Children, start your boxes: Teachers turn cardboard into cars for preschoolers
Eighteen cardboard cars lined up in front of a flat-screen TV. A 3- or 4-year-old nestled inside each one. The set up looked like a drive-in movie theater, preschool-style.
That’s just what teachers Lana Brede and Frances Thomas were hoping.
“I saw the cars on Facebook and thought it was a great idea,” said Frances, a teacher at StoneyBrooke Academy of Early Learning in west Belleville. “We have been working on this since April.”
“Kids got to pick their own colors,” said Lana. “We roll-painted, and let them dry. When they dried, we pushed them in the boxes.”
The teachers saved the boxes from shipments of paper towels and other products the preschool uses. Paper plates painted black became tires. Plates with the middles cut out are steering wheels. Taillights are cup covers from QT. Each car has a paper license plate with the child’s initials and birthday date.
“Mine is blue,” said Megan Behrmann, leaning back in her car.
Just after 9:30 on a rainy Wednesday, teachers turned off the lights and turned on “Happy Feet,” a 2006 animated film about Emperor penguins who find their soulmates through song. One penguin who cannot sing, made up for it by tap dancing something fierce.
“We’re studying animals,” said Lana. “We’re going to the Zoo on Monday. We have been talking about penguins the last two days. I go to the library and get books on what we are studying”
“Look, a baby,” one of the preschoolers called out early in the film.
Teachers interrupted occasionally to ask questions.
“Is it warm there or is it cold there?” said Lana.
The kids responded with a chorus of “cold.”
The teachers were proud, not only of their project, but of their students, quietly absorbed in the sweet movie.
“They are like sponges,” said Lana. “Anything you say, they grasp and take.”
The bonus for the little movegoers?
“We are going to let them take the cars home tonight,” said Lana.
This story was originally published July 12, 2015 at 3:00 AM with the headline "Children, start your boxes: Teachers turn cardboard into cars for preschoolers."