One of my favorite things about working with preschool-aged children is watching their minds work and grow. They are constantly absorbing information, adding to their files, observing and cataloging. I love meeting them where they are and then giving them one more piece to add to their knowledge—a new bit of vocabulary, an expansion of an idea, a question to get them pondering. But even more than that, I love how they surprise me and tickle my funny bone, just by being themselves.
Recently, I was playing with a group of children as they used various shapes made out of foam to make other shapes and pictures. One child was placing shapes on a card with a picture of a birthday cake, using rectangles to make candles and small triangles to make flames, and she turned to me and said gleefully, “I made you a birthday cake!”
I exclaimed over the completed cake, and then said, “Wow, how did you know I have a birthday coming up?”
The child’s eyes went round. You can see the thoughts passing through their minds at moments like this: ‘Wait, she has a birthday? But she’s a grownup!’
I asked the table how many years old they thought I was turning, and one child promptly guessed, “Five!” (This happens to be her next birthday, so it’s perfectly logical that it would be mine, too.) I shook my head, and said, “Nope, more than five.”
“Six? No? Seven? No? How old?” By now a crowd of children had gathered, and they all hung on my pending answer.
“Fifty,” I told them. There was a beat, and they stared at each other in open-mouthed astonishment, then echoed the number as if it were the most amazing thing they’d ever heard: “Fifty! Wow!” (Same, kiddo, same.)
Another exchange came at the lunch table. One of the children is what appears to be allergic to sitting on his chair. He squirms, turns, balances on the edge, and slips off onto the floor on a regular basis. I leaned across the table and said earnestly, “Hey, buddy, I need you to sit correctly in your chair.” His eyes went round and he lit up in astonished wonder at my all-knowing powers: “My Mom says that!!”
Another day, we sat in circle and discussed the possibility of getting a classroom pet. The teacher posed the question to each child as to what pet they thought we should get, and recorded the answers. There were the usual suggestions of a cat, a dog, a mouse, and a fish, but there were also guesses of a cow and chicken nuggets.
When it came time for one boy to answer, he said what the teacher heard as “Chia” and she was impressed at his out-of-the-box idea. “Wow, a chia pet? That is an interesting idea. We could spread the seeds on it and water it and it could be fun to watch grow!”
The boy blinked, mystified, and he clarified, “No, a CHIA.”
Across the circle a girl was listening to the exchange with mounting horror. She had been staring at the boy and the teacher, ping-ponging through the conversation, and now she leaned forward and said urgently, “But it could scratch us!”
By this time it was dawning on the adults that perhaps “chia” had been misheard, and I clarified with the little boy, “Are you thinking about a cheetah? Like a big cat, like a tiger?”
He nodded with relief, and suddenly the conversation was about how maybe a cheetah wasn’t the safest choice for a classroom pet. The little girl across the circle sagged and let out a big puff of air, clearly relaxing now that the adults had come to our senses and negated the scratching cheetah from the list of potential pets. (In the end it came down to a vote between a mouse and a fish, and soon there will be a little fish swimming around for us to enjoy.)
As we left the circle, however, a boy slumped with disappointment. I asked why he was sad, and he lamented, “I wanted chicken nuggets.”
Juliana LeRoy wears many hats, including wife, mother, paraeducator and writer. She can be spotted around Windsor gathering material, or reached at ml****@so***.net.
