Picture This: A Fly on the Wall...

A week and a half ago I volunteered in Ashlyn's classroom. I'd been so curious about how things really went at school--the flow of the day, the social interactions of the kids, Ashlyn's behavior, getting to know the other kids a bit more, etc. The day I chose was a big one. It was Ashlyn's day to bring the snack and to bring items in for show-and-tell and it was also school picture day. To be completely honest I wanted to be there to make sure she looked her best ;) (more on pictures in a minute...)

Ashlyn and the boys! So funny--it looks like Ashlyn's really running the show with these boys, but they were actually listening to "Goin' on a Bear Hunt" and doing all the motions. Mrs. Stoufer said that they LOVE this one! I could tell :)

Ashlyn's sharing time. She brought her "Ashlyn and Dora's Rescue Adventure" book that has her picture in it (such a cool gift idea! Check out other options at shutterfly.com). She also got to do the calendar and weather boards and she was the line leader for the day.

I thought this was a cute picture of Ashlyn and Elizabeth with their cute flower hair bows (made by me!)

So...picture time...sigh... Both girls were a bit of a mess. As soon as we got to the area where they were taking pictures, Elizabeth started crying and didn't stop the entire time. Good thing Kristi decided last minute to skip ordering an individual picture and just get the class picture. I thought Ash was doing well...until it was her turn to get her picture taken. You can tell by the picture above how that went! I tried whatever I could to get her to smile, to no avail. The photographer and his assistant tried...no luck. I decided to leave the room to see if that would help. The photographer said he thinks he got sort of a smile, so we'll see what that looks like! Geez--maybe it would've been better if I hadn't been there that day! The cool thing was that the photographer was really good at working with all the kids, taking as many pictures as he needed in order to get the best one. Thank goodness, too, for digital photography!

St. Peter's Lutheran Preschool Monday/Wednesday 3-year-olds
(front) Gerrit, Will, Ashlyn, Reid, Tyler
(back) Kiersten, Sam, Elizabeth, Kyle, Jackson

It was really fun to be in the room and just watch the kids interact with each other. I have sort of a "mom crush" (I think I just made that up) on little Jackson--he turned 3 at the very beginning of the year, so he's still so young and adorable! And Will really took a liking to me. Any chance he could, he would sit on my lap. And when he wasn't sitting on my lap, he wanted to be next to Ashlyn. Cute :)

At the end of the day we went to Chapel. The kids really love it. They get to hear a bit of a short Bible story and sing "Jesus songs". It was a lot of fun to spend the day in Ashlyn's class and I'm really looking forward to doing it again!