Kindergarten Butterflies

Emma Rose had a happy day today. Her Kindergarten class went on a field trip to Hands On Museum in Lancaster. I went along as a last minute substitute for a parent who couldn't make it.

I know many adults who would have loved this place. You could pretend to work in a widget factory, get your face painted, work on a farm, catch fish, visit a grocery store, dress up, milk a cow, gather eggs, play in a treehouse, and so on. It is a place where the imagination is king. Emma really liked fishing for trout, and checking to see if they were "keepers" or had to be thrown back.

Emma also has been busy helping me pull weeds out of the garden, with a special interest in milkweed. She took many milkweed leaves to school...for butterflies! The class has been watching caterpillars and then chrysalises(?)...I call them cocoons, which I'm sure is incorrect...and then butterflies. The butterflies will be released in a few days, and the kindergarten class will be released in a few weeks. Emma wants to stay in kindergarten, and I'm not sure that I disagree with her. Kindergarten is great. With a heavy sigh, though, we must go onward and upward like the butterflies, to first grade and wearing a uniform and learning to read and adding and subtracting. We will miss the days of kindergarten and the butterflies and the children's rainbows hanging from the ceiling.

Oh, by the way...riding in a yellow school bus all the way to Lancaster is definitely an experience, especially when you fill the bus with vibrating six year olds...one of whom has a nosebleed and another who is nauseous.

Count your blessings today, and say a prayer for your kindergarten teacher.