the magic frog

Kids nowadays are growing up so fast... many would say too fast. I see it a lot at my internships; just the other day I overheard two second grade girls in the lunch room arguing over Justin Beiber's rumored pregnancy scare. It gets to the point where you sometimes forget how young they really are.

So it was a lot of fun when I went into a first grade classroom with a frog puppet named Kelso. My supervising school counselor was planning to read from a book about tattling (If you haven't, check out: A Bad Case of the Tattle Tongue) and she was going over concepts from Kelso's Choices, too. I happened to have the Kelso puppet on my hand when we walked through the door, and students immediately responded. There were little waves that were clearly meant just for the puppet, and I could hear little whispers of, "Hi, Kelso!" After the read aloud, students went back to their desks to color a worksheet based on Kelso's choices. I walked around with the puppet and talked with the students about the worksheet. Students got completely caught up in talking to Kelso and told him stories about the good choices they were making. It felt almost magical.

When our time was up, I gathered up our presentation materials and had Kelso wave goodbye. Students jumped from their seat, waving, saying goodbye to him, and asking when he would come back to visit. Later, their teacher came up to me to let me know that his class was delighted by Kelso's appearance. "Kids don't get a chance to have much of a childhood, Stephanie. Thanks for making their day special." I assured him that it wasn't just them... that classroom visit had made my day, too. Kelso the Frog is truly magical!