Baby Taye's First Visit!

Well, today was a historic day at Glendale Sciences and Technology School....it was our first baby visit for our Roots of Empathy Program.  Mrs. Grainger's grade one class was joined by baby Taye and his mom Lea.  The kids were asking all morning..."When is baby Taye coming?...is that before or after lunch recess?"  They all had noticed the new pictures of the baby that were on our bulletin board.  All the children were commenting about how cute he was.

Finally...after what the kids call "lunch recess" the moment we had all waited for arrived!  All of the students gathered around the green ROE blanket and began singing "Hello baby Taye, how are you? Hello baby Taye, how are you? How are you today?" Baby Taye entered the room in all his glory.  He was dressed up for the occasion in his plaid shirt and vest.  The children all 'oohed' and  'aahed'.


Once baby Taye was settled on the blanket with his mom, we revisited our predictions that we made during our pre-baby visit last week.  Can baby Taye talk? Can he crawl? Can he cry? Can he stand up? Can he walk? ...just to name a few.  Unfortunately, not many of our predictions were accurate... not yet anyway.  We measured baby Taye with unifix cubes... he was 31 unifix cubes long.  We compared him to our classmate Ariel that was 64 unifix cubes long.  The children were all very interested in Taye and his mannerisms.  How would he let us know he was happy?  Sad? Uncomfortable?

The children were all very concerned about the baby.  One student commented that we all needed to be really quiet for the baby.  One interesting activity was when Dakota laid down on the blanket across from Taye.  For a while, Taye was looking at Dakota. 

Bailey showing concern that Baby Taye can't get
his head up.

We asked Dakota what he would do when he was tired of laying on his belly.  He said that he would just 'get up'. Since baby Taye couldn't just 'get up', how would he let us know he was tired?  As if on queue, Taye began to get fussy.  The kids all said..."That is how he is going to tell us!" Before baby Taye left we compared his size to the size of the ROE doll. 

Baby Taye checking out the ROE doll.

Taye was quite a bit bigger...he was very interested in the doll.  He even tried to 'talk' to it.  We rounded out our visit with a few questions for Mrs. Frank (Taye's mom) and then we sang our goodbye song.  It was a great first visit, the kids talked about it for the rest of the day.