Kindy Field Day

Field Day. Twenty years later, the words still conjure up nothing so much as all that was wrong with elementary school culture, with the bullies getting rewarded for their brute strength while everyone else was made to feel three inches tall because of our relative lack of prowess at sports. Oh, there would be the token reminder from the gym teacher to not boo, but of course it usually went ignored. I suspect the teachers looked at it as nothing more than a chance to get out of the classroom on what was usually a very hot day, back in that pre-air conditioning era. (It was the '80s, but the school was built in the '50s and I don't think it had ever been renovated very much.)

All of which is just my way of getting around to the pleasant surprise I had this morning when we herded the kindy kids down to a local park for our own field day. It was hot and sticky and of course the grownups couldn't wait to get back inside, but the kids actually played nice and went along with the games just for the sake of playing. What a wonderful change! Of course, that could be only because they're so young, but I'll take what I can get.

There were only two events, tug of war and a hula hoop obstacle course. The teachers demonstrated tug of war by playing an impromptu battle-of-the-sexes match. (Yes, the women kicked our butts, but there were twice as many of them!) We then let each of the classes have a chance facing off against each other, expending a fair amount of energy ensuring that they were about evenly matched in age and class size. Then it was on to the obstacle course, which was a bit over some of their heads - but everyone seemed to have a good time! None of the kids had much of anything to say to me about it all. Mostly they just seemed to welcome the chance to spend the morning outdoors in a fairly bucolic corner of our grungy little town. (And it was a beautiful park - I hope I can find my way back there one of these weekends.)

As for me, the sun and humidity aside, I can see the appeal of getting out of the classroom even when you do have air conditioning. The fact that it didn't seem to inspire any kind of football culture heirarchy among the little kids was just icing on the cake. But I do like icing!