good clean fun.

On Friday it was super stormy. I was at preschool. The rain was gushing down. The thunder was loud. The sky was black. The children were singing "Rain, Rain, Go Away." It was pretty exciting. And then, just when I thought things couldn't get any more thrilling, the tornado sirens went off.  Now, preschool children often don't know what is happening around them, and this was no exception to their confusion. I mean, they are just 3-5 years old, so confusion is a big part of their lives right now. For example, the other week it was unusually warm outside, but the kids were all still wearing long sleeves. Because it's supposed to be winter. Anyway, they were rolling around on the ground telling me how hot they were so I had to explain to them that if they're a little warm, they can push their sleeves up to cool off. And life was okay again.


Anyway, when the sirens went off, the principal made an announcement on the intercom that we need to go to our shelters. So, we lined them up and marched them all to our "Safe Spot," aka the boy's bathroom. At this point, none of them had any idea what was happening. We walked into the bathroom and every child immediately just went into a stall and went to the bathroom.  I tried to explain that we're just in our safe shelter and they don't have to use the bathroom, but I wasn't fast enough.  Then things got a lot grosser. And here are the reasons why:


1) Little girls have never seen urinals before. Which obviously means they're going to lay all over them, flush them constantly, touch the flush water, etc...I mean, who can blame them, really? Urinals are weird. And if you're 4 years old, they're even weirder. It then became a really fun game to touch the urinals and have to wash hands. Fun.

If I were in preschool I would want to touch this, too.

2) If you keep preschoolers in one place for an extended length of time, say the time it takes for a tornado warning to pass, they will undoubtably lay down and start rolling around. Which is fine if we're anywhere but the bathroom, but we weren't. We were in the boy's bathroom of a preschool center.


3) Not only were the children all over the ground, but all of their belongings were scattered around the floor as well. Sanitary.


Maybe we should reconsider the location of our Safe Spot...