when the bell rang

Well, we've all upped the ante on the never ending fairy tale. The first graders are reading a new fairy book series that has led them to believe that they don't have to wait around for a fairy to visit them anymore, they can just go to FairyLand themselves.

When I found the latest set of notes left out for the fairies, I thought, we're screwed, they want to go visit "fairyland". The two little girls in the books get to go...why can't they? So, P.S. and I decided I'd write a response note from the fairies essentially saying,

of course we'd love for you all to visit though it's very, very hard to find fairyland, so, don't be upset if you can't find it...

etc, etc. and P.S. would draw a really complicated map for them.
Which I did.
And which she did.

But it didn't deter them one little bit.

Once the girls got over the fact that it wasn't just their secret....
All morning long the girls tried to hide the map from everyone because, dammit, they didn't want everyone else coming to FairyLand with them! It started to feel a bit like maybe this whole thing had backfired from the sweet thing it once was.... but, once we explained they needed to show it to everyone, because, well, they were gonna need all the help they could get finding that big purple & pink mushroom on the map...they finally put all heads together and went a searching. The whole mass of them couldn't get out that door fast enough at lunchtime. It was beautiful.




They were sure they'd found a way in one time, and then another time, they were sure this dirt hole was the way... and then one of the boys wondered aloud,

how are we all gonna shrink small enough to get into FairyLand?

That took 'em back a bit and new observations about the map were heard. Eventually, some of the kids decided the way to FairyLand wasn't within the school grounds at all and they'd have to start looking outside of our little realm...