Classroom

I took last Friday off to do a craft with Gillian's class. I was a little intimidated by the idea of 22 gregarious 3, 4, and 5 year olds since I have never taught a group like that, per se. In my usual fashion, I bought everything I needed on Wednesday, and did nothing to prepare until Thursday night, when I could stay up late because I wasn't working the next day. I had googled "mouse paper bag puppet" because I had this idea about reading Gillian's class If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and having a theme for art and snack around that. Unfortunately, the mouse puppets I found online left a lot to be desired, so I created my own template-borrowing a little, of course. It had to be cute, it had to have few enough pieces that even the littlest kids could manage the project, it had to be economical for me (<$10 for everything), and it had to be functional. Typical, but this took a much longer time to cut out all the little pieces than I expected. I started prepping at 9:30 pm, and finished at 3 am. The nice thing about the bag hand puppets is that all the little pieces tuck nicely into the bag.

I slept 3.5 hours, and then I got up, got the girls fed and ready for school, took Gillian to school, and came back and baked 4 dozen cookies (for snack time-you know give a MOUSE a COOKIE). Gillian was not aware that I was coming back to her class. I arrived a little before 9:30 am (the scheduled arrival time) and the kids were doing circle time and acting out various animals. It was adorable. I have never had a chance to witness a regular day at her classroom, so this was a bonus. They all went to the bathroom, during which time her teacher and I knocked over all the chairs in the classroom (which was attributed to a naughty little leprechaun-they obviously had a lot of fun with leprechauns the day before, which was St. Patrick's Day). The kids came back in marvelling at the destruction the leprechaun had left behind and put all their chairs back where they went. Then it was story time.

I sat down, all these precious little faces eager to absorb every word of the story (except Sebastian, Gillian's arch nemesis, who apparently never listens to anything, ever, and gets sent home on a regular basis for doing things like calling his teacher a "big, fat LIAR!"). And we read the story...I asked them the sorts of questions I ask Gillian during a story ("why do you think he did that?" or "what color is that crayon", or "why do you think the mouse had all that energy to mop the whole house?"), so it wasn't unnatural or anything. I have a four year old. I get that age. And I got to be with them on their best behavior because everyone behaves better at school than at home. It was so much fun to read the story, but then it was craft time.

Everyone took their seats, and I passed out the little brown bags to everyone and told them to dump the contents out. Ms. Woods (one of G's teachers) pinned a mouse to the wall as an example, we passed out the glue sticks, and I walked them through the steps of gluing on different parts. I told them they could make the mouse however they wanted (they could make the eyes be crossed or one up and one down for silliness, or put the whiskers on their bellies, or whatever)...and the teachers and I helped kids who were having a little trouble. The oldest kids finished quickly, following the example, not waiting for my prompts. The little ones brought up the rear, but everyone had a blast and loved the product. I took the picture, below, because they were so excited and it was such fun!

Then it was cookie time, which was even more exciting. They approved of the chocolate chip cookies heartily, and then after that was "free play". Gillian was asking if I could stay longer, so I stayed through free play and had lots of fun playing Swan Princess with Gillian and a few of her classmates (God love Daniel, who was dressed to the nines in a tutu and had a magic wand), when Gillian was singing Swan Lake at the top of her lungs, and then we colored and played tea party... then Ms. Woods asked if I wanted to do regular story time before lunch, so I read another book. Even though Gillian pleaded for me to stay and eat lunch with her, I decided to leave because I was starving and exhausted.

This experience made me even more appreciative of teachers, and what they do every day to give our kids a sense of normalcy and routine. That is probably the only place some kids get that, though maybe less children have family issues in a private school. But still. I honestly had a wonderful time and thought that teaching would be so rewarding and hard. Just like parenting. So, props to all you educators. I honor you and am in awe of you. Thank you, really, for everything you do. I can't wait to come back and do it again (I was told I have an open invitation!).