Loading...CHARLIE IS A SWEET & SENSITIVE BOY
who tends to take a while to “warm up” each day
Today, like most days, Charlie arrives at preschool holding tightly onto his mom’s hand. As they walk into the classroom, Charlie sees his friends and lots of interesting-looking activities but finds himself pulling mom closer and closer. One of Charlie’s favorite teachers gently approaches him, squats down a couple of feet away and quietly asks if Charlie would like to feed the fish. He hesitates for a moment and then the teacher offers the fish food jar and he somewhat reluctantly lets go of mom’s hand and takes hold of the container. The teacher reminds him to say “goodbye” to mom and then they’re off. Charlie loves to watch how the fish dart happily to the surface to swallow the tiny flakes of food. They seem so happy to see him. Once the fish have eaten, Charlie’s teacher asks him if he would like to do some “blow art”. He is intrigued.
Charlie walks over to the art table and another teacher pulls a new straw out and asks him if he would like to create something using the straw, his breath and some paint!. Charlie immediately sits down, chooses a few colors, takes a deep breath and blows the paint across a white sheet of paper. The paint colors streak across the page as Charlie continues to blow through his straw. Charlie is now smiling and seems to be ready to fully engage.
He sees a couple of friends in the construction area and sits down beside them as they all pull out just about every wooden block & start to build. There are a lot of blocks & together the boys create a combination of towers and other structures. Finally, once every single block has been used, Charlie pulls out a couple of other bins containing wooden animals & cars/trucks. He carefully perches a spotted cow on the top of their creation while the other boys take some of the cars and drive them around, occasionally crashing them into one another. Their teacher announces that it’s almost time to clean up & tells them that if they’d like to save their impressive structures, they can leave them standing today & help other classmates out during clean up time. They’re excited about this proposal and decide to leave the structure and prepare to go help their friends clean up before morning meeting.
Charlie is always one of the first children to come to morning meeting & he tends to sit as close to the reader as possible. His teacher reads “Llama Llama Misses Mama”, which reminds him of some of the feelings he felt earlier that morning. Teacher leads a discussion about missing one’s parents which allows Charlie to feel like it’s okay for him to have those feelings. Charlie listens intently as they also talk about things you can do when you’re feeling sad. In morning meeting, the teachers tell everyone about tomorrow’s special guest, WildCare. Charlie is excited for them to return to the classroom again this month as he particularly enjoyed last months presentation, during which he got to touch a real rabbit.
After morning meeting, Charlie walks over to one of the tables and grabs a big handful of blue Play-Doh. He sits down at one of the available chairs and looks over the table at a variety of tools. His favorite tool, the garlic press, is not on the table so he gets up and walks over to bookshelf where he rummages through lots of other Play-Doh tools until he finds it. Today Charlie has decided to use the garlic press to create hair and he carefully squeezes the dough through the press and then sticks it onto a big blue ball he rolled earlier. Charlie listens as the other children at the table chit chat back and forth. Someone mentions they’re making a dog and Charlie excitedly shouts out that he has a dog at home. He seems happy to have been able to join the conversation and decides his Play-Doh hair is now blue fur instead.
As Charlie finishes up, one of his pre-kindergarten teachers calls him over. When he arrives at the table, he sees a pile of papers laying on the table, each one with a different letter on it. His teacher lets him know that they’re making a class alphabet display and asks Charlie to choose a letter to decorate. As they look through the different letters, Charlie and his teacher try sounding them out. Unsurprisingly, Charlie chooses the letter “C”. A table is setup with lots of different art supplies and Charlie is asked what he would like to use for his letter. He starts by carefully squeezing glue around the outline of this letter then takes a bowl containing small pieces of colored tissue paper, crumples them up and sticks them in an AB AB pattern along the perimeter of the “C”. Once he finishes up, his teacher invites him to wash his hands and go sit down for snack.
Charlie pulls out his snack and a Post-it note flutters onto the ground. He picks it up, looks at it and then asks his teacher what it says. It’s a note from mom that says, “Have a great day. I love you!”. Charlie smiles as he sits down to eat a couple of strawberries. Charlie then pulls out some string cheese. Knowing how difficult it is to open, Charlie stands up and gets a pair of scissors so he can cut off the top of the package. It takes him a minute or so to finally get the plastic cut off and he feels quite proud of himself for this accomplishment.
Once snack is over, Charlie lines up with his friends to go outside. Charlie goes straight to the huge gravel pit where he takes one of the yellow tractors and helps a couple of his friends load up a dump truck with gravel. Charlie’s friend Sarah shows up with another dump truck and Charlie helps her fill her truck up too. After a solid amount of time playing in the gravel pit, Charlie dusts himself off and heads over to the nature playground area where several friends are laughing as they jump from log to log. One of the logs is quite wobbly and Charlie concentrates deeply as he steps onto it and carefully walks across it until he reaches a more stable log. He laughs and continues over the next few before jumping off and running back to the beginning.
The teachers announce that it’s lunch time and Charlie runs full speed back to the classroom so he can wash his hands and start eating lunch. He is famished and eagerly devours the rest of his strawberries and a turkey sandwich. Once he finishes, he cleans up and then goes to the book area and chooses a book with a silly looking monster on the front. He lies down on a bean bag and starts flipping through the pages until the Mystery Reader for that day shows up with a book of their own.
Once the Mystery Reader is finished and some of his classmates are dismissed, Charlie starts the optional after-care by returning to the block creation he built earlier that morning. He’s looking forward to visiting the Farm Stand across the street later to taste some of its freshly picked organic blueberries!
Education begins the moment we see children as innately wise and capable beings. Only then can we play along in their world.
Vince Gowmon
