Every 30 minutes at work my kids and I move to a different classroom. This can be a bit tricky to get 8-12 three-year-olds mobilized and walking in a line to the next room, but since we do it so often, the kids are usually pretty good about it. We have a few strict rules with transitioning, and one of them is that my children must always stay behind me in the hallway. I walk backwards in the hallway so as to see my kids at all times as we move from place to place. If I were to lose control and have one of my kids run off where I couldn't supervise him/her, I could lose my job.
One time when we were transitioning to the playground, I noticed that there were some patches of mud between the door of the building and the play area. So I told my kids, "Listen, when we walk outside, we have to pretend that we are a family of ducks. I am the mommy duck and you are all my baby ducks and you have to follow right behind me in a straight line, okay? There's mud outside and I am going to lead you around it, but you have to waddle right behind me." The kids loved pretending they were baby ducks following in my footsteps, and so it worked like a charm. But I didn't think much more of it until later that day, when we were transitioning in our normal every-day way, and my sweet N* said to me, "Ms. Abbi, you're our Mommy Duck and we're your Baby Ducks!" Melt my heart. I think whenever I see a family of ducks in the future, I'll think of my sweet kids at Creme and how they followed me around like a line of baby ducks.
Writing this story made me think of two others I want to record:
Often my kids will try to walk backwards in the hall, pretending they are me, and I have to remind them that only teachers walk backwards in the hall. My kids think they are so funny when they do this, and even though I don't show it to them, I think it's pretty funny too.
One time when my twins A* and A* were new to Creme (and the English language), A* ran off to the nearby computer room as we were all walking into the music room. When I counted all the children in the music room, I started to panic, realizing that I was missing A*. I ran and quickly found him in the computer room, smiling like it was a game. Like I said, this is a very serious matter, and so I told him very firmly, "You cannot do that. Never do that again. You have to stay WITH Ms. Abbi. You have to stay BY Ms. Abbi." When A* saw how upset his running off made me, he was very sorry for what he had done. And you know what he thought I was saying when I said that last sentence? "You have to say, 'Bye, Ms. Abbi.'" Because right after I said that, he said very solemnly to me, waving his hand, "Bye, Ms. Abbi." Hahaha. Oh my sweet A*!
