Ten Hundred Hugs

One of the things I love about working with children is their uninhibited affection and enthusiasm. While subbing at day camp today I didn’t even try to keep count of all the hugs I received and gave. =)

At the very end of the day, there was one last little boy waiting to be picked up by his mom. When she finally arrived, he ran to greet her with a big hug. As they were leaving, he spontaneously turned around, ran back to me, with arms wide open, calling, “Huggy, huggy!”

“Oh, I love hugs!” I answered. “Here’s a ‘have-a-great-weekend hug’!” I hugged the little boy goodbye.

Scampering back to his mom, he exclaimed, “I have ten hundred hugs!”

“Wow! That’s a lot of hugs!” I replied. I couldn’t help but smile. “You’ll make a lot of people happy with that many hugs!”

I’m reminded of Jesus’ words, “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8).

Kiddie Quotes

This summer, in between all my travels, I’ve been subbing at a local summer kids’ day camp. I’ve been blessed to have a flexible job that is also giving me valuable experience in the field of elementary education. One of the many things I love about working with children is hearing the cute comments they say. Children tend to see life differently than us grown-ups, and sometimes the way they express their thoughts and observations makes me chuckle. Here are a few of my recent favorite kiddie quotes:

I had just finished counting all nineteen of the kindergarten boys in line for the fieldtrip when Parker* asked, “What number comes after nineteen?” “Twenty,” I answered. “Well,” he replied, holding his stuffed penguin Penny, “Then there are actually twenty boys. Penny is a boy too. And this is his first time ever going to the Dow Gardens!”

While Jillian* and I were playing together on the teeter-totter during playground time, she told me, “My mommy says we can either get a little brother or a puppy.”

On a field trip to pick blueberries at a blueberry patch, one of the boys declared, “I only like blueberries from Meijer.”

*names changed.