One of the parents in our preschool absolutely made my day yesterday. . . .Yesterday my class, along with the class down the hall from us (Ms. Treasa's class), held a 4th of July parade with our kids. Treasa is Lydia and Emily's teacher and has become a good friend of mine. We tend to join together on occasion for activities and events we do with the kids in our classes. We decided to have a parade using some of the crafts we had the children make in class this past week. Treasa downloaded Yankee Doodle and I brought a cd player to school. We invited the other kids in the center to sit in the school hallway and watch our parade. It was so cute!!! The kids had a great time with it! We even went so far as to give them each a piece of candy (thanks to Ms. Rabia) to "throw" to the children watching the parade. Several of the younger two year olds did not want to throw their candy or even let go of it for that matter--they wanted to eat it:). A mother of one of our kids came up to me as she was picking her son up from school yesterday. Her son is in Ms. Treasa's class and they had already made their way up the hill to the playground . . . Ms. Stacey tends to take a little longer getting her kids cleaned up . . . anyway, this is the mother of a child I had when I first started working at this center. Very nice woman, but this is her only child, she is an older mom and she is a little harder to please than a lot of the other mothers. Plus, she and her husband are teachers:). In her son's cubby, Treasa had placed his Uncle Sam hat and construction paper flag he had carried in the parade that morning. She collected these items to take them home. As I was sweeping up the crumbs from snacktime, she passed my room holding this hat and flag, just looking at them. I looked up to say good-bye to her and she started to thank me for all the effort Treasa and I put into these kids. She said, "This parade must really have been a production." As she was talking tears welled up in her eyes. She talked about how difficult she knew this must be for us, but how wonderful it is for our kids to experience things like this. She went on to say how she was going to take the hat and flag home and see if she could get her little boy to have a parade at home with her and her husband. She must have thanked me three or four times. I told her I would be emailing pictures to her and to be on the lookout. She said she could not wait to see them.
I am thanked from time to time and told, quite often, how great it is that I do this and that I must have amazing patience. Funny, I really don't have amazing patience, but I love what I do so much that my lack of patience is focused on showing the kids the best way to direct their energy. I appreciate the things all the parents say, but coming from this particular mother was like receiving an award! Before I even reached the gate at the playgound with my kids, I began to tell Treasa of this good fortune. She said when this mother came up to pick up her son, she thanked her as well.
This made Lydia and Emily's 2nd parade. Back towards the first part of June Ryan, Lydia, Emily and myself were in a parade that was part of a local lawn party. The director of my center owns another center and we rode in the parade for that center--advertisement. It was really neat and the kids thought it was so great! We rode on a make shift float that was actually a trailer being pulled by a pick up. The trailer sat pretty close to the ground and at the end of the parade, in order to get back to our vehicles we had to get out on the main rode for about 2 miles. One of my co-workers was in the back of the pickup and yelled at me to turn around to look at Ryan and her son, Dylan. As I turned around I saw both of them leaning over the edge of the trailer watching the pavement go by rather quickly:). Screaming at them to get back before they fell off the trailer and hit by an oncoming vehicle, I realized this is the first time either of them had been able to see the road while riding in a vehicle. What an experience:).
Today was such a great day! My co-worker, Treasa (Lydia and Emily's preschool teacher), and I have been doing a nutrition unit with our preschool students and decided to take the kids to a grocery store to tie everything together. One of our "mothers" is the deli manager at the Food Lion just down the street from our center. She agreed to give our kids a tour of the store. This was something so neat for the kids as well as Treasa and myself. Ms. Sarah (our "mother") gave each of the kids a nametag upon arrival and a hairnet to allow them to go into the deli. In the deli, they met Mr. Tom who gave each of them a piece of American Cheese. We then went through the dairy department and into the back room where we went inside a storage refrigerator and freezer and saw the box bailer bail some boxes. Then, it was on to the meat department and to produce. In the produce department back room we were able to go into the produce cooler and see some different fruits and vegetables. We finished off the tour by spraying off the produce on the produce department floor area with the hose--each child got to spray a little bit. We said our thank you and good-bye to everyone as each child received a Food Lion bag filled with crayons, pencil, balloon, color page and a banana. It was such a neat day for all of us! I had a particular attachement to this fieldtrip because I worked at this Food Lion when I was in High School and College. They have had a huge renovation since I worked there, but for as many things as I saw changed, that many were the same. Thank you so much Sarah and the staff at Food Lion!
Green Eggs and Ham. We brought in eggs, green food coloring, and got some sliced ham from the lunch stash at school. The kids had so much fun eating GREEN EGGS!!! With the cold weather, it has been a little difficult to take the kids outside. We had traded places with the four year old classroom and stayed down there until lunch time. The kids had such a great time!
