There's cute, and then there's "puppies and kittens and bunnies coated in sugar" cute. So, while I do my best to be nice to all the kids at my 3 preschools I visit, I can't help find my favourites. Sometimes it's easier to pick my favourite ones than other times, especially when they are the ones that won't stop kanchouing me, or the bossy ones who see me playing with one kid, then yell at the kid to make them run off crying, and then try to get me to play the same I thing I was playing before, but with them. But, after a few months of deliberation, and new students this year, I've finally decided on my top ones from each school. An unfortunate consequence of getting to play with so many kids at 3 preschools is that I never remember their names, so I only remember them by their faces or their nicknames. Granted, anyone who has heard my nicknames for all the people at my local Starbucks knows that I'm far from creative when it comes to naming them (The Starbucks people by the way, are Manager girl, Smirky, Smiley, Smiley girl, Asian lady, English lady, Pixie Chick, and Glen) but hey, they're apt, and it makes them easy to identify!
Kazuki Okay, a fairly unimaginative nickname, since it's just a Japanese boy's name, and not his name, but I think he looks like a Kazuki. He has a shaved head and has that cute thing that little kids have where they can't pronounce words properly, but it seems way cuter when he can't pronounce words in Japanese, so he calls me "Thenthei" instead of Sensei and likes to come up to me and sit on my knee and squish my face.
Lil' Gangster I feel sorry for this 3-year old and his 5-year old brother, who have tryhard parents who have died their hair brown and given them "hardcore" mullet/rat-tail type hairdos. But this runty guy, who's smaller than the others in his class, has the biggest black eyes I've ever seen. And he's mastered the cute semi-dazed stare. I usually find him come into other classrooms at random times, and just stare at me, or at the other kids, without saying anything, before the teachers politely tell him that the others are busy and can't play with him now, so he leaves for 5 minutes and comes back. He's only started talking to me lately, and just asks for me to pick him up all the time.
Special Dude He's a 3-year old with fairly severe autism, so at first, when I didn't know he had autism, just thought he hated me. But apparently, he's been telling his parents that he likes it when I come, which did get me warming to him a little more. He's also been asking his helper teacher if I can have lunch with him, and says he won't eat if I'm not there. At first, when I did sit next to him, he usually got too scared to eat or ran away. But after a fairly deep conversation with him "Do you like ice cream? It's good huh?" He's now talking. "Mmm... It's good!" is about as far as the conversation goes, but I'm happy.
Half 'n Half A girl at one preschool who's half Japanese, and TOTALLY adorable. She knows a fair bit of English words, but doesn't really talk much in English, but does come up to me with random objects from outside to show me that she knows them in English, like "wock", "twig", "twee" and "weaf".
Non-3-year-old I told you my nicknames were pretty unoriginal. But anyways, Non 3-year-old is a 5-year-old, but looks like a 3-year-old in one of my classes, so looks way younger than everyone else in the class. He's the one who cried and refused to play Fruits Basket (the game where you all sit in a circle, and have to switch seats depending on what someone says) after he didn't understand what to do in our practice round. He didn't know how to open or eat those tiny jelly cups, so I had to open it for him and feed it to him.
Tea Boy - He was on my list of potentials for my favourites list for a month, since he was always finding me on the playground in the morning and wanting to play something with me. There was also a time when I was helping his class make origami frogs, and so he got me some light green paper for himself and me. Thinking I should make a different looking frog, I went to get some dark green paper, and he oh-so-cutely stomped his feet had a mini hissy fit before changing his paper to dark green too, so it was exactly the same as mine. He then tried to copy the same face I drew on my frog on his.
But what made him land a spot in my top was during story time day. He got me to sit next to him during story time, but midway through the book, he quietly got up, went to his bag in the back of the room, changed his pants, and sat a little bit away from me. After story time, the teacher noticed a puddle around where he was sitting. "Oh, What's this? Did you have a little accident?" she asked.
"Oh, no, it wasn't me," replied Tea Boy. "I think someone spilled some tea there at lunchtime." The teacher promptly got up, to grab some disinfectant and clean the puddle up. But in the meantime, the surrounding kids decided inspect the puddle and see if it was tea, by shoving their faces in it.
Aah, any 5-year-old kid who calmly changes their pants without other kids noticing, potentially knows the consequences of his actions and knows he can avoid it by lying, and then make other kids in the room put their face in an unknown liquid is definitely a favourite in my book.
