Growing your world

Spring is one of the best and worst times to be a teacher. It is the worst because as soon as the little ones realize that it is nice outside the demands to go outside and play begin and continue unabated all day - be it in speech, sign, picture symbols, gestures, or other creative forms of communication. With my class I do not take them outside to play until right before they leave to go home because our specialty is definitely not transitions and once I manage to herd all ten or eleven of them out the door and down to the playground the last thing on earth I want to do is to try to convince them that they have to all march back inside the building. They outnumber the adults on average 3 to 1, closer to 4 to 1. If we attempted this I am quite certain that they would unite and stage a miniature revolution, scattering into the wind and causing a disaster of epic proportions that I never want to experience. If you have ever tried to catch one toddler/preschooler who was trying to avoid something imagine doing that on a scale of 9 running children with endless space because really, why should the district invest in a fence when they can purchase things like a new gym facility in the new administration building or raises for the top administrators. Oh, and forget opening windows because the windows are placed perfectly at child height and my little Houdini has figured out that these are not only great escape routes for every toy in the classroom but also for himself. It will be a long, hot spring. But there are awesome things about spring. Top of the list is that I no longer have to wrestle little bodies into eighteen layers of clothing to go in and out of the building. This never made sense to me because we are in the south. Reality check, children in Alaska wear fewer layers! Forget potty training anyone when they are wearing three pairs of pants. The other great things are all of the opportunities to bring hands on experiences to the kids. Almost everything that grows in spring can be experiences by my little ones. On our torturous walk (sissy city kids - you went less than 1/4 of a block in 30 minutes and most of you were in a wagon) we saw moths, heard bird songs, saw every color of the rainbow in flowers, saw leaves in different stages on trees, and saw squirrels. We will go on more walks to see how the flowers grow, to check for more birds, and to watch the leaves. They will learn to deal with it because the wagon only seats 4 and 3 of those seats are reserved for my escape artists. I am so mean making my children get outside and do something so terrible as walk through a neighborhood with a bunch of adults that love them and tell them cool things about the plants and animals. We are also attempting to grow flowers, and by some miracle most of them are actually starting to grow. This is a dual miracle because the kids were almost completely independent in the planting of these flowers and because I am capable of killing artificial flowers. On Monday I need to replant a few because I think they need a second chance to grow before my kids discover that some have life and others do not. Thank God they can not read otherwise the fights and teasing over who has a flower and who does not would get ugly amongst my children with language. Most fun of all is that we are "growing" butterflies. We received nice fat, fuzzy caterpillars, or as my kids call them "baby butterflies" because the official terms are way beyond us and not necessary. They have watched them crawl around and eat their food and on Friday it looked like they were getting ready to start their cocoons. To the kids, this is known as "wrapping up in a special blanket so that they can sleep and while they sleep they will become butterflies". Again, we are 3 and 4 years old and most of us have delays here. The baby butterflies are now next door in a safer room because I am afraid that once they start to "wrap up in their blankets" they might be bumped or dropped by a preschooler and then not ever wake up. My little ones are so into this that they ask about their baby butterflies every day and have asked some great questions like "where is their mommy?" "they miss mommy?" "brothers?", "what do they eat?", "what the blanket?". and "when we let the butterflies go, will they ever come back?". Between flowers, two little pots of kitchen herbs, and our butterflies we are growing our world this spring and it is awesome to see them so hands on about it. I hope, hope, hope to get permission to take them on a field trip to the farmer's market in a nearby town in May and let them see what happens to all of the fruits and things that people grow. Call me brave, crazy, or both but I want them to experience as much of what is alive in their world. And no way on earth were we even considering the zoo or the petting farm. I may be brave and/or crazy but I am not stupid!