so, after coming in from a long outdoor time, the preschoolers were hot. during indoor circle time one little friend took off his shirt. no one noticed at first, it wasn’t silly, etc so we teachers ignored it as well. a little while later when i noticed some gigging about it, i tried to normalize things without calling the shirtless boy out. so i said things like when you’re a preschooler you might take your shirt off if you’re hot, if you see someone at preschool with their shirt off that’s what’s going on, when you’re at kindergarten you can’t take off your shirt, but preschool some things are different, etc.

the children started chiming in about their dads taking shirts off when mowing grass, sleeping with shirts off, etc and it seemed that the shirtless boy was feeling comfortable. then about 6 others started feeling comfortable.

we had over half a dozen preschoolers-boys and girls-topless. i tried to act normal and continue our conversation about vocanoes.

but visions of a visitor coming in, fears that some of you are hoping to instill a sense of modesty greater than that, and generally feeling like i came to close to a line we shouldn’t cross, i paused circle time to “concentrate on cooling off” so we could get dressed and be ready to go back outside.

sure enough, when i opened my eyes from “cool off” time, all shirts/dresses were going back on.

so. if your preschooler was at school thursday afternoon, they’ll know about this. if your preschooler comes on other days, they might hear second-hand about this “shirts coming off at preschool” stuff.

and that was the day.

let me know if you have questions.

thanks,

humbly and gratefully yours,

kristin