Dreidel..Dreidel..la la

I pick up my grandson every Monday, Tueday and Wednesday from the head start preschool down the street.

On Tuesday I noticed a note in his cubby that said –

This week we are doing Holidays around the World! If your family celebrates an alternate Holiday we invite you to come share this week!

Oh my.

I told the teachers we don’t have a Christmas tree at our house. I tell the grandkids that Santa will just have to take our presents and put them under their tree. Nothing to get alarmed about. Of course I am always in there with my head covering and long skirts..But I like the teachers. I told her we have a menorah at home and we play dreidel- but we are Christian too – we just celebrate stuff that is in the book – that is all. maybe I could bring in a snack and dreidels for tomorrow (that’d be today) even though it isn’t Hanukkah anymore.

 That was a hoot! Knowing that I am dealing with a public school system on the same day that the county has sent out people assess the class – I was sure to keep it PC – yet accurate. and a bunch of four and five year olds – it needed to be simple. The teacher had just told the story of the  Christmas star and how the wise men followed it to find the baby – but they were not allowed to say the name of the the baby. Hmmm…

So I told the kids that the Dreidel was a weapon against bullies!  A group of Bullies came in and took over the clubhouse of these guys and filled it with trash and gross food. And kicked out the people who hung out there! They said:

                     No more reading! NO more crazy language!

No more singing! No more learning!

The people who got kicked out were very sad.  Then some of them hid in the woods because they really wanted to read and learn. But if a bully found them he would tear up their books and beat the people up!

They had an idea! If they thought a bad guy was coming they would hide their books and play with the dreidel. No one could take their books away and ruin them if they were hidden. I explained to them what the letters stood for – a great miracle happened there! The kids thought it was written in chinese!

What was the miracle? The guys who had been bullied finaly chased off all the mean guys from the club house! but that isn’t all! They wanted to have a party there on the same day the bullies had put all the garbage in their clubhouse. So they cleaned it up quick as they could!  That way they would forget about what happened before and instead of remembering sad things they could remember happy things. On the day of the party they were sad though. Because it was so long ago, they didn’t have electric lights so they tried to find oil for their lamps that wasn’t spoiled! They could only find a little bit of oil – but instead of waiting for more to be made they wanted to celebrate what they had. It was a great miracle that a tiny bit lasted long enough to make some more! So they could keep the light on in their clubhouse and protect it from the bad guys.

We handed out baby goldfish and honey nut cheerieos and everyone played.

I think they had fun – everyone knows the problem with telling little kids ancient history is they get restless. But I think we kept their attention and they were great at sharing and taking turns.

The teacher played the song – I told her I have heard the song but I didn’t want to get the kids off on a South Park tangent….maybe they wouldn’t but their parents would…so best to avoid it..