The instructions:
1. Pick a color of construction paper.
2. Pick a color of marker.
3. Write your initials on the paper.
4. Miss Erin will trace with glue the letters you wrote.
5. Place puzzle pieces over the glue.
6. Done. Go play.
Here's how it went down:
Me: Ima, your turn! Hi, I'm Miss Erin. Nice to meet you. We are going to do a craft together using the first and last initials of your name. Do you know what your initials are?
Ima: Yes. My name is Ima McPreschooler, so I'm going to write "I-M".
Me: Yes, good job! OK, pick a color of paper and a marker, and let's get started.
Ima (carefully choosing one color from the package of markers and writing her appropriately sized initials on the paper in legible handwriting, all while holding the marker the way a regular person holds a writing utensil): All done! Now what?
Me (glue-tracing the "I" and the "M"): See these puzzle pieces? You get to glue them down over your initials and it's going to look really cool on the paper!
Ima (completing the entire task in about 3 minutes): OK...what's next?
Me: Nothing kiddo, that's it. Go play. Thanks for hanging out with me!
Me (feeling pretty good/cocky about my mad skills as a preschool teacher helper): Skip, your turn! Hi, I'm Miss Erin...blah blah blah...Do you know what your initials are?
Skip (watching some kids playing nearby): What are they doing?
Me: They are playing, and it's your turn to do a craft. Do you know what an initial is?
Skip (Dumping out all 16 markers, taking the tops off the ones that didn't roll on the floor and, holding them like weapons, violently scribbling on every piece of construction paper on the table): Cha! Boom...blah! Rizzo!
Me (WTF???): Skip, can you pay attention and put those markers down? So your first name is SSSSssssskip. Do you know what letter Sssssskip Ssssstarts with?
Skip (swinging his legs back and forth as if pumping on a swing set, but 1000 times faster): "S"?
Me: YES! GOOD JOB! Skip starts with an "S"! What's your last name?
Skip mutters something unintelligible that only his mother would be able to interpret...
Me (looking up Skip's last name from the list the teacher gave me): It looks like your last name is Allcrafts. Is that right? Skip Allcrafts?
Skip shrugs and then bolts from the table to go play with some superhero figures. I wrangle him back to the table and just flat out tell him what his last initial is, because I cannot do that sound it out thing again. Then I direct the kid to write "S-A" on the paper in very large font. He writes "Spak" in microscopic letters. I resist the urge to ask him what his problem is, then flip over the paper, re-instruct him on what he should be doing, and he responds by swiping all of the markers and papers from the table and declaring that he will now build the puzzle. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, because it's really all I can do.
Anyway, after getting my ass handed to me in just 75 minutes, I knew in a concrete and special kind of way that I was meant to never, ever be a person who hangs out with large groups of children for any substantial amount of time. The people who choose to hang out with tiny humans all day long should win major awards and make wads and wads of money, because they are heroes - like actual warriors who go up against these fearless little armies and somehow come out champions.
