Peet Eyes Mural on South Broadway

Anne had a hectic day today at school. She had two half-days at two different schools. She started at the elementary school in the morning, which because of the district’s shared bus schedule; it is the earliest school to start classes in the morning. In the afternoon, she switched over to the early childhood center, which starts last, but also runs later. That didn’t affect Anne too much, because she was in preschool. She showed up for preschool just in time for their lunch, which was nice, because otherwise she might have missed out on having any time for her lunch at all. As she was shepherding her wee charges to lunch, recess or back to class she would count heads. Invariably, as she was counting aloud, “one, two, three …” one child would yell out, “I’m not three, I’m four.”

She got to be the Nap Nazi, for what it was worth. The subject of why Anne was substituting came up as a topic of general discussion. The regular teacher is pregnant and had a doctor’s appointment, but is not due until spring. One of the students asked, “Is the baby coming out today?” This prompted another student to volunteer, “I know where the baby comes out. It comes out of the vagina.” That student was instructed that that word was not appropriate for school, which prompted the question, “Where did your baby come out from?”

This last story was something that I had heard on the radio, but it falls in line with the tenor of this post, which is all about precocious preschoolers. A teacher was giving an art lesson on drawing. During her lecture she noticed that this one little girl who almost always was daydreaming in class was paying rapt attention. When it came time to put into practice what the class had learned, she set herself at the task at a feverish pace. After a while, the teacher who was circulating around the classroom looked over the shoulder of the little girl and asked her what she was drawing. “I’m drawing God”, the girl said. “But no one knows what God looks like”, responded the teacher. “They will in a minute”, announced the little girl.