Today I’m thankful for Emily’s lost roast beef piggy.

11.16.2021

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About 5 minutes after dismissal yesterday, my student Emily (not her real name) and her dad came into my classroom. She lost her roast beef piggy finger puppet and came back to the classroom to see if she’d left it there.

We’d had an afternoon of little piggy fun as part of our nursery rhyme unit. Surely you all know the rhyme … “This little piggy went to market. This little piggy stayed home. This little piggy had roast beef … etc” Well, the kids had made little piggy finger puppets to retell the story. They’d also sequenced and glued piggies on top of their respective toes on a giant foot in their nursery rhyme books. (Check out the picture of my example foot to get the full effect of the story!). Miss Kathy, Kindergarten aide extraordinaire, was in my room at the time, and we were both busily helping kids. We were all in the little piggy zone, and time flew by. We ended up having to pack up very quickly at the end of the day. It was a bit chaotic, so it’s not surprising that a piggy or two got lost in the shuffle.

Anyway, when Emily and her dad came looking for her roast beef piggy puppet, we couldn’t find it. I gave her a new copy of the puppets so she could make a replacement one at home. She wasn’t thrilled with this solution, but she went on her way. I mentioned this to Kathy when she came back from taking the Kindergarteners to the bus. She shared that Emily was actually missing a piggy for her toe on her sequencing page in her nursery rhyme book and perhaps that’s the piggy she was looking for.

Now fast forward a few hours to a text I got from Kathy. She had Emily’s missing roast beef piggy on her mind. How much do I love Kathy’s kind heart and the fact that she was thinking about the missing piggy hours later? Oh, so much! Miss Kathy loves her Kindergartners. And when I say that, I mean she really, really LOVES her Kindergarteners.

I went to bed with Emily’s missing roast beef piggy on my mind too. Funny how our brains work, but both Kathy and I fell asleep last night determined to make sure that sweet little Emily, who was quite passionate about this whole activity, had a full set of piggy puppets and a full foot of properly sequenced piggy toes!!

So, today we sorted it all out. She was, in fact, missing her roast beef piggy puppet, but she was also missing a piggy toe in her nursery rhyme book as well (the one that goes wee wee wee all the way home, for what it’s worth). I’m happy to report that all her piggies are now accounted for, properly sequenced, and living their best piggy lives. Emily was all smiles. All is well in Kindergarten again.

So why this whole long story? And why the gratitude over something so trivial?

Because life is hard and the world is a little bit crazy. There are huge, big problems out there. Ones that I can’t understand, let alone solve. So, as Miss Kathy so beautifully pointed out to me … it’s nice to have a problem we can do something about. If a little girl is upset about a missing piggy and we have the ability to fix that … well, gosh darn it I’m grateful we can do that.

So tonight, I’m thankful for Miss Kathy’s caring heart and her wise perspective. I’m thankful that Emily’s piggy problem is fixed. And I’m thankful that in the midst of a busy, stressful week when my mind is going about a million miles a minute, that something as seemingly trivial as a piece of paper with the roast beef piggy on it was the catalyst for me to pause, take a breath, slow down, and refocus on the things of importance right in front of me My job may be about teaching kids to read and write and add and subtract. But honestly, it's also about finding lost roast beef piggies, because these are the things that are far from trivial to all the little Emilys in my class. I'm 100% positive I miss many, many of these moments each and every day, so when one jolts me to a pause, I can't help but be thankful.