You can help by bringing in any of the items listed below:

Items they need:

Copy paper

Batteries (AA mostly)

Blue painter's tape (the only thing they can use to hang things on walls)

Sharpies (black medium point)

Drawing paper for art

Sheet protectors

Clorox wipes

Colored pencils (not a ton)

A couple Kindergarten teachers would love pencils that do NOT have erasers (they don't need tons of these.)

Items they do NOT need: crayons, folders, notebook paper, spiral notebooks, and pencils

Collection boxes for supplies will be located at the main desk at the entrances to each division.  If you have any questions, please contact Megan Grinder, Berclair Partnership Chair for PDS Parents’ Association.  Thank you for your support of Berclair!

• Academic Boost
• Remediation or reinforcement in any subject or skill
• Homework Help
• Enrichment in a subject
• Study Skills
• Preparation for standardized testing

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Dear Parents,

Our BBMM virtue for the month of September is The True Friend: Leave No Man Behind. The characteristic that we are emphasizing is kindness. Throughout the month, we hope to paint a picture of what kindness looks like for your son. Through the use of visual aids, he will learn about kindness in chapel, classroom devotions and class meetings.

While modeling the behavior we want our children to display, ourselves, is always the best teacher (“I would rather see a lesson than hear one”), pediatrician and author Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, M.D. suggests four simple ways we can nurture kindness at home.

1. Let your child help you. When you let your child do things for you — set the table, sort the laundry, cover you with a blanket when you're chilly — you give him the feeling of, "Hey, you're important. We wouldn't make it without you.”

2. Let your child choose to be kind. My daughter used to ask her son, ‘Would you like to see if you can help your baby sister feel better, and I'll be there in a minute?' If he said he didn't want to, she'd drop it. Later, not always but usually, he'd be off trying to help his baby sister because now it was his idea. You can't force a child to be kind. If you do, you're teaching dominance, not kindness.

3. Let him own his acts of kindness. At a playground in France, I watched a 1-year-old trying to get up the nerve to go down a slide. His 2-year-old friend came along, grabbed him and took him down the slide in his lap. They smiled at each other and walked away. The 2-year-old's mother told him that was lovely, then went back to her reading. She didn't make a big deal of it. She just gently reinforced to her child that he'd done a kind thing, but not so much that it took away from the naturalness of the moment.

4. Say you're sorry. Teaching kindness is not just about the times when everything is sweetness and light. It's also about times that aren't. When you've done something wrong — snapped or gotten impatient or yelled — you have the chance to turn it around and apologize. Think what it means to your child when you say, "I'm sorry. I didn't do that right. How do you feel?” It shows respect and humility, and that kindness really does help.

-Mark Fruitt

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don’t hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life—learn some, think some, and draw, paint, sing, dance, play, and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder—remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup:  the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody knows why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish, hamsters, and white mice, and even the little seed in the styrofoam cup—they all die. So do we.
• And, remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned—the biggest work of all—LOOK.

According to Fulghum, everything you need to know is there somewhere—The Golden Rule, love, basis sanitation and hygiene, relationship management and balanced living.

PDS is excited about this year’s BBMM Luncheon Series. The quarterly luncheons will feature respected authors and teachers discussing topics relevant to raising children in today’s culture. This year’s speaker series will feature the following speakers and topics:

 
 September 21st 11:30-1pm
Dr. Jim Taylor
Author of Positive Pushing: How to Raise a Successful and Happy Child; Dr. Jim Taylor is internationally recognized for his work in the psychology of performance in business, parenting, and sport.
Topic: Positive Pushing

RSVP Online

I’ve posted two blogs about creativity recently (part 1 and part 2), and I wanted to write about the SEC and creativity. (A disclaimer: I have been a Vols fan since my dad took me to my first game in 1974, though I have grown to like the Rebels when they are not playing the Vols; I also will pull for the hometown Tigers, even though they don’t play in the SEC.)

SEC football is not just about the game itself, of course. It is about the tailgating and talk as much as it is about touchdowns. It is about bravado and bragging and boasts…none of which are in short supply among the fans, especially at this time of the year, before the dreams of BCS bids have been shattered by big losses to bitter rivals.

So, in the spirit of the annual SEC preseason frenzy, here is my first annual (perhaps) SEC Creativity Contest. I invite SEC fans of all stripes to see who can come up with the most creative answers to the following questions.  In a subsequent blog, I’ll post the results and/or winning answers, as well as announce which school has the most creative fans. Among everyone who participates, I’ll draw a name from a cyber hat and get this person a tailgating pack customized to his/her tastes and team.