Pretty Cool Moment!

At school today, we were talking about our families. I decided that it would be fun to show a video of my family to my preschool students. I showed them the video of our Family Vacation in Upper Michigan. The children really enjoyed the music, and seeing the pictures of Lake Superior and all of the amazing animals we saw in the Upper Peninsula: the reindeer, the fawns at the Deer Ranch in St. Ignace, the fox, the black bears, the piggies, ducks and oh, especially the porcupine resting high up on a tree branch - they loved that. The link to the actual video can be found on my sidebar of this blog.
I narrated the part of video about how my daughter lost her hat in Lake Michigan, in Traverse City. My preschoolers loved the story of how my daughter actually lost two hats on that vacation. One hat was lost in Lake Michigan. It actually fell in twice, but sank to the bottom on the second time around. The first hat was lost in West Branch, on a pitstop to The Bridge: Jili was in a public bathroom and I accidently knocked her favorite hat into the toilet as it was automatically flushing. "Ewww!" they yelled. I explained that I reluctantly fished it out and threw it in the TRASH!
During the video, they asked where I was in the pictures, and I responded that I was not in many pictures, because I was taking the pictures. When they actually saw me in some of the photos, they yelled in unison, "Ms. Jill!!!"
After we watched the video, the kids had a lot of questions. The first child raised his hand and said, "M-m-Ms. Jill, I think your family is awesome! I want to meet them someday. I want to come over and play with your kids." It melted my heart.
Other kids commented on the animals, and the carrots that we got to feed the deer. They also loved the beach photos. Then, they wanted to know what color eyes my daughter had. I asked if she looked like me. They said no, she has different colored eyes, "and hair like this," motioning that her hair was straight. I said that she was my daughter, but we looked different, and that was okay. They all nodded in agreement, as if the only differences were the color of eyes and the textures of our hair.
Afterwards, we had a regular volunteer, named Barb, come to our class to read a book called: I Want My Hat Back, by John Klassen. I nearly rolled over with laughter, because it featured a bear, with supporting forest characters, such as a fox and a reindeer in the story - what a coincidence! The children wasted no time telling Barb about my daughter's hat that fell in the lake and the toilet, and how she wanted her hat back too, but it had to go in the trash. Then, they connected the fox, the reindeer and the bear in my video to the book.
Today reminded me one of the many reasons I love to teach. It is always the innocent, sweet, yet honest words, and fresh learning experiences through the eyes of young children that make you appreciate life's simplest joys.
Happy Day!
Jill :)