Polly wandered out to the hallway to stand by the cubbies and greet the students as they arrived. I crossed the room to our reading boat, started rearranging the pillows. The reading boat was the pride and joy of our classroom. Polly had surprised me with it right after I’d hired her. Ethan had recently been hired at Bayberry, too, and she’d asked him if he had any idea where she could find a boat. He just happened to have a non-seaworthy one in his storage unit from his indie film-making days.

The two of them had put their heads and creativity together. As a result, an entire small fiberglass boat was now tucked into the far corner of the room. Nautical-striped pillows cushioned the bottom. The stern was fitted out with a low bookshelf, a smaller bookshelf tucked into the bow. READ READ READ YOUR BOOKS GENTLY THROUGH YOUR LIFE was stenciled in big block letters on one side of the boat. The other side said MERRILY MERRILY MERRILY MERRILY READING IS A DREAM.

The reading boat was by far the coolest thing in the room. Whenever I looked at it, I wanted to crawl in and get comfy, crack open a book, be a kid again.

“My eyes have a hundred bazillion sleeps sticking them closed,” Depp said as he staggered into the classroom.

“My eyes have twenty hundred bazillion sleeps sticking them closed,” Juliette said from the sand table.

For preschoolers, knowing that twenty hundred bazillion is way more than a hundred bazillion is some pretty advanced math.

The students kept stumbling in and eventually everybody arrived. We gathered on the circle, each of the students coming in for a landing on the dot that marked their place without any major collisions. The kids took turns sharing their Thanksgiving stories, the football games they went to (my team won!), how big their turkeys were (this big!), how far they had to drive (a million miles!), what the best dessert was (pilgrim cupcakes!), what a great time they had (my mommy’s more fun when she drinks lots of wine!).

We all stood up. Polly and I got the kids sorted into groups of two, facing each other. We started singing a rousing rendition of “A Sailor Went to Sea,” making patty-cake motions and then triple high-fiving when we came to each repetition of words.

A sailor went to sea, sea, sea,

To see what he could see, see, see.

But all that he could see, see, see

Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea.

It was an oldie but goodie, and always a crowd pleaser with the preschool set.

I couldn’t draw like Polly or build things like Ethan, but one of the things I loved best about being a teacher was making up fun things on the spot.

I added some other movements to our triple high-fives:

A sailor went to shake, shake, shake,