Things I learned in Preschool...

Although I am embarrassingly depressed over the fact that my part-time job at the CYC has come to a heartbreaking end, I must reflect upon the many life lessons I learned while working with a school full of three and four year old children.
 Take notes:

... Any problem can be solved with a "I don't like when you _______ because I feel _______"  statement and a hug. 

... 'Brussels Sprouts' is a place, not a food, ie, "I am moving to Brussels Sprouts. They have good chocolate there."
... Hamsters bite. 
... And can squeeze their furry little bodies under door cracks. Subsequently, they can also survive a nine-day game of hide-and-seek. 

... Crossing the monkey bars completely and without assistance is a right of passage. 

... I am now fluent in Sign Language for every animal on the farm. 
... "Feliz Navidad" actually sounds better when you don't know the real lyrics.  "Police Na Na Na" is equally, if not more, heartwarming. 

... Sushi now comes in lunch boxes. And kids enjoy it. Who knew?
... If a five-minute warning is not given before a transition, no one is expected to move or change. It's only fair. 
... I will have to name my future classroom. 
How will I ever address the entire class without yelling "Yellow Rooooom. Yellow Roooooom, FIVE MORE MIIIINUTESSSSS"? Also, how will anyone ever know who I am talking about without a formal title like "Yellow Roomers?" 

... Pope Benedict's favorite drink is allegedly Orange Fanta.  
---

Alas, the things I learned from the preschoolers will endure, even if my job did not.

XOXO, 

            Ms. Alensis 

Miscellaneous Musings

So it's Monday night and I'm sitting in my living room, surrounded by the coziness that our half-lit Christmas lights, a glass of red wine and the lull of the tumbling dryer provide.

It's 10:47 and there is nowhere else I'd rather be. With a neglected textbook by my side, I sip my wine only to be interrupted by random spurts of side-splitting laughter.

Allow me to give you a glimpse into my simplistically humorous day.

Twenty minutes before I had to leave for class, the fire alarm went off in my building and I impressively threw my makeup in my back pack and rushed out the door almost completely ready to begin my day.  I'm happy I haphazardly gathered my belongings in a rush out the door because we were assured by half-asleep young man in flannel pajamas that this was "Not a drill. I repeat, not.A.Drill." (Everything was fine.)

Then I got in the car and spilled an eighth of the contents of my water bottle on my lap, leaving me with an uncomfortably cold sensation on an already brisk morning, and an unfortunate shading on the inseam of my pants suggesting I didn't make it to the restroom.

---

My day got better at the CYC thanks to entertaining conversations with my babies.

The Blonde Brigade: "Ms. Alensis come look at the bridge we built!"

Me: Wow boys, that must have taken you a long time! I love your sand structure!

Blondie 1: Yeah we worked really a lot.

Blondie 2: Too bad it's going to be destroyed by hot lava any minute now.

Me: Oh no, hot lava? Where does it come from?

Blondie 3: Volcanoes.

Blondie 1: My mom told me where volcanoes come from. They come from amusement parks. You know the kind with dinosaurs. WATCH OUT THE HOT LAVA IS GOING TO EXPLODE RUN RUN RUN

... end of conversation.

Words of advice: hide-and-seek is less fun when you are always the counter, and when those who you are seeking only hide in one of two chosen hiding spots, for twenty-five minutes straight. There are only so many times I can count to 10 and pretend to search the playground before Ms. Alensis loses her mind, kids.

Then I played the politically-correct version of the game formally known as Hangman, Build-a-Man, four times in a row with a four year old who only knows how to spell "Horse."  

---

I baked spaghetti squash for an hour and it wasn't completely worth the wait.  Good thing I ate one slice of savory pumpkin bread and one slice of delicious banana bread in the mean time.

---

My roommates are fabulous.

On Google and their work site amenities: 

"Don't they have goats that cut their grass?" - Anonymous Roomie 

On doing tax homework:

"I don't understand why I have to do this.  There are minions that can crunch numbers while I'm sleeping so I can do the things that really matter when I wake up." - Anonymous Roomie 2

Good idea... write that in your application to Grad school.

---

Happy work-week!

Bathroom talk is for bathrooms

I almost forgot how naive, uninhibited, raw and well, childish, the humor of a five year old can be. Lately we've been faced with a bathroom-talk epidemic in the Purple Room. 

The boys of the class have recently discovered the phenomenon that is making fart noises with the convenient pairing of a hand and an armpit.  They also discovered it doesn't have to be your own armpit to make this magical music. I anticipate this habit will end shortly after the first boy develops odorous sweat glands, but I have faith and hope that it will end sooner.  

Nothing is funnier than when someone passes gas during meeting.

 "I don't know why you're laughing, this happens to everyone. Please put bubbles in your mouth and continue listening to the story," I say.  

They look at me as if I'm nuts. Maybe I am. I have to suppress my giggles too. 

Two students were laughing to themselves in Dramatic Play. "What's going on over here?" I ask. 

"Nothing." Followed by more giggles.

I glare.

Dennis (the Menace):My brudder said naked.

Lil Genius: Yeah and I know what it means.

They continue to repeat the N(aked) word back and forth until I decide this is a battle I'd rather just walk away from. 

Yesterday we were on the carpet playing Build-a-Person, the politically correct and therefore preschool friendly version of Hang Man, when a student guessed the first letter to the Builder's four-letter word. "P." There were two.  For the love of God no one guess an O. 

One of my students decided it was acceptable to pull his pants down mid-tag to urinate. On the sidewalk. Next to the slide. He proceeded to pull his pants down and continue running from whoever was "It." Not okay. 

Whenever a student feels the urge to use "bathroom talk" I ask them to go into the bathroom. Bathroom talk is for the bathroom, please only those words there. However, sometimes they simply can't bear to wait for the bathroom. Walking back from the pool today I asked two misbehaving students to stop their "not nice words" and separate. The boy whose hand I took looked straight at me with a sly grin. "Butt. Butt Butt Fart. Poop!" There was nothing I could do; the words were said, and there was no bathroom for me to send him to between the pool and the CYC. Boy, did he have a S-word grin on that face! 

Stupid is the S word for five year olds, in case you were wondering. Except for Mr. Know-it-all... he'll correct any tattle-taler when they complain someone called them the "S word."  I constantly have to make some obviously loud clamor to protect the innocent ears of his peers... Sometimes I question honest parenting. 

Who am I kidding? Bathroom humor isn't limited to five and six year olds. It's still damn funny otherwise I wouldn't be blogging about it. 

Today I helped some CYC summer campers water the garden. We noticed one of our first crops popped up - about 3 teeny-tiny green tomatoes. 

Me: "Do you think these tomatoes are ready to eat?"

Missy: "Ha-ha! Ms. Alensis you're silly... tomatoes don't eat!!"

Touche, little one. 

Purple Room Fun Facts

My students are a lot like Snapple Caps; they hold a lot of information for their kindergarten-sized containers, but it's hard to say which info they spew is phenomenally true and which is indubitably false. 

My students are clever. They are talkative. They are certainly intelligent. And nothing makes them beam more than making a teacher interested in something they have to say. With that being said, they often vie for my attention with countering their peers' stories. 

Luckily for them, nothing makes me happier than absorbing their lessons (fictitious or not.) 

Today, lunch time: 

B*: Did you know what Pope Benedict's favorite drink is?

Me: Um, no, I don't.

B: It's Fanta. He loves Fanta. It's like Orange Juice but way better.

Yesterday, Morning meeting:

Me: What can you tell me about WATER?

Lil Genius: It can go in your lungs and then you will suffocate and die. I won't go in the pool you can't make me.

Me: Huh... fair enough. 

Monday, Pool time:

Diva: Do you know I can jump so high?

Me: No way.

Diva: Uh-huh. One time I was in Florida and I jumped in the pool so high I scratched a bird.

Me: Wow. I bet you jump really high Ms. Diva.

Diva: Yep.  I kept it's feather. 

Me: You're so silly! Are you telling me truth or telling me a story?

Diva: It's true!! You don't believe me? Ask my cousin. He told me to keep it for my collection. So I did. But I asked him to hold it for me first because I needed to pet my neighbor's dolphin. They have a dolphin in their house. 

Me: Ok. 

Don't tell me it's an easy job distinguishing the honesty from the farce. It certainly is not. 

 

Some days I leave the CYC feeling more like a student than a teacher. I learn a lot from these kids, even if it's just a refresher course in using my imagination. 

*Once again I have changed names to protect the wit and intelligence, and ultimate identity of my Purple Roomers. 

Monday Madness

Remember our Yellow Room Pet, Little Sweetheart? 

Let me reiterate the fact that although the students adoringly named our new hamster friend "Little Sweetheart," the animal is not remotely sweet nor little as the name suggests. 

Due to Little Sweetheart's nasty personality and tendency to bite everything in sight, the children are not allowed to touch her. Due to Little Sweetheart's nocturnal nature, she stays secluded in her cave throughout the entire school day. Basically, Little Sweetheart prefers not to be watched nor touched. The children love her nonetheless.

Today, Little Sweetheart escaped. The Summer Camp teachers in the Yellow Room showed up this morning to an open cage. I was terrified. A mean, smelly rodent is the last thing I want to run into on a Monday morning. I hate rodents as it is, let alone a vicious hamster the size of a small dog with a bad case of the runs.

It reminded me of the time a few years ago when my neighbor's chinchilla, Bob Tequila, escaped from his cage and we had a neighborhood watch for him. This I can not make up. Not unlike Little Sweetheart, Chinchillas are typically nocturnal and are rarely affectionate pets.  Apparently they also require excessive exercise, which he certainly was not getting in the cluttered basement space he called home. Chinchillas also require a body temperature of under 25 degrees celsius, hence his basement-style living. Imagine the worry we felt when he went missing. All we needed was an exploded Chinchilla in the house. Actually, it would have been better to have about 100 dead chinchillas because then we could have at least made a coat...but that's not here nor there.

For a good two hours, the entire CYC was on the lookout for a not-so-little ball of white fur which would probably be gnawing at something inedible. Like the wires of our beloved copy machine. Or a child's precious lunch bag.

Moments before we were going to call Pest Control to bring a trap for our furry friend, Little Sweetheart was discovered in the office FOUR doors down from the Yellow Room. Take a guess who's booth? Yep, mine.

Little Sweetheart is lucky I wasn't the one who found her.... my shriek would have been enough to blow her ear drums if my instinctual kick didn't kill her first.

Happy Monday everyone!

A Year Ago Today...

I was spending my first day in Spain.  (Read about it here. )

Today, instead of getting settled into a hotel in Madrid, getting acclimated to strange breakfast foods and meetings new friends, I am preparing myself for my first Open House (!!) for summer camp and packing for a girls weekend in Ocean City.

Not quite as adventurous as touring a foreign country, but still exciting nonetheless.

I'll be back Monday with a recap! Wish me luck meeting the parents of my Purple Roomers!!

Have a great Weekend,
Ms. Yelencsics ;)

Friday the 13th

So rumor has it that today is the only "13th" of the month that lands on a Friday this year. I'd believe it.  Considering I woke up at 6:45 to study, then stepped outside to walk to my 8:00 exam to discover it is the first cold and rainy day in a string of perpetually beautifully sunny days.

Rest assured, my Friday got increasingly better.  Once I finished the exam (composed of 5 essay questions - 2 of which I had no idea how to answer) I had a quick sweat sesh with my girl Ashie to work off any remaining stress. (Insert another 4 hours of studying here that I would rather just forget) 

Around 3:00 I headed to the CYC for my last hours in the Yellow Room for the semester.  Really really sad. All I kept thinking about was what on Earth I would blog about for the next month away from the kiddies?! But seriously...I can't believe half of my munchkins will be going to Kindergarten next year ... and even the half that will be back in the Yellow Room I won't see as much as I did this year due to my less-than-accommodating class schedule for next semester. 

To end my Yellow Room adventure I'll sum up the afternoon's events:

3:30 pm - I am greeted with three running-start-hugs. =]

3:31 pm - "Ms Alensis do you know today is your last day?" 

(I may or may not have teared up answering yes)

3:45 pm - Sang the Insect version of "Head,Shoulders, Knees and Toes"

 ... "Head, Thorax Ab-dom-en, Ab-do-men."

3:50 pm - Passed around a centipede to observe during Circle Time.

3:50 pm and 30 seconds - Centipede escapes. Screams and Cries ensue.

3:51 pm: Little Man accidentally smushes centipede with hand in effort to save it. Circle time is over.

4:00 pm: Cutie-Patootie, Munchkin and Girlygirl present me with a card (signed by all my kiddies with pictures!) and a gift bag. I feel so loved :) 

Aaaah I miss them already! 

Anyway, back to being a real college student and studying until my brain fries itself to a crisp, or my 8am and 4pm exams are complete. Whichever comes first. (and yes, 8am on a Saturday. They are trying to torture us.)

Happy Friday the 13th, everyone! Glad it's almost over. 

xxoo 

Chocoholism

One week has officially come and gone since Easter, and I am officially out of chocolate. This is the worst, and best news of the week.  I probably could have drowned in the massive amount of cocoa I ingested. My taste buds were happy, my scale was not.  

Coincidentally, the same day I ate my last chocolate egg, a little man in the yellow room got a bloody nose. Don't see a correlation? Let the little man explain for you --

Me: Little man*, Were you picking your nose too hard again? **

Little Man: No. My mom gave me choc-o-lutt and I got blood yest-a-day. 

Me: Oh? So you ate chocolate and then your nose startled bleeding?

Little Man: Yes. Choc-o-lutt makes you get blood. 

Interesting. Completely false, but interesting strategy to limit household candy consumption. If this was in fact true, I would have died days ago from immense Hershey-induced hemorrhaging. Maybe my mom should have told me bloody noses were a direct consequence of eating choc-o-lutt. Maybe then my scale would be happier with me.

Sometimes I wish I still held the same naive view of the world my Yellow-Roomers do.

*Names were changed to protect the innocence of Yellow-Roomers
** Yes, this is actually a problem we encounter daily.  Some students find entertainment in shoving tissues (or bare fingers) so far up their nose-holes that they bleed. Gross, indeed. 

Word-of-the-Day Wednesday

A couple of weeks ago my Methods of Reading professor introduced us to the word "cacophony."  Her mother is a reading specialist at a local elementary school where she encourages her students to be detectives to decode the meaning of unfamiliar words.  One week they were told to decode the word cacophony. 

caco - Greek, meaning "bad"

phony - Greek, meaning "speech sound" 

Cacophony = bad sound.

Or, more techinically, 

ca·coph·o·ny [kuh-kof-uh-nee]:

harsh discordance of sound; dissonance: a cacophony ofhoots, cackles, and wails.

(dictionary.reference.com)

The funny thing is (and the reason I chose to share this word today) is that I heard it for only the second time in my life (the first being from my teacher) at the CYC today.  One of my  nerdy brilliant students' father used the word cacophony in reference to the chaos that erupted in the Yellow Room after meeting; the student understood perfectly what his father meant.  I always thought I had a decently large vocabulary, but up to a week ago apparently a preschooler had one up on me.

Preschool Flattery

In a matter of 2 seconds and 1 full breath, I was greeted in the yellow room today with,

 "Ms Alensis remember when you came yesterday and I said hi I wanted ice pops but we played inside then outside and you looked pretty, where did you get all of those jewels, will you rub my back?" 

Shocked and impressed with the munchkin's ability to recall, summarize, flatter, and inquire all within the limits of one long run-on sentence without breathing, there was only one way I could respond; I laughed.

"Ms Alensis why you laugh?" 

I don't know, munchkin, you just make me happy.


I can appreciate that he's learning to butter up the women in his life prior to asking favors.  I wonder if he knows this is the exact tactic my boyfriend uses to get everything he asks of me.

Happy Valentine's Day!

This morning didn't feel like Valentine's Day. I finally got out of bed after hitting the snooze button three times, and turned on my phone to a text from my Valentine: "Happy Valentines Day!!!!!"

After a brief "thnx babe you too" correspondence, the early-morning texting rapport ended.  And I left to class, not to hear from Christopher until around 10:00 pm, again, via text.  

This is the first year in four consecutive years to not be with loverboy on V-day.  Sure I was mildly depressed seeing happy couples walking hand in hand on this unusually beautiful 60-degree February day, but I really can't complain.  You see, Chris treats me everyday like most boys only do on Valentine's Day.  I didn't receive any roses in the mail today, because last month he sent me a bouquet just because it was Tuesday.  Last week he sent me a gift I had my eye on for months, and my favorite recent picture of us in a beautiful frame. He's the best. 

Not to mention, I didn't have much time to feel lonely today; I talked with the main man in my life (Daddy) while walking across campus, and I spent my afternoon with my adorable yellow-roomers.  Man do those guys know how to love.  I was greeted with uncountable hugs, 'i love yous,' and homemade Valentines.  

"Ms. Yelencsics I made you a card.  Because I love you and that's what you do for people you love on Valentine's Day." --yellow-roomer.  Why can't everyone put so eloquently into words what they are feeling? Why do we forget how to express our love once we graduate kindergarten? It's amazing to me how much love can fit inside those tiny little bodies.  

-The Valentine I received from my yellow-room friend