KIDS LEARN LIFE'S BASIC RULES IN KINDERGARTEN

Hang up your coat. Don't kick. Listen to the teacher.

Six-year-old Malcolm Boyce and his classmates venture daily into these milk-and-cookie rules of life in Linda Hill's morning kindergarten class at Clippard Elementary School.

Hill says the kids learn "some good life skills that they are going to use forever" -- things like sharing and playing fair.

Learning covers a varied tapestry of topics in Hill's classroom. April showers, bears and flooding were all topics of discussion one recent morning.

"We talk about the news," said Hill. "We know what the weather will be."

Hill has been a school teacher for 31 years, with most of that time spent teaching kindergarteners.

It's a job she loves. "They (the children) are real spontaneous and they like to move a lot and so do I," said Hill. "I don't like to sit and do all the quiet stuff."

Her enthusiasm is clearly evident in a classroom covered with colors -- from the green, upside-down umbrella hanging from the ceiling to the Curious George "lived in a jungle" display on the wall.

Hanging from the umbrella are a mobile of words: "April Showers Bring May Flowers."

Cutouts of little umbrellas mark off the days on a wall calendar, while large numbers in a rainbow of colors stare down on it all.

It's the kind of room that author Robert Fulghum would love. Fulghum wrote the classic essay: "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten."

"What we learn in kindergarten will come up again and again in our lives as long as we live," Fulghum wrote in commenting about the essay which applauds everything from warm cookies and cold milk to afternoon naps.

Malcolm and his classmates already have an understanding of some of life's basic rules, much of it wrapped around the "no-hitting" admonition.

"Keep your feet on the ground and don't hit anybody," Malcolm pointed out. "Keep your hands to yourself."

"We don't punch or kick," said Melanie Swift, 6. "We don't call people names and we don't push anybody down, and we don't push people off the swings."

Swift may be a classroom rookie, but she already has a good idea about the key rule of life. "I think the most important one is to not do anything that the teacher says not to do," she knowingly observed.

Kristin Final, 6, is an expert on the coat rule. "Whenever you first get to school, you have to hang up your coat and put your backpacks in the boxes and then we have to sit down in our chairs."

"When the kids are talking, the teacher has to say, `Quiet,'" said 6-year-old Deakon Bragg.

"Stay on the blacktop," advised Brianna LeGrand, 6. "Don't kick each other. Don't bother one another. Don't be mean. Don't talk to strangers."

Putting your toys away is also important, she said. "My brother isn't good at it," she confessed.

Bradley Baker, 6, said he is always "trying not to hit people when I am outside and trying not to talk when the teacher is talking."

Not hitting people is the most important rule, he insisted.

Cheryl Hagler, 6, advised it's important to pick up the toys in school. "If we don't do it, it will probably look like a disaster, like my room does."

But she said the most important rule is: "Don't take drugs."

Six-year-old Kenneth Lewis has a rule to live by. "If somebody calls you a name, you have to go tell the teacher."

Fulghum's philosophy is no less basic. "Think what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world -- had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.

"Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

"And it is still true, no matter how old you are -- when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together."

Malcolm and his classmates already know that.