Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Letter to my daughter's Kindergarten teacher

Dear Kindergarten Teacher,
Every Tuesday your students have to bring something from home to share for show and tell that starts with the letter of the week.  This week, we actually remembered!  I know!  We were shocked too!  Over breakfast we consulted the class calendar and found the letter to be Ii.

No problem, we thought!  I is a very common letter, right?  Surely we have something.

The first thing to pop into may head was iguana.  We have no iguana.  Sammy the cat won't pass as one, but even if he did, it probably wouldn't be a good idea for our daughter to drag him to school, via a 1 hour bus ride.

I'm not sure where my ipod is, as I use it for running and I have a clever excuse to avoid that for a while.  And besides, she's five, note the bus ride.

We didn't have an igloo in our Christmas decorations, which are still up.

Something illegal?  An illness (already did that, I'm sure)?  An idol (probs not appropriate for a Catholic school, huh?)?  She could just take me, as an example of an Idiot, who can't think up something to take for a Kindergarten show and tell... FAIL!

Maybe we should have started thinking about this last night.  I mean, I didn't even have my coffee half gone.  It's a lot harder than we thought it would be.

But, gosh darn it!  We actually remembered, we were going to send her with something!

Okay, we thought, how could we get some ice to make it to show and tell time in the afternoon?  We could grab a big chunk, wrap it in bubble wrap, throw it in a little cooler and pray she doesn't open it until she hurdles the obstacles of the sitter, an hour on the bus with friends, a whole morning and lunch, until finally she would present in the afternoon.  My husband and I debated the likelihood of this not ending in a messy, wet disaster.  No dice.

I even considered pulling a dictionary.  Now that I'm at work and have had my full dose of coffee, I thought of Illustration, which could be easy to take.  Duh. Or an inch on a ruler.  Or a toy plastic indian.  A map of India, Israel, or Iran!  A toy insect!  An instrument!  A bit of iron!  Yes, I'm using the dictionary!

But my husband had a great idea.  What helps hot things, like coffee, stay hot, and cool things, like ice coffee, stay cool?  An Insulated mug!  Of course!  We just needed to focus, and drink our coffee!

Now, we had to consider the likelihood of our daughter remembering why the heck we had sent an empty travel mug to school with her.  We did explain and quiz and make her say "Insulation" over and over again, but still, the probability is low.

Thus this letter.

Sincerely,
The Mother of a Kindergartner


3 comments:

Marijanna and Shaun said...

I can just imagine how that turned out! Is this really what I put parents through when I tried to get them involved in the learning process? Oh dear... well relief is that now I'm home and they can rest easy. Next time try "Ice skates" or even brownosing it with an "Iced coffee" ...for the teacher. Or "Iceburg lettuce" or a jar of "icing" or ...well you get the picture. Just pull out the dictionary a couple of days before and brainstorm with Addie. It's amazing that it's often the kids that get it better!

chrissyrudd said...

Ah, Iced coffee! Short of making our own, the nearest D&D is over 3 hours away! Yeah, even with a few days advance notice, we failed on the letter K too! But for L Jeremy sculpted a Lion out of Legos, so that's double points, right?

Marijanna and Shaun said...

I think it would be double if Addie did the sculpting!