Saturday, December 5, 2009

Winter Wonderland...Texas Style

If you are from the central Texas area, you may want to move along. Not much new for you here today.

The weatherman starting predicting snow earlier this week for Friday afternoon. How he can know these things in an area that only sees a slight flurry once every three years, I have no idea. But guess what? Six year olds listen to the weather, apparently. And there was a secret underground of drums pounding out the message. (Much the same way that at any moment you can ask any child, "What is the present Happy Meal toy at McDonalds?" And they always know.)

Every mother's child arrived at my classroom Friday morning fully expecting to be re-creating Frosty at recess. This did wonders for all academic endeavors all morning. After lunch, we bundled up and headed out to recess. It was cold, but no white stuff falling from the sky.

I took my unfulfilled snowbunnies-in-waiting back into the room when recess was over, and the disappointment was palatable. I promised them that if we saw snow out the window everyone could quickly get a coat on, line up and we'd go outside immediately...if they could just try to, you know, do a little WORK until that happened. (Quality of all papers was severely compromised by continual glances out the window.) Well, seems we'd begun to settle into our language arts period when the first report rang out: "IT IS SNOWING!" A mad scramble for coats and the door. I have never zipped and buttoned so many in so little time. 

We were able to make it outside for the 15 minute Central Texas Snow Show of 2009. There were actually flakes swirling. Not sticking, but they could be caught on clothes and tongues. The entire school poured out on the playground. (Thank you fellow teachers, for realizing this may be the only snow, pitiful as it was, the children may see for years in central Texas. It was definitely more important than any Friday afternoon work that we had planned.) And then an amazing thing happened: the sun came out and the flakes still continued to fall. I've lived a while on this earth and I've never seen that. We were quite impressed.

I keep a blog for my classroom, and if you want to see the cutest kids known to man enjoying the Texas version of snow (look closely for a few flakes), click here.

Somehow, I do not think the school children of Alberta, Canada could possibly enjoy the snow as much as we did yesterday. And we'll be looking for it again in 2014.

4 comments:

Lynn said...

LOL!! You are so right about Alberta kids and that snow! Our kids get excited for the first snowfall and they definitely enjoy it more than I do but everyone gets tired of it by March!! Glad the kids had so much fun what a neat experience for them. Loved the smiling faces, glistening eyes and red noses in Texas snow!

Dawn said...

My kids got to go outside yesterday, too - my 11th grade son's precal teacher took them out as did my 8th grade daughter's science teacher. Both earned brownie points from me for that!

We moved here from Chicago so the flurry (pun intended) of activity before a predicted snow here just makes us laugh. I went to Walmart the night before the "storm" and was amazed that there wasn't any milk or bread. I casually mentioned it to the checkout clerk and he laughed and said it happens everytime there's a prediction of snow or a hurricane anywhere in the Gulf of Mexico. Funny!

Anonymous said...

We'll send some of our freshly fallen snow here from Eastern PA as of today....I like the very first blanketing....especially my kiddos enthusiasm...but come February...enough is enough....My bones envy your milder year round temps!

When I was a youngin'
we had 2-3 feet of snow (Laurel Highland Mts. in western Pa) at times and would miss 1-2 weeks of school....we don't get snow like we used to..like in those "good old days." Even if we did, my kiddos have school at home...like any other day!!

Glad you all enjoyed your dandruff(like) flakes! ( ;

Buttercup said...

I only realized it was supposed to snow today when I saw other people's comments and pictures late this morning. It was practically balmy last night. When I came out of the craft fair this afternoon there were snow flakes, but it wasn't clear if it was rainy snow or snowy rain. Looking outside a little bit ago there is no snow on the sidewalks. I am happy for the least amount of snow.