This past Wednesday was a very important day for Jenna in her Turtle classroom at school. It was finally her turn to be The Turtle of the Day!! She'd been anticipating this day for what seems like forever. You may be wondering what exactly it means to be the Turtle of the Day so I will explain. When it's your turn to be The Turtle of the Day you get to bring home the very special Turtle of the Day striped bag which contains a book to read and a worksheet to fill out telling some of your favorite things. Jenna put down that her favorite food is dinosaur egg oatmeal, her favorite movie is Dinosaur, her brontosaurus stuffed animal is her favorite toy (figured out yet what Jenna's into lately?), and Blackberry Farm is her favorite place to visit. More importantly, you get to bring home the classroom mascot...Speedy the Turtle...for a sleepover! This was very exciting for Jenna...and Speedy went everywhere with us when he got here...he ate lunch with us, went to carpool, took a bath, played in the backyard, got a ride in the stroller...he did everything with Jenna and she was so happy. He spent the night in her bed.
The next morning Jenna was very excited to get to school. She picked out her green turtle dress to wear for her big day and was looking forward to accessorizing with the special turtle necklace Miss Hollenbeck made indicating to everyone that she was, in fact, The Turtle of the Day. Jenna had been talking about this necklace constantly and couldn't believe it was her turn to wear it. She also got to bring in a show-and-tell item to share with the Turtle classroom. Jenna chose one of her stuffed dinos that makes crazy dinos noises. Her plan was to show her friends the dino and then surprise them by squeezing the sound box and making it roar (or whatever dinosaurs do). I'm not exactly sure how it all worked out, but she said that everyone liked her dino. Each Turtle friend in the class then gets to do a "one finger touch" of this very special show-and-tell item. At the end, the kids raise their hands and Jenna got to call on her friends one by one so they could either pay her a compliment or ask her a question about her dino. I was able to see this little activity play out with another child in the classroom when I volunteered earlier in the week and it was great. All the kids really seemed to enjoy learning about their other Turtle friends. :)
Jenna's favorite part of the whole thing was having Speedy visit. She was a little sad when she came home without Speedy after school that day. I explained to her that Speedy lives in the Turtle Room with Miss Hollenbeck and that he was off visiting another Turtle friends family now. Her exact words...she wanted me to "email Miss Hollenbeck to see what store she bought him from" so that she could get a Speedy too. It's hard to believe that she will be "graduating" from preschool and going to kindergarten this fall. Her time in the Turtle Room went by so quickly!
