LaurenandLloyd.com
where our wasted time becomes your wasted time
It’s National Lutheran Schools Week, and we’ve had various dress-up days this week. Red & White / Pajama Day / Crazy Hair and Socks / Mix, Match and Clash (hence my two boots) and tomorrow – worst of all – Team Sports Day.
There is one sports-related item of clothing in this house: An ancient Cardinals t-shirt. I wear it every single time we do sports stuff, so people ask me if I am a die-hard fan.
I am not.
*sigh* Why can’t we have Cat Hair Encrusted Black Clothes Day?
A couple of weeks ago, the ‘lid’ to my ‘new’ butter system slipped out of my hand and chipped. Surprise, surprise. What did I expect from buttery glass?
I spent a good long time thinking about how to replace it. At various stores, I looked at containers for holding pencils, toothbrushes, sewing goods, fishing tackle – nothing was right. But then ShopKo had this Snapware thing in the lunchbox section.
Perfect. It’s unbreakable, secures my butter with four, count ’em – four locks, and the best part? When I’m running low on butter, there’s room for another stick to get cozy and start a-softening for next time.
I think I might spend too much time thinking about butter.
The older I get, the more college students come through the doors of the CDC. Be they aides, observers, student teachers, whatever – they just get younger and younger, wearing cuter and cuter clothes.
I, on the other hand, am old don’t really give a rip about what I’m wearing. Usually that works out just fine, but when I get to the point where I realize that I couldn’t dress up even if I wanted to, it gets a little worrisome. Then I remember that I teach preschool and my hobbies are ‘sitting on a stool’, so I relax and realize that there is no need for nice clothes.
(Topic switch) I went to Target on Saturday for some new dishes for my housekeeping area. My old ones are fairly cracked and it’s time to replace them. I love the pattern. These are plastic. Plastic!!
(Topic switchback. Are you getting whiplash?) I was walking by the clothing section and saw that the sweaters were deeply discounted. I picked up three: a cardigan with *gasp* decoration! and two sweaters that are not regular cardigans. (Those are tricky. I can only wear them on cloudy days because my room heats up like an oven when it’s sunny.) The prices were right – 6 bucks for two and 8 1/2 for the other.
At the checkout, the cashier asked if I participated in blah blah blah. I said I did not, so she explained blah blah blah. I said, “That sounds nice.” Since I didn’t have blah blah, she used her own blah blah account, scanned something on her phone and boom! I got 20% off on those sweaters!
That blah blah sounds like a good deal. I really wish I would have been paying attention…..
The school-age coordinator at the CDC is incredible. She is in charge of the before-and-after school program, as well as the school-age summer program, plus she helps out in all the classrooms throughout the school day. She genuinely loves those big kids, and always has great activities available for them to do.
One of my favorites is sewing. They get to use needles and thread to sew whatever their minds come up with – weird snakes, tiny pillows, ill-fitting doll clothes. It’s fantastic.
We had a windfall and I decided the CDC should have its own sewing machine. Usually when I sew with my kids I lug my own machine to school, but it would be nice to have one that just lived there. I thought a nice mini machine would be cool. (When I was little I had two hand-cranked toy sewing machines – the kind that make a chain stitch.)
I ordered this one from Amazon. (The book is for my class. We’re studying space. The Starburst package is for scale.)) The reviews were mixed. Everyone agreed that it was slow, but a good started machine. Some people, though, said it was a piece of junk. I am a little worried they were right. My first two attempts wound up with a tangled bobbin, but I’ve been messing around with it and I think it might be good to go. We’ll see!
It came with a bonus set of electric scissors. Those things are SCARY. It’s basically a motorized, chopping razor blade. It glides though fabric like it’s nothing. I am scared to think of what it would to to a finger. (It is not going to school.)
People are always donating stuff to the CDC. We nearly always accept, because even if someone gives you boxes of junk, you can always unload it at Goodwill later, and someday they might bring something pretty usable. That sounded less inspiriational than I intended.
A couple of weeks ago, one of the retired art professors and his wife brought in several boxes. There were coloring books, old teacher books, some toys, but the most interesting was a box of games. There were some old standbys, two very old Scrabble sets, and this beautiful Tangram set. (Side note, I used to call them tan-a-grams, and find it very difficult not to anymore.)
I brought it home to show Lloyd, but I fully intend to take it back and play it with the school age kids that come in the early morning. The box is so beautiful – it opens with a magnetic front flap, and you see the pieces and the book with 1600 puzzles!
The puzzles are arranged in themes – a page of ‘people’, ‘houses’, ‘birds’, or in this case, ‘tools’.
The boys and I worked for ten minutes on the saw. The first boy, an arrogant first-grader, saw the box and said, “Oh! I love these! I do these all the time! I’m great at these!” He lasted two seconds and said he didn’t want to play.
The other two boys and I puzzled and struggled. One was a kindergartener and it was so interesting seeing how he could not flip a piece (like a pancake), but just kept turning it around and around. It reinforced for me how important it is that children PLAY WITH STUFF, not just tap at things on screens. A tangram app would have you drag and tap to move pieces. Moving things around with your hands in real space is SOOOOO important for brain development.
It makes me want to make a series of posters for school that says “Yes, we are big into Gaming Culture! We have all kinds of simulators: Train simulator/ Driving simulator / Flight simulator! We have multi-player role-playing!” with photos of us actually playing with toys and people.
I’ll work on that.
Lauren came home from work early yesterday and isn’t going in to work today. I can’t remember the last time that happened. She usually has the decency to get sick over Thanksgiving or Christmas break.
I am trying to ease her suffering in these final hours, but Wally isn’t helping any.