Adventures in Nursery

So the last couple of weeks in Nursery have been kind of crazy. For those of you who don't know, Ben and I both have callings in the ward nursery. I absolutely love it! The kids are so cute and they definitely have their own personalities. I do believe Ben likes it as well. He seems to get along with the kids, which does make things quite easier.

With switching to a new block, it makes Nursery very difficult for the kids. We switched to the 11 o'clock block. So we have lunch/nap time right in the middle of nursery. Boy does that mean loads of fun for everyone.

So today I was playing with Reese and we were trying to find things to feed to the dinosaur. We would give the dinosaur our fingers, cars, whatever we could get our hands on to. Reese then found an orange. Instead of feeding it to our dinosaur she proceeded to put it into her mouth. In case you were wondering, the orange was 100% plastic :). I asked Reese if she was hungry and she nodded her head. I told her that we had to wait a little while before we could eat and that she should go and play. A few minutes later, I see her picking up the toys around her and singing the "Clean Up" song. I guess she figured that if she cleaned up all the toys and sang the song she would get treats/snacks. (This is what we normally do while we clean up the toys) Anyways, it was really cute. Occasionally she would get side tracked but normally she would come back and begin to clean up the toys and sing the song (You can't pick up toys without singing the song :)). About 10 minutes after Reese ate the delicious orange Enzo saw the same orange and decided that it was a delicious snack. I guess that orange looked like the real thing! :)

The other crazy/fun thing is we have a couple of kids who don't really like nursery which means their parents have to come in with them otherwise they don't stay calm. There is this cute little girl named Paige and every time she comes in she bawls and talks about how she wants to leave. Every other week her dad leaves her with us for an hour while he teaches gospel doctrine and then he tries to come back. She does not like Nursery. I'm not exactly sure why. This week another Mom was in there that Paige knew and so Paige just sat on the other mom's lap. It worked well for a while but then when it was time for snack time Paige just started crying because she thought the other little girl's mom was leaving. To say the least Paige still dislikes Nursery. Her dad came back and it went a little better. He just sat on a chair in the back of the room and made her eat snacks, sing, and play with the bubbles. She seemed to enjoy it...who knows maybe Nursery won't be so bad for her. I am having my doubts though...

On a side note, I have learned very important Nursery skills while in this calling. When I have kids and they transition into Nursery and they are having a hard time, I will stay but I will not play with them on the floor. There are some parents who stay and then proceed to sit on the floor and play with their kids. I do understand them wanting their kids to enjoy nursery but now their kids won't want them to leave because they are used to playing with their parents in Nursery and having them be right next to them. I have observed several parents who use an alternative strategy that seems to work much better. The sit at the back of the room and tell their kids to go play and they will sit in the back and watch them. Eventually their kids have gotten used to Nursery and they are free to leave/sneak out. It works soooo much better than playing with your child on the floor and then wondering why they still don't like nursery.

Another note, in the nursery we learned an important thing this past week. It is important to know how to spell the childrens' names. We thought we knew how to spell them but there were a few that weren't as intuitive as we thought. In particular, there is a little girl whose name is Zoey. In case you were wondering that is not how you spell it. There is no "y" at the end, who would have known. If you spell her name wrong, she bursts out into tears and will not be comforted. That was quite the shock when it happened and we had no idea what was wrong. Her mom then told us that she was pretty particular about how her name was spelled. We felt really bad. The second occurrence happened to a little boy named Zander. We all assumed that the z sound at the beginning of his name came from a "Z", but to no avail it is that silly "X" that makes the sound. At least he didn't cry he just would complain to his Mom. To say the least we are now asking for a class list from the Primary president so we do not have to guess how to spell the each child's name.

Anyways, nursery is great Ben and I enjoy it and are getting to know all the cute little kids.