Recently, I have enjoyed substantial amounts of high quality time with the McCropder kiddos, particularly in the form of two organized events.
Event #1 - School on strike!
There was no school for the preschoolers and kindergardeners on Tuesday, for there were no teachers to teach their little charges, because they were on strike! Je ne sais pas pourquoi... But evidently, it was a very organized deal - only happened yesterday, and the families got a good bit of notice prior to the strike that it was going to happen. Thus, four McCropder kiddos had no school on a day that their parents did have school
And so Aunt Sarah (who will be the children's teacher in Burundi) held the first day of l'école McCropder that afternoon, and I got to participate! We did all sorts of wonderful activities - practicing letters, singing songs, making up stories, reading stories, counting objects inside and outside, running up and down and up and down and up and down the hallway, learning shapes and drawing them, following rules and taking turns, playing hot potato, learning about opposites in French and English, the alphabet mat... A grand time was had by all with only two major meltdowns!
Event #2 - Valentine's Day!
Today, the four McCropder célibataires hosted the seven McCropder children for a Valentine's Day party. This entailed making and decorating heart sugar cookies, a pizza lunch, a story from Uncle Carlan, a valentine's day scavenger hunt, and Valentine's Day crafts. Fun galore.
A few highlights:
1. A fun math story problem:
Aunt Sarah: "ONLY TWO HEART COOKIES FOR EVERYONE. The rest will go home with you."
...a few minutes later...where did all the cookies go, and how does the math with all kids having two cookies each add up with what's leftover?
2. Kids are decorating the cookies with pink frosting. Eventually (not sure how long this was going on for) someone noticed that Ben was contentedly shoving frosting into his mouth rather than spreading the frosting on the cookie. Good stuff.
3. The general mayhem, chaos, madness, and overflowing amounts of energy bursting through the walls perpetually.
4. Can't quite recall which kid it was that said this, but I believe it was Miss Anna's reaction to the fact that we were eating the pizza straight off of the table rather than getting plates and henceforth creating lots of dishes... "Wow. Guess this is how we eat when the parents go out on dates! This would never happen otherwise!"
5. The splendid weather this afternoon in which we found hidden candy and ran all around and did a lot of swinging. Good stuff.
And so the past two days have been full with all these wonderful little people. Tomorrow, more or less the whole school ventures out on the Sortie du Ski! Twill be a grand adventure...
Good stuff.
ReplyDeleteEspecially making big messes when parents aren't around.