Today's beautiful thing may not seem particularly beautiful, but believe me it is.
Behold the beauty of this Lisa Frank sticker. Cherish it. Respect it. Contemplate it.
Now believe me, this is a thing of beauty - because, you see, I am 99% sure that this sticker helped me to successfully encourage six 3-4 year old's to behave.
As the Children's Ministry Director at the church, I also direct the church preschool that meets on the property twice a week. While I love kids, this part of my job drives me nuts sometimes. There's just a lot to be in charge of when you're running a preschool, and it can become overwhelming for someone who hold's a Master's degree in Christian Education but has no academic training in business management. Anyway, as the director, I hold chapel time with the kids every preschool day, so the teachers can take their breaks. Typically, it's utter chaos. You try getting a bunch of preschoolers to sit still and focus on a story for 20 minutes straight. Since today was our first day back since Christmas, I was expecting an extra dose of chaos. But somehow, the kids were well-behaved. The good behavior of the super-mellow 2-yr-old class merited stickers, and as I was passing them out, my eyes landed on the cat sticker you see above.
Let me make something clear. I like cats. I also like Lisa Frank. And, although I may be in my mid-twenties, I also like stickers. So after handing stickers out to the kids, I peeled off the cat sticker and stuck it on my sweater. Why? Because I felt like it would add an air of happiness to my morning, and you'll recall that my one New Year's resolution involved pursuing happiness relentlessly.
Enter the 3- to 4-year-old class for chapel. This is the class with the most rambunctious kids in the program, who generally require the assistance of another adult to keep from disrupting everything. I'd already arranged for another adult to be in the room, like I have done for half the school year. But today, things were different, and I think it's because of the sticker.
It went something like this:
"Children, do you see what Ms. Celia has on her sweater?"
"A STICKER!!!!!!!!!!"
"Would you like a sticker too?"
"YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"What do you think you have to do to get a sticker?"
"BE GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
And lo and behold if those children weren't good. They were attentive, they were engaged, they were responsive, and they were able to retell the story on their own by the end of the twenty minutes. Of course, this isn't the first time stickers have made an appearance as a good-behavior incentive. In fact, I've given them out after almost every chapel time. But this is the first time that I had a sticker shining forth its colorful glory from my sweater for every child to see throughout all of chapel. And today, for the first time, every single child got a sticker at the end of class, and no one had to sit in time out at recess because they were being hellacious in a holy setting.
So thank God for stickers. Clearly, miracles do happen.
