What Did You Say?

Preschool is off to a great start. Unless you are the teacher in the 1 yr old room, and then I have to say it's off to a screaming start. I give it 2 more weeks and they will be like bonded ducklings to the teacher. Poor thing. It is soooo loud. Whoooweee - just helping for 20 minutes at a time both days deafened me. Those babies are not happy with their mommies right now.

In Pre-K we are happy to be at school! Each year, the teachers ask the kiddos to help identify the most important rules at school and why we have them. I love to read some of the doozies they come up with! There are 3 basics we categorize everything in: 1) Take care of yourself; 2) Take care of your friends; 3) Take care of the classroom. The ones on my chuckle list: Don't color on yourself with markers; No hitting or socking your friends; and NO TEXTING WHILE DRIVING! Good to know there won't be any distracted cozy coupe drivers at preschool!  The amazing thing is that all of those rules fall into the 3 main categories and that is what we get the kiddos to see, and when they forget and run in the classroom, we can point to THEIR RULES and ask "oops - did you forget..."  

One little munchkin learned an important "choose a better way" to communicate, which falls under the take care of your friends heading: When I was working with another teacher to take out all the stacked trikes, toys, scooters, and balls out of the closet, she poked her head out the classroom door and putting a hand on the hips goes, "SERIOUSLY?"  I didn't get to see it, sadly, but when I heard about it, I knew this had to be nipped in the bud, having seen her work the system the previous two years. Yeah, I've been watching and am braced for impact :))  I put on a nicely confused face and sat down with her at the table and asked her if she saw how hard we were working to bring out so many toys for her and the other kids to play with... and by the way, did she mean to sound so rude? Then I asked her if she could think of some ideas of how to handle that situation better so her ears wouldn't hurt and she wouldn't hurt our feelings. Hah! We decided she could have shut the door to her classroom or moved to another play area where she couldn't hear balls bouncing across the gym.  We hugged and I went back to work struggling not to giggle over her Teen Drama Queen Moment in a 4 yr old body.  She's a sweet little handful who will find that there's not just one, or two, but at least FIVE teachers who are fully in loving control at Pre-K. She will appreciate the boundaries once she identifies them all!  Next week we will probably be discussing word choice at music time which she pronounced as BOR-ING on the first day of school.  Oh girl - we gonna have us some fun times! One of the things I've learned over the years, the ones who may be a challenge at first end up being the ones you miss the most when they graduate.

I've also reflected that the things that make me laugh the most in life are kids - from the little ones to my young adults! I love that so much.  And, so I simply have to share this story, taken from the status update of my coworker:

• In a father son discipline talk, he expressed how he wished he was an only child, then remarked, "I bet you feel the same way, huh dad, with two out of control kids and a grumpy wife".

So between the texting, the SERIOUSLY?, and that quote of the year, I have to say, God Bless the Little Children.... and keep 'em coming please! This woman needs to smile.