Penelope Rex is a character in a book we have at Rainbow School. Do you remember her? I was thinking about her today. In the Hello Goodbye Yard, all the children sat on one side of the Hello Goodbye Yard and every time poor Penelope Rex tried to sit next to someone, all the children moved away.
Penelope Rex tried to join the game of good guy bad guy, but none of the children would let Penelope be the good guy. She didn’t want to be the bad guy.
Some children decided to play with the unicorns and blocks. Penelope Rex loves unicorns. She especially loves rainbow unicorns. She especially loves one special rainbow unicorn. The children weren’t playing with the special rainbow unicorn. They had decided to keep the rainbow unicorn from Penelope.
Soon all the children were playing unicorns and blocks and keeping Penelope from getting to play with that one special rainbow unicorn that she loved. Penelope waited patiently for a turn, but they never gave her a turn. She wanted to play unicorns and blocks too and was using a lasso to catch unicorns.
The other children started throwing unicorns and blocks at Penelope. Penelope thought it was just part of her lasso game until BOOM! A unicorn hit her on the head. Ouch! Then one of the children used the toy they’d been using as a unicorn prod on Penelope. Ouch! Penelope started to cry. Poor Penelope!
Zombies! Egad! There were drawn out moans of brains, brains. I was very glad I was in the safe area, and then, I wasn’t. You had turned me into a Zombie, not in the safe area. I made the mistake of leaving the safe area.
I was very hungry, and I could smell lots of sweet, tasty children’s brains. Zombies aren’t very fast. Actually, they are quiet slow. I was very slow. I couldn’t catch any children, and I was so hungry. Zombies never give up. So I might have been slow, but I was determined. Your brains are so yummy!
I was pushing the swing. You were swinging on the swing. You sang “E will. E will rock you.” You asked me to sing the turtle song about the bubbles. You were the only one left on the swing. You told me, “There are no monsters here.”
I asked, “Not even the ones with 60 90 claws and 60 eyes?” You said something about only two eyes, I think. I thought that must mean no monsters. People have two eyes. Birds have two eyes. Squirrels have two eyes. Most spiders have eight eyes.
Then we heard a ROAR! There was a monster in the yard, and it was chasing everyone. Well, not us. I was glad we were swinging.
One person was digging a slide. They had some tiny dinosaurs. Maybe it was a dinosaur slide. They dug until they hit the hard. They invited me to help. I was digging a hole with someone else.
Another person came along, they wanted to fill our hole with water, but that wasn’t our plan. Our plan was to dig a sitting hole. We wanted a dry hole for sitting. I thought maybe they could dig their own water hole.
They wanted to fill in the hole with dirt. That was okay as long as we still had room for sitting. Then my digging partner decided they wanted to sit on the edge of the hole with their feet in the hole. It became a foot hole.
Our hole filler decided to bury their feet, and it became a foot mountain. In the meantime, I’d built a mountain of sand from my own hole digging. They broke up their foot mountain, climbed mine, and rolled and slid down it.
I dug a hole at the bottom of the slide. Someone yelled, “Teacher Michelle’s digging a hole!” Suddenly everyone surrounded the hole. I got up and out of the sandbox. Two people began to dig a bigger hole and to make it smooth. Another person grabbed the hose to fill it with water.
The two diggers said to the person with the hose, “Wooaaahh! It’s not ready yet. Every so often the one with the hose checked in, “Can I fill it now?” The diggers dug and dug. The one with the hose waited and waited. And then the hole was ready. Amanda turned on the water.
Suddenly clothes were flying. Another child waded into the hole with their clothes on not noticing the water still pouring from the hose. They were looking down. “Hey!” they exclaimed as their dress got soaked. I pointed out that they’d walked into the pouring water. They got out and stripped down to underwear too.
Two were singing and swinging. Three were picture writing. Two were painting. One was washing the animals in the barn. Before that they had been washing the paint window as the two painters painted. Then they moved on from animals and back to washing the paint the two painters were painting. This time it was on the fence.
There was a problem.
You guessed it. The painters didn’t want the paint washed off. They wanted the paint on. The washer was taking care of Rainbow School and wanted more things to wash. This was a problem.
Then, Scott spotted the dirty bike. I noticed more dirty bikes. Soon, there were four more helpers taking care of Rainbow School and lots of clean bikes. I wonder how many.
There were two at the mark making table. Both were picture writing stories. One story had so many characters in it. Characters are the people or other beings in a story. Then a portal appeared in the story. The writer asked the other writer – both writers were also in the portal story – if they wanted to go in the portal.
I wondered where the portal went. The writer declined to go in the portal. They were writing a story that took place in deep water and lines jutted out in all directions. A third joined the picture writing. They had a single character in their story, a cockroach. The cockroach jumped off the page and chased the other two writers up Rainbow Mountain.
Later one of the writers wrote a story as a birthday present. Someone turned 3 today.
Yay! I got to play today and lead our Hello/Goodbye Yard meetings. I like our meetings. I like to play. We played dino fight. I noticed that our dinos are hard and some even have extra owie spikes on them. I did not want to get boomed by a dino that was fighting with another dino. That would hurt.
I decided to hold my dino by the tail when she wanted to bite the other dinos and hold her by the head when she wanted to use her tail to boom the other dinos. I tried to keep my hands as far as possible from the crashing and booming dinos. I also tried to keep my body as far as possible form the crashing and booming dinos. I have long arms.
I worked with my dino to watch out for people hands and bodies too and only boom and bite other dinos. It was scary with all those dinos shaking the ground and roaring and booming and biting. A couple of dinos took a break. Then a venomous dinosaur came, and all the other dinos died. When they woke up, they went to the sandwich shop and had mac & cheese hamburgers and ham & cheese sandwiches.
This morning I overheard a conversation in the sandbox. Amanda had a big heavy shovel. She dug a hole at the bottom of the slide that had been moved into the sandbox. There was a root, and the conversation was about how to get the root out.
I don’t know why you wanted to remove the root. Different people offered different ideas. There was discussion about how tree roots are strong. Finally, someone suggested digging around the root to get underneath it. Amanda dug some more.
The root came free enough to grab hold and tug. Someone did. The root gave way with a POP!
I watched as you moved buckets and other containers of water. You started at the sink. Later you moved to the hose when the sink became overcrowded. Even later, you used water from the full bin. You were taking care of the living things we share this planet with by using the water already out.
The full containers were heavy. One person asked for help. I cleared the road for them between the Safe Area and Mud Mountain. Another person was busy digging up mud and moving handfuls to new places. A third person explained that they wanted to route the water from the pool on top of Mud Mountain through the bushes and out the other side.
I had a conversation with a fourth person who wished they had a helmet. I wondered why. A fifth person came to sit on my lap. They showed me a picture they had made with lots of circles and some yarn. I noticed two circles in a bigger circle. I have two eyes. I noticed two triangles on top of the bigger circle. I have two ears. They are not triangles though.
They told me it was a cat. It looked like a cat.
Love, Teacher Michelle
P.S. Morning Meeting with Rainbow Rocket News will begin again next week. This week I am meeting with your grownups in the morning. Thank you for this time.
