Nursery Teacher's Revenge

I have said a million times that I love our nursery teacher (and all the staff) and that I think we really lucked out with our first two years of education. However, I have noticed a phenomenon which I can only define a Nursery Teacher's Revenge. Here are some of the ploys that you could never point your finger at as being deliberate but that leave you fuming nonetheless. It's a sort of nursery teacher's oneupmanship I think.

1. Just as you are about to leave the teacher notices some orange juice left in the bottle. She pours some into a plastic cup and gives it to your child (lovingly), knowing full well that the child is now going to insist on walking down the stairs holding said cup of sticky orange stuff.

2. Paintings or models made out of sticking sand or dry mud onto paper, card or plastic containers.

3. Similar to 1., but there is one slice of gooey iced chocolate cake left over from the party...

Here's one we did at home

4. Talking of chocolate in any shape or form. It always  miraculously appears when your child is wearing new clothes.

5. They have a birthday party at the nursery on each child's birthday and the child gets a present from all the children. It is usually finger paints.

6. Your child has the honour of being the Sabbath Mummy or Sabbath Daddy on Friday. It is already Thursday afternoon but they forgot to tell you earlier and you've already been to the shops. Back you go for juice and crisps for 20 children and two challah loaves for 'breaking the bread'.

7. You get Friday morning nursery which you pay for and need because that's when you cook and clean for the weekend. So one week in January it was closed because of the Jerusalem Marathon and the roads were closed and the week before it was snowing so no nursery. The week before that was DD's birthday and Mummy was invited to her party. Previous to that there was the nursery Chanuka Party to which all the parents were invited. That was already four Fridays in a row. Then there was the Friday we had to come with to the 'happening' at the community centre. The Purim party, the local elections, the end of year picnic....

8. On a Friday when there is no birthday party (i.e no chocolate cake) they take the children down for a quick play in the sand-pit just before hometime. Well it wouldn't do to send them home clean-ish for once would it?

9. Arts and crafts every single day, each resulting in a work of art that has to be brought home and displayed, for eternity.

10. Cooking, with photos of 20 snotty hands kneading the dough or 20 snotty noses sneezing into the batter. You must try some Mummy, now, go on... I've never refused because I have visions of them locking me in until I've done as I'm told.

11. They give you the library book that's been repaired with the cover upside down. So you're trying to read it to your DD and she's ripping it out of your hands and trying to turn it over - "NO! Mummy it's upside down!"

12. In the deep mid-winter, they take the children out to see the rain, hunt for snails and splash in the muddy puddles. Splashing in the puddles is compulsary.

Please feel free to add to the list.