Pre-K Projects and Happiness

We had our first family homework project sent home from school over the weekend. We had to decorate a turkey feather to be hung on a turkey in the classroom. We could have chosen anything we wanted. Cereal. Glitter. Noodles. Cotton balls. Elias said he wanted to decorate it with stickers. I was fine with that, but didn’t want just a bunch of car or dinosaur stickers on there that didn’t really mean anything. So I made it into a bit more of a family project about thankfulness. Elias and Simon placed leaf and pumpkin stickers all over our feather, and on each one we wrote something we are thankful for. Each person in the family has at least a couple of things represented.

I was happy with all of the things that Elias said he was thankful for. But some I was especially pleased by. “The New Baby” for instance. I’m really glad we did it this way because it opened up some good discussions for us. When I first started talking about thankfulness, Elias said, “At Sunday school I always just say I’m thankful for Mommy and Daddy and Simon.” He wanted to end at that for this feather too. I told him that was great, but there are so many more things to be thankful for. He really opened up and included things like “clothes”, “school” , “Ama and Baba”, “my cousins”, “God and Jesus” and “friends” and “art” and more. Can you guess who put “coffee” and “baseball?”

Elias was very proud of his project and wanted to look at it for a long time. We read all of the stickers together many times and he carried it around the house until I made him put it up to keep it safe.

This morning he was very concerned that I would forget to bring it to school. I had him put it in his school bag, and he held on to that thing like his life depended on it. When we arrived at school he proudly presented it to his teacher. I missed the moment he handed it over, but he was just so happy to be there I decided to snap a picture of him starting out his day at his table instead.

His head is turned toward his teacher, but you can still tell he has a huge grin on his face. We are lucky to have found a place where he is so happy to go each morning.

Simon also wants to go to school. Here is what he looks like every morning when I force him to walk back to the car with me.

Simon will get his chance next September!