Fall Harvest Festivals?

Did you know that the annual operating budget for the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, a garden of comparable size to our own, is $400,000? This is fully funded by the Chez Panisse Foundation.

Did you know that our first garden parent, Suzanne Frazier and our first garden teacher, Susan Reynolds went to lobby for Edible School Gardens in the early 1990s, years before Alice Waters made it fashionable?

Did you know that world-renowned Green Gulch Horticulturists, Skip Kimura and Wendy Johnson, created the Mill Valley Children’s Garden in the 1980s for the disabled of Marin? It was funded by the Buck Center to develop a special place where the disabled could learn a skill.

Did you know that Smith and Hawken used the garden for a test bulb site and that the tulips in the garden were legendary?
Did you know that there was a huge battle for the garden in 1990 and that teachers, parents, and community petitioned to save it?

When the school district reopened Edna Maguire in 1990, they wanted to bulldoze the garden and turn it into a playing field. The parents and teachers petitioned and now our children reap the benefits of that activism.

Test Your Passenger Safety Knowledge
Edna parent Georgia Pung, M.D., provides some excellent information about child vehicle safety in this article.

Psychologically Speaking
District psychologist Claudia Trinklein-Engman writes this month about “put-downs” and how to help kids respond to them. Read the full article.