Marcia Meets Pre-K for the Wrap-In

Friday morning Marcia thought that it couldn't get much worse: reindeer antlers.

Marcia is not enjoying wearing the reindeer antler headband.

But, the day did get better for her.  We had drawn the lucky straw and were matched with Pre-K for the wrap-in.  The Pre-K kids are always super fun as are Mrs. Fruit and Mrs. DePew.

Here's my advisory with their presents before we head over to the wrap-in.
Marcia and I are in front.

My advisory is, of course, the most awesome advisory, so they were super fabulous with the Pre-K kids.

There was just one item of business that we had to address: the Pre-K kids didn't know about Dewey or Marcia!  So I had to explain EVERYTHING.

The kids swarmed us with questions.

 We had the kids form a semi-circle around Marcia and use their quiet voices.  They were very good about being gentle.  They were also good about moving out and letting the next child into the petting circle.  Sharing is a big concept in Pre-K.

Q&A with Pre-K

Marcia was very, very good. She stayed in a down stay.

 This lasted only a couple of minutes as we needed to get the wrap-in started, so we shooed everyone off to their chairs. Then I began to make the rounds with Marcia.

Marcia went table by table saying hello.

Some children were more enthusiastic than others.

 In the end, there were a couple of middle school kids who loved Marcia to pieces and happened to find that happy place on her tummy that made her say, "Ahhhhhhh."

Marcia is being petted by three middle school students. 

The three students seem to have found a special spot on Marcia's tummy.

Marcia's leg is a blur as one student scratches her belly.

Nice job Marcia! Great job kids! Excellent wrap-in. Fun was had by all.

The Wrap-In and the Christmas Convo

Last Friday, a week ago, our entire school participated in our fourth annual Wrap-In.  It's a community service initiative that brings together the whole school and it ultimately benefits several local charities:  Redlands Christian Migrant Association, the Head Start Programs at Jackson Springs and Town and Country Commons and Dover Elementary School.  

What is nice about the project is that all the divisions get to mix it up and be together, an upper advisory group with a lower classroom, middle advisory with upper and so on.  This year, like our other years, we were lucky and got paired with one of the pre-k classes and a middle division class.  

Richie and Kelland sit with Coach after writing letters for their gift bags.

Coach's job was to go around and let all the kids pet him and to behave calmly and sit.  He did very well.  When he started to pull on his leash about 9 am, I figured something odd was up and took him outside.  Yep, that was a classic Coach poo signal.  Yea Coach!  Pooping in the pre-k classroom, while not unheard of, would have been a bad thing!

I met one of the most delightful pre-k little girls.  She is sitting on the chair next to me.
She had red sparkly glasses like mine and was a real spitfire.

Mostly our older kids helped the younger kids write and decorate letters to the put in the gift bags for the kids to receive on Christmas. It is a nice community-building experience for us.

Here's what a 1,000 plus filled Christmas gift bags look like! Very colorful. (Photo by Chris Woods BPS)

And in the end, our kids our very generous and we donated over 1,000 presents.

Coach is lying on the wooden gym floor thankful there is no more piping going on .

Later in the afternoon we went to the Christmas all school convo.  That was almost a screaming disaster.  Evidently, the new piping instructor has tuned the bagpipes or the pipers are now playing them differently, because for the first time ever, Coach nearly lost his shinola in the gym!  We were about 10 seconds from bolting from the convo: I had gathered up all my stuff was about to get up, Coach had sat up and was shaking his head and seemed poised to let out an ear piercing howl, when the pipers stopped playing.  

Sweet silent night.  

Coach went back to sleep and all was well.  Happy Holidays!!