Career Day with the Rockets

All this month, Lara's preschool is learning about different careers. Doctors, teachers, fire fighters, policemen - these guys all come with props. So what do you do with someone like yours truly?

You start by talking about a special school where grownups write really, really long books called dissertations. You bring a copy of the dissertation to show and ask the kids to guess how many pages it is. The answers vary - "One hundred million million!" "Ten!" "Thirty ten hundred!" - but all are given with mild awe at the stack of sheets you're holding in your hand.

Then you bust out the story book you wrote about Lara, which goes over well. Lara repeatedly announces to the other kids, "That's a picture of me. That's me with the sword. That's a picture of me talking to the pirate."

And then? Then you make with the craft you prepared the night before - making graduation caps!

The night before, you cut craft foam into the right shapes and made a bazillion tassels:



The kids put then together (and they stay together far better than you were expecting!):



All are resplendent in their new duds:



And you take a cute picture of Lara, knowing that she was psyched that you came to school and "pretended to be the teacher":