You Might Want to Nap First
This was a very busy week. For the most part, I planned for and played with children of all ages. We had VBS and I was the recreaction teacher. Every year we get bigger and bigger. We are growing by leaps and bounds. Boy, am I tired. I am usually pretty high energy but the little munchins got me beat. I didn't even run much this week. Too tired!
I can't even imagine the moms who are my age and just starting out. I have many friends my age with kids still in grade school. Ugghhhh what were they thinking!! I think they look at me a bit enviously, but I guess there are pros and cons to young motherhood. . I just happen to think there's more pros in having kids younger than older. Is it because I did so? Maybe. But now I can enjoy my grandchildren much longer before I'm too old to do so. Well...... I've only got one so far....with high hopes more are to follow....LOL.
This week playing with all the little ones has been good practice, because my grandson and his mother (my daughter-in-law) will be up soon for a whole month! I'm looking forward to seeing little Ethan's big changes. The last time I saw him he was only a month old. He will be almost 10 months old when he arrives here next month. He'll be a walking, talking, babbling bundle of joy and energy for us.
His picture has been circulated as coming attractions. Heh! Couldn't help myself. He's sooooo cute.
I did notice some things tho while playing with the little ones this week. The youngest group was Kindergarten and the oldest group was 5th grade. You could defintely tell the kids who were being brought up athletically and those who were not. Some could not even kick a ball. Some couldn't even roll the ball. It would be bounced to the kicker instead. They had no idea. For some this was their first experience with kick ball. I thought this might be a universal game like it was when we were kids. Not so.
We taught them how to play a version of ultimate frisbee. Within a few minutes of play, you could begin to see a pattern going on in the field. The game is played when two teams are trying to throw a frisbee to their teammates to play keep away from the other team while trying to move the frisbee down the field to a goal line. After a few minutes the athletic ones even as young as five figured out who they should throw the frisbee at. So even tho many are calling out, "me, me" they were looking for only the ones they were sure would catch their pass. So what was happening was many of the kids were running around the field but being shut out of the game while only the ones deemed "athletic" were getting all the play.
At one point, with a very large (24) high energy younger group, I put down bases and with a whistle directed them to just run around them. I lined all the kids up and one by one pointed and blew the whistle as a sign to go. We had lost control in the kickball game and this was the unplanned solution. . They loved it. Who would have thought to just run around three bases would be so much fun? Yet it was something they all could do. Some were faster than others but all could participate equally.
Of course there is nothing more delightful to a youngster than water balloons. Whoever invented balloons was a genius. So much can be done with balloons, dry or filled. We played every game we could think of using water balloons and then at the end let em' fly. One teacher joyfully volunteered to let us use him as a target. Giving each kid a balloon and letting him run after this soon to be very wet leader was fun to watch. The laughter was infectious. Oh, to be a kid again. I remember those days.
The week flew by. At the closing exercises of this VBS we had a slide show of all the happenings as we do every year along with the background theme music. Our resident photographer did her best to catch all the fun filled moments and it was interesting to sit and watch what everyone else was doing all week via this slide show. At the very end on the screen were the words of next year's theme, Island Paradise. The kids cheered when they saw this. Next year.
Before we know it, it will be time to start planning all over again.