Fun?

    This may have to be brief, because K is playing in her enclosure a foot from my chair, may be poopy, and is tired.  The enclosure is new to her, I didn’t think she’d be this mobile this soon, so while I meant to get her used to it before it became a safety thing, it has become a safety thing and we both just have to deal.  If I keep up a steady flow of remarks, occasional eye contact and new toys, she is (so far) patient with the arrangement.  She’d rather eat my keyboard and scoot under the desk in search of choking hazards though.
    Fun.  That word is my educational "f-word."  How to manage expectations of kids when you pull out toys to teach with?  Just because this is a toy doesn’t mean that you get to touch it right now, do what you please right now, and by the way: you do have to follow directions and you do have to share.  There are grown ups who would find this hard!
    The Jr F.I.R.S.T. Lego League is meeting in my house.  I have set myself several really, really hard constraints.  We have to meet in the mid-afternoon when M is still sleepy because he should still be napping.  This is not negotiable, we meet then or we don’t have a team because that is when the older brothers meet for B’s robotic team and I can’t very well ask the parents to come to this town twice, besides, I think there is soccer or something.  This is a pity, because I’m not too fresh in the afternoon either!
    There are 9 kids. This is because of my goof.  I forgot that a Jr team has only 5 kids, so I have now got 2 teams in my little apartment.  Meeting in my apartment worked OK in other years, but it isn’t really working well right now, because I have twice the children.
    Several of the children on the team know each other, but M and I only know two or three of them, so we feel like the outsiders, even though we are the hosts.  I did make the kids play a name game the first day, one boy was embarrassed by the silliness of it, another seemed to be embarrassed by his difficulty with the long list of names to rattle off, it didn’t go well.  I’m still stumbling over names.
    All but one are boys.  The social dynamics of boys are tricky for me.  Our one little girl is having an interesting time fitting in.  When I coached the Jr  F.I.R.S.T. Lego team before, it was half boys, half girls, made up of children I already knew, and several of them were siblings already used to working together.  The interpersonal aspect was not some foreign thing I had to insist on.  I’m not sure how to proceed accept to insist that the kids share, use names, and take turns.
    An easy out (perhaps a sensible one) would be for me to cut the last 4 children who registered with me, as I should not have added them in the first place.  I don’t want to do this because it’s not their fault, and the psalmist writes that a Godly man swears to his own hurt and changes not.  But mostly I’m stubborn.  I don’t want to admit that I can’t make good on a goof.  I don’t want to solve my problem by causing one for little children.
    So I don’t plan to cut four kids so we have only one team, but I sure do have a big challenge in making things "fun."  Yes we use Legos.  Yes we will need your brilliant ideas when we make our model.  But right now you have to share, you have to squish, you have to follow directions, and you have to use a pleasant voice, even when you remind me not to call you by your brother’s name. 
    What can I change?  I can give the other parents a better idea of how to help.  I can give the children a better idea of my expectations so they behave better.  I can ask the parents to talk to the kids about sharing, pleasant voices, putting up with younger kids, switching off jobs so everyone has a turn, and not insisting on their own way.  I have already sorted the Lego parts into two kits, so they don’t have to find the pieces from the same box (competing piece searchers = accidental elbow in the eye)  I hope someone comes up with some other ideas too (besides cutting difficult kids from the team, I’m tired of cranky behavior, but I’m more tired of peace by separation.)
    At least the other Moms bake cookies.  Cookies are always "fun."