Snow Day!

The other day at work... Okay, I should probably pause and explain a little bit about my job before I get into this story. I work for a national non-profit running an after school program for kids. From 3:00-6:00 every Monday through Friday, I oversee educational and arts and crafts activities in a makeshift classroom in the back room of the leasing office of a lower-income apartment community. I normally love working with children, but with most of my experience being with older kids and teens, being the only adult in a room packed with 5-12 year olds has been a bit more... challenging?... than I initially expected. So I'm constantly looking for new ways to keep their attention and have fun with such a wide age range while still working in some of the curriculum I'm supposed to cover each day. Which brings me back to the other day, the beginning of December when I'm supposed to be shifting from Fall to Winter activities and decorations. Okay, un-pause.

The other day at work I realized that the floor was in serious need of mopping and I got an idea. When I went out that night to go get Christmas decorations, I picked up a few cans of shaving cream at the dollar store. The next day I wrote "Snow Day" on the board and got all our activities ready. We started with homework time, then moved on to playing hang-snow-man with our new December spelling words. While I drew more and more accessories to keep from lynching Frosty on my dry erase board, the kids played along while cutting out paper snow flakes and decorating construction paper snowmen to hang on the walls in place of their hand-print turkeys. Everyone was having a great time for once, including me! When the vocabulary words got old, we moved on to our last activity of the day. It took FOREVER but we got the little paper triangles cleaned up from the snowflakes, put the crayons away, and folded up the tables. Then I split them up into groups and told them whichever team could make the biggest shaving cream snowman on the floor would be the winner. They didn't get it until I sprayed a little bit out on the floor, then they got really excited.




It went along really well for the most part. Each group had a different method: some tried building really tall snowmen, some tried drawing with the cans and them filling it in, some just sprayed it all out and smeared it around with their hands. They were having a great time and I was too.

Then they discovered they could have a shaving cream fight.

The older kids started it and when I didn't squelch it quick enough, the younger kids caught on. Within a matter of minutes they had abandoned their snowmen and launched an all out attack. Most of them were happy throwing handfuls of the soapy fluff at each other or just smearing it on whoever was closest. Several figured out they could fill up both hands and clap to make it "snow." One girl even tried making snow angels once enough had accumulated on the floor.

About the time everyone had started calming down, I looked at a group of girls with shaving cream from head to toe, smiled, and said, "I'm really surprised you didn't get any on me." They looked at me confused for a split second and then I could see the light bulbs go on over all their heads at once. I got waylaid. For a few seconds all I could see was tiny hands filled with all the shaving cream they had left at their disposal. I came away with my hair and T-shirt completely covered and was only disappointed I couldn't take a picture of myself without getting shaving cream all over my camera. Unfortunately, it was just a few minutes later that one of my overprotective moms showed up early to pick up her daughter. When I first saw her, I reverted back a few years.

She.

Was.

Pissed.

And for an instant I felt like just another one of the kids, caught having fun doing something wrong. I smoothed my hair back down (still covered in soapy foam), walked over to her, and said, "I'm sorry. They were drawing snowmen on the floor and it got a little out of hand." She didn't respond. She wouldn't even look at me. I got her daughter cleaned up and she took her home without a single word. I started getting the other kids cleaned up and my other overprotective mom showed up for her two girls and that "conversation" went pretty much the same way. Now, I don't use this phrase often, but these are two grown-ass women getting all puffy because their kids got soapy. (It's kind of self-cleaning, you know) At this point we're running a little late I'm starting to freak out that this was a really bad idea and everyone is going to be pissed. I finished getting the rest of the kids presentable and sent them home then called my boss to warn her that she may be getting phone calls and apologize for my bad idea. It took her a minute to figure out why these moms were upset and then she reminded me, "they're kids" and said she'd handle any phone calls that came in.

Oh yeah! Fun, that's why I'm here! I felt a little better, but was still kind of freaking out while I cleaned up the room (for an hour and a half- I was cleaning shaving cream off of the ceiling!) and when I went to meet a friend for dinner. I gave her the short version of the story and showed her the pictures I'd taken. She thought it was a terrific idea and told me about a similar experience she'd had in elementary school playing with shaving cream in class. She said it was one of her favorite memories from elementary school and I remembered again, fun. These kids had fun today. And I did too. When I saw how great of an experience my friend had had that she still remembered it so vividly at age "26," I started thinking maybe it was worth it if my kids enjoyed themselves that much too. I don't even like my job some days, so if I get in trouble or even fired, at least I got to give something to them along the way. I owe this girl a lot for helping me see that.