Wishing Well Preschool

When I was five, I attended a preschool. It was called Wishing Well, although I only knew that was the name because my friend David Christensen, who also attended, would call it that.

Since both of my siblings went to school, I would often ask my parents when I would get to go to school. Eventually they enrolled me in this preschool, and I was really excited.

Until the day came for me to go. I was so scared to go that I went in my parents' room and locked my mom out in an attempt not to go. But I forgot to lock the back door, so I was scared when I saw my fuming mother coming around the back.

I actually enjoyed going to school after that. David and I would carpool, so when the kids would see us getting out of the same car every morning, they assumed we were brothers. I remember once when I was looking for my backpack. I asked a girl if she had seen my backpack. She said, "Your brother has it"--and indeed, David Christensen (not David Melville, of course) was walking around with my backpack, calling my name.

One of my classmates was Colby Johnson, who broke his arm twice during the school year.

Every morning we would have opening activities with everyone. Then we would separate into smaller groups and do different things.

One of our activities was show and tell. This was one of those incidents where when one kid shows something, everyone shows it. One common activity for show and tell was folding a blanket. One day I decided I was going to fold a blanket for show and tell, so I took a little blanket that had a bear holding balloons on it. I practiced folding before I went and invented my own way of folding it. It was not an even fold. When it was my turn to fold it, I seem to recall the teacher laughing or exclaiming when I folded it with just a little bit leftover. That day, half the kids folded blankets for show and tell, and I felt dumb for doing the same thing as everyone else.

We had various playing stations. One was a table that was full of dry rice and had toys in it--kind of like a sandbox. One day toward the end of the year, we had a special water day and they changed the rice in the table to water.

Sometimes we would get refreshments. Once I remember we had Jello, and David discovered that if you swished it around fast in your mouth, it would turn into juice. Sometimes we would have graham crackers and milk, and I discovered that graham crackers would get soggy a lot faster if you waved them around in the milk instead of just letting them sit there.

Once we made our own popsicles by putting juice into little paper cups and putting sticks in them. The cups had pictures from Aladdin on them. When we got our frozen popsicles back, one girl was laughing at the picture on the cup that had the Sultan's pants down. She said something about "his panties," and I remember thinking that that wasn't true, because panties are for girls.

At five, I still sucked my thumb, so I remember one day when some boys pointed to me and said, "Baby, baby!" At home, my brother David would always tell me I needed to quit sucking my thumb. One day he told me that kids would make fun of me. I told him of this incident and said that it didn't bother me. He told me that older kids were meaner when they made fun.

I remember some field trips. On one occasion we were on a bus and noted that we didn't have any seatbelts. There were some footrests at the bottom of the seats in front of us. We didn't know what they were and wondered if they were some special kind of bus seatbelt.

One day we went to a farm and the farmer showed us cottonseed, which really did look like a seed covered in cotton. They showed us a lamb, which I thought was positively adorable. I think it was on the way home from this trip that David and I were riding in the back of a van or a bus. I was singing a song I had heard from the Sister Act soundtrack, "Nothing you can say can take me away from my God," although I didn't know many lyrics. David, on the other hand, was singing "I Lived in Heaven."

On another occasion we went to a dairy factory and they told us that Little Miss Muffett's curds and whey was cottage cheese. They gave us little paper hats, and I remember one  day when we were eating lunch at David's house, he went and got his to wear during lunch.

I think one day we went to the Festival of Trees.

On another occasion at Christmastime, we performed the Mexican Hat Dance for a bunch of old people. Afterward we got those little cheap, red suckers with white powder on them in the form of a Santa face. Then we went back to school and colored and glittered our Christmas countdown papers.

Once we rode ponies in the schoolyard. Often we would walk over to a nearby park. On one of these park visits, I was surprised to see a mailman driving with the door open, and one of my classmates told me they always did that. 

Upstairs in the preschool building was a big dance floor, and we would go up and play. We used to do a dance/game to "Three Blind Mice." One day near Valentine's Day, they gave us conversation hearts that had faces on them. Sometimes they would let us dress up. I remember being silly with another girl and dressing up in a red dress. It was big and I kept slipping on it, and we thought that was really funny. (It seems like our teacher may have forbidden me from wearing it because I kept tripping on it--but that was what made it so fun!) On another occasion, a kindergartener who had been in the preschool the previous year came and visited, and I always wanted to visit when I got bigger. (I never did.)

Once we had a whole unit about other cultures. I remember getting Russia and Asia confused, and we had a girl named Asia in our class.

During one of the early days of this unit, the teachers asked if we could bring a doll from another country. One day I went to the dentist, and for a prize I got a little ugly troll. I noticed a word on the troll, so I asked my mom what it said. She said, "China," meaning it was made it China. I told her that we were supposed to bring dolls from different countries, and she told me that it wasn't really from China. But I took it in anyway and said, "This was made in China!"

Different parents gave presentations about different countries. The mom who did British culture told us that they called their moms "Mum," which we thought was really funny. One mom brought Haribo frogs because that culture ate frog legs (and no, I'm not sure if it was France).

One day near Easter, we did a craft project that used two pieces of wallpaper as two pieces of an eggshell that you would move and see the chick inside. (It's hard to describe.)

Then came the last day. Here is a paragraph I wrote about the last day from another blog post:
"They gave us pictures of our class and pencils that had pictures of the earth. They also gave us bags of clothes. These were clothes that our parents had given to the teachers in case we ever peed our pants, but a lot of us thought they were just giving us clothes. I can't remember whether or not I recognized the clothes as my own, but I do remember that I didn't recognize the Mario underwear as my own. (In fact, I think that underwear might have originally belonged to a friend named Keith, or else he had some that was the same. Underwear has a way of changing houses among children who are scared to use strangers' bathrooms.) One boy in my class was tearing off pieces from his plastic bag and eating them, saying, "I love plastic." I thought how I liked it too, but my mom and brother had told me it wasn't good to eat. (It's possible this last part was a dream; sometimes it's hard to distinguish old memories from dreams--but I always thought it really happened.) Then I think I played with my friend David Christensen while my parents were getting ready for camping. It was an overcast day."

I'm sure I will remember more preschool memories later!