This week at work

This week at work, I brainwashed several 2 year olds[and a couple of 18 month olds] into a real love of school buses…I also petted a tarantula, shook hands with a large furry bear, sang a million verses of “The Wheels on the bus” [well, actually only 2 or 3 verses, over and over and over…] presided over a car wash, and came close to being vomited on. My job is so exciting!
On Tuesday, We ran a hose into the playground and used a basin and rags to wash some dusty riding toys and our two jeeps [that used to be battery operated before they were given to us]. That was a lot of fun, and we ended up getting very wet. I was really thankful that it was such a warm day…
On Wednesday, a group of children were playing in our cardboard box aka bear cave/house/garage, when one threw up. I ended up stripping his best friend down to her diaper and washing her shoes to get all the vomit off her. That was the sad end of our box...
We had a special field trip scheduled for Thursday, so I started indoctrinating the kiddos last week-this Tuesday we were invited to get on the bus and sit in the seats. I had to carry the youngest onto the bus, she was very nervous about it at first. After a few minutes she warmed up to the idea and started exploring the bus-at least I think that is what she was doing-she did seem to be paying special attention to the emergency exits.
Since I switched hours with my aide and started arriving a little later, I always hit the ground running when I enter the classroom door. On Thursday, it was a mad rush to get everyone fed, diapered, and sun screened. We met the deadline and boarded the bus. We were barely out of the parking lot when my ESL student indicated to me that he wanted to sing “The Wheels on the Bus”. He looked over his shoulder, back at me, said “bus?”, “wheels?” and moved hands and arms in a circular motion. I am so proud of him; his grasp of English has just exploded lately. So of course we sang for all of the fraction of a mile it took us to reach our destination.
We disembarked and started looking at the amenities available-a magnet fishing pool, a play dough table, a foam and paper craft table. We made spiders from Styrofoam and pipe cleaners, and met a tarantula named Faith. One of my little dears wanted me to “Touch it! Touch it!” So I got permission and gave poor Faith conniptions by gently touching her back. Already some of the kids were chanting “Bus? Bus?”
Smokey the Bear approached us as we were having some water, and my kids’ faces froze…I shook his hand and patted his arm, and my bravest lad also shook his hand, but then one of the children started to wail and we had to beat feet. We did manage to plant some flower seeds, but the rest of our visit was punctuated not only with chants of “Bus, bus!”, but with cries of alarm and pointing as Smokey came ever closer… Finally we boarded the bus for the return trip. I tell you, I had some tired little teddy bears! They were so overtired, it took almost an hour to get them all settled down for naptime after they’d eaten lunch.
For the next day and a half, we had screams of joy every time we saw the bus, and all of our play was peppered with enquiries of “Smokey Bear?” Overall, a very successful and productive week at work.

Perpetual Master's Degree

I've been thinking about my future. I know I want to get a Master's degree, but I'm not sure what my focus would be. Educational research? Reading specialization? Preschool science? Something in the educational field at any rate.
It sure is taking me awhile to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. When you think about it, I am 46 and it took me 26 years to earn my Bachelors degree, 8 years actually taking classes and earning credit...not sure if I have time to waste here.

Fafsa aargh

No, it’s not a foreign language. It is just a reflection of my feelings, having just completed 2 federal aid forms-one for each son. These documents, called the Free Application for Federal Student Aid [aka Fafsa], are miracles of circular reasoning. In order to access the document, you put in information like student’s name, social security number, and birth date. Then you press the Next button, which takes you to the “confirm your identity page”, on which you fill in the student’s name, social security number, and birth date. The Next button here takes you to the actual application page, on which there are blanks for the…you guessed it… student’s name, social security number, and birth date. Mercifully, smart technology kicks in at this point, and the blanks have been filled in for you.
So, I went through the whole process once, then did it all again, noticing on boy number two’s final confirmation page that I could have chosen a button to pre-fill the second child’s application. That’s where the “aaargh” really sets in.
I really can’t complain too much-since it took me six years to finish the final two and a half years of my bachelor’s degree, I have plenty of helpful practice. And, if I did everything right this time, I should be able to access the applications next year and make small changes without having to completely re-file. Yay!

That Cat

Five o'clock in the morning , and Molly Bad Cat decides she'd like an early breakfast. She walks all over The Man, then touches noses with The Woman, saying in a perfectly clear voice [in Catese, of course-all intelligent beings speak Catese]"Feed me now!". The folks are not responsive, obviously rendered unconscious by some insidious force. Molly B. Cat takes things in her own hands and goes to the buzzy box on the night stand. This box is miraculous...when it buzzes, people jump up and feed the cat and all is as it should be. Molly B. pushes the box to the edge of the stand-one more push and it will fall on the floor, causing the noise that will save the peoples, earning Molly their eternal gratitude. Just before the crucial moment, The Woman opens her eyes and grabs the buzzy box. She makes a funny face and says, "I've got another half hour!" [in human, which of course, Molly, as a sophisticated student of primitive languages, understands perfectly...although she often pretends not to...in order to better study primitive beings unobtrusively]. When the woman closes her eyes, Molly stomps back across the bed. Finally The Man sees some sense and says, "I might as well get up..."

The Great Food Coloring Caper

We had a lot of fun at school this week, playing with cause and effect. Food coloring had a part in much of this-like, (1) if we add coloring to the water in a vase and put in a white carnation, what happens? (2)If you add red color at one end of the water in the texture table, and yellow color in the other end, and mix well, what happens to the water?(3) If you have jars of food colored-water, eye droppers, coffee filters, and eight two year olds,what can you make? (5)What happens if the teacher leaves the food coloring on the lower counter?
The answers-(1)the flowers in the blue and yellow waters change colors-for some reason, the red and green vases are slow to share the colors with the flower. (2)You get orange water! (3) Beautiful paper flowers ;-) and (4) a mess on the puzzle table, all the way across the room! You also get four marked plotters, one of whom is caught red-handed…the other three, of course, are blue, yellow and green handed…Which brings me to a question I have always pondered…if red, yellow and blue are chosen for the classic four vial food coloring box because they are the primary colors all other colors are made from, as I assume, who decided to put green in, and why?
How about a nice purple or magenta or chartreuse? Actually, I always need brown and have little luck with mixing the “toast” formula on the back of the box…