Sometimes It Goes That Way

I tell our parent-teachers that I consider clean-up time to be the core of our curriculum. This is the most concrete way that the children begin to make the school their own in the only way that anyone ever truly takes ownership of anything: by assuming responsibility for it. The problem for many of us is that they don't always do so with the kind of speed and efficiency that we would like to see. That's why I also tell the parent-teachers that I don't care how long clean-up time takes, even if it stretches out to 20 minutes or more, something that never actually happens, but it's an exaggeration I use to illustrate my point.

While I know that most parents fully support the idea in theory, I can see that in practice this really grates on some parents, who simply can't help quietly speeding things along with their larger hands, stronger arms, and greater sense of urgency. Finn and Grey's mom Jenny, however, is a seasoned veteran of our school, a woman who knows the power of not lifting an extra finger when she knows the kids can, however eventually, handle it for themselves.

Yesterday she was the parent-teacher in charge of our sensory table. We've been playing with wine corks, containers, and tongs this week. I thought I'd create a little variety and challenge yesterday by adding water. I imagined the kids having fun in the way bobbing for apples is fun, trying to capture those corks with their tongs, then transferring them to containers. I didn't imagine it would engage 5-year-olds for a long time, but I figured it would be a relatively entertaining "drive-by" station. As it turned out, it wasn't even that. I'm sure a few kids played there, but Jenny was left pretty much all alone for the hour. I tried several times to lure the kids to the table, but most dismissed it with their hands in their pockets, not even humoring me. Oh well, sometimes it goes that way.

When I banged the drum that signals clean-up time, I wanted the kids to move the wet things to a towel where they could drip dry. We made quick work of the rest of the classroom, all except for the sensory table. That's because the kids had decided, finally, to put those tongs to work, using them to painstakingly transport a couple hundred corks to the towel one at a time. It was a slow, slow process, one Jenny courageously fought the urge to hurry, instead sticking to making those informational statements about what she saw happening in front of her. 

Twenty minutes later we were finally done. Yes, sometimes it goes that way.

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