Pajama Jam!

Korrin B.

March 20, 2009 - 7:00 PM

As I've said before, I have the best job in the world. Not only are my co-workers incredible, but also the kids I work with are so much fun and remind me to have that innocent, childlike fun in my everyday life. Last night, we had our annual Pajama Jam at Meadowlark Elementary School. Pajama Jam is where all of the kids and staff dress up in their pajamas and after the regular after school program is over at 5:30pm, the parents show up for a night of pancakes and fun!

Our first task was getting the thirty or so excited kids into their pajamas. If I said I'd never seen so much running around and screaming in a gym before, it would be a lie, however, this did come close! The kids were so excited and so wired from a long day at school. Our staff is incredible though and we soon had them dressed, ready, and quiet in the library.

While we waited for the parents to show up, we worked on some of our own, personalized Mad Libs. The staff had written stories about certain activities in our program or about staff members and then had taken words out of them so that the kids could give us new words and then we would surprise them with a funny story including their input. I had the kids raise their hands in the library and wrote down the different nouns, verbs, adjectives, numbers, body parts, foods, and more that I asked them for. When we took them into the cafeteria to meet with their parents, I put the words onto the large Mad Libs stories we had posted on the wall. When everyone was settled, our program coordinator read them aloud. I'm pretty sure one of them turned out to be something like, "Korrin is so dusty. I can't believe she sings everything while wearing earrings!" They were pretty funny and it was nice for the kids to be able to see the thing that their words had helped create.

Next was the best part - the buffet line! We had the event catered by iHop and had endless toppings for the pancakes, including chocolate chips, blueberries, strawberries, syrup, whipped cream, and more! We also had fresh fruit, Sunny D, and chocolate milk. It was quite a lovely meal. I had helped decorate the dining area earlier. We covered the tables with paper that we decorated to look like quilts. Then, I placed some little felt pillows and eye masks that the kids had made in one of my classes as centerpieces. It was so colorful and fun.

The night ended with storytelling, song singing, and crafts. The kids created quilt squares out of paper so that we could put together a paper quilt on one of the bulletin boards. One of the kids made me a quilt square that said, "I am happy when I see Korrin." I put it up on my wall at home. I went home and unfortunately had to start stressing over studying for my Greek final the next day, but it was worth it. I love these events we are able to put on for the kids. I love my job!