the chicago blizzard of 2011

i was very excited about the blizzard we had last week. wait. that is a massive understatement. i was a wiggling, jumping up-and-down, ohboyohboyohboy, ecstatic mess of meteorological dorkiness. i stayed up all night to watch the storm from my living room windows. as soon as the wind died down a bit the next morning, i went out to play.

there was a LOT of snow.

and i LOVED it.

school was closed for two days, and when we came back on friday, attendance was pretty low because it was still very difficult to move around the city. public transportation still wasn't back to normal, cars were buried, and there was too much snow on the sidewalks for preschoolers who usually come to school on foot. by the time monday came, the memory of the storm was already fading for many of the children. when we talked about it, i did get some concrete experiences from them (these were originally dictated in chinese, and translated by my lovely co-teacher).

"daddy and mommy push the car."

"my house has a lot of snow. other people's homes have a lot of snow, too. the snowman held a flower to hit the leaves. snowman had toothache."

"it had a lot of snow. very high. i removed the snow with a shovel at home."

"thunder, snowing, and windy. the car was very fast and fill the gas on the back of the car."

i was glad that at least one child noticed and recalled the thundersnow. before the storm hit, i had made a poster of photos from the 1967 chicago blizzard to show the kids what was coming (and to explain why we were going home from school early that day). there was much buzz about the cars that were stuck in the snow. after the storm, we looked at photos of lakeshore drive and saw that the same thing happened during this storm! when vivian saw the photos after the storm, she pointed to one of a half-buried car and squealed, "me mommy! me mommy car!" i asked her mother at pick-up time and yes indeed, their car had gotten stuck.

much to my satisfaction, "blizzard" has now become part of our daily classroom vocabulary.