Hotel Kindergarten

Joseph Campbell coined the phrase Follow Your Bliss stating that "when you do doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors".

I guess my kids were on to something when they voted to learn about hotels. Once the word was out we were invited to tour the Marcel at Gramercy due to our high ranking connections (Thank you Cindy and Lou!).

We arranged a visit with the Hotel Manager Mark Houston with a focus on answering the big question our students wanted to know "where do the people sleep?". Mark guided us to two rooms; one with two double beds and another with a king-sized bed. Both rooms had fantastic views of the NYC skyline, including the Empire State Building.

They were able to use the room key card to enter each room and once that door opened it was a bit of every man for himself! Thank goodness Mark was patient and seemingly unfazed by the bing-bing-bing blur of movement their excitement engendered. At least they refrained from bouncing on the bed(s).

This was the first time many of them had been in a hotel room and they were fascinated and full of questions regarding the safe, ironing board, toilet paper (with the fancy "M" seal), large mirrors, amenities and the LG flat screen television set.

Mark also took us up to the rooftop lounge area where the kids 'ooh'ed and 'ahh'ed over the view before settling into their lounge chairs as if they did this everyday after school.

Before we left Mark gave each student their own room key (to play with in our classroom Hotel Kindergarten) and more information about NYC hotels.

When we got back to class each child wrote about the experience. It was amazing to see the learning through their writing and detailed pictures.

It goes to show ya that kids are paying close attention even when they appear not to be. As Martha would say "It's a good thing".