Chaperoning for a Living

Due to a lack of a sufficient number of chaperons for the Nursery tyke's field trip, there were no music classes today. This is because I was drafted in to help a trip of 60 three year olds go to the Wetlands. Man, that was fun/exhausting.

Highlights:
"Miss Casey! We're going on a school trip! ... (pause wherein he realizes that I am sitting across the aisle and one row in front of him) Miss Casey? Are you going too?!"

There is a little Italian boy who only recently started attending nursery at my school. Up until about two weeks ago he was wailing every morning and frequently was taken home by 10am because he was so upset. This little boy? Today? WOULD NOT SHUT UP- he had a massive grin on his face and was chattering away to me and though he was mixing up his Italian and English a bit, most of it was understandable and ENGLISH. How do kids learn this fast?! I'm in awe.

We took nets and hunted for creatures in the pond, we strolled around wetlands and looked at "ducks" (Any ornithologist or even mildly interested bird watcher would be appalled that we referred to everything as "ducks.") had lunch in the "sunshine" and then spent a good hour or so in the playground!

The! Playground! Was! AWESOME! (And that's me saying that, not just the kids.) I was in charge of watching the gate so that none of the tykes could escape. Fortunately, the giant bouncy dragonfly/see saw allowed me to have an unobstructed view of the gate while simultaneously allowing me to bounce constantly for an hour. Except for a short period of time when I was required in the "secret lair" (a bunch of child sized underground tunnels with skylights in the hills above) the tykes were moving swiftly through the "secret lair" (did I mention it was child sized I was all "yeah. Okay guys. Hold on a sec. (crawl, crawl, crawl) I'll catch up in a second!")

There was also one of those zip line things, a bunch of smaller seesaws, a rubberized pit for running around in, and a lot of plants/bamboo for hiding in and then popping out and saying "boo!" from.

Over on the giant dragonfly we did a lot of singing (they *were* missing music class after all.) The whole thing was pretty precious. And exhausting. In the class that I was helping most with all but two of the tykes fell asleep on the bus ride home. I ended up carrying one back into the school and he just kept snuggling his head into mine- which was very sweet except that he seemed to most want to push my head over to the side, knock my glasses off with his forehead, and burrow his skull into my nose. Like that was comfy?