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STL team members Pepe, Ben and Dorota had the wonderful opportunity to spend half a day at a pre-school in Evanston as special guests for Community Helpers Week.

The theme for the day was Building and Construction. In all honesty, it is a little more nerve -wrecking to talk to 3,4 and 5 year olds then it is to potential client. The little ones will tell you if you are boring straight to your face.

The day started in a circle, sharing news from the weekend. The “news” that was shared ranged from a grandma coming to visit to one child explaining how he put a raisin on his knee, covered it with peanut butter and jelly and that ate it. It was hard not to laugh at their innocence. We then went around an introduced ourselves and what we do. Pepe, the architect/designer thinks of ideas for new buildings and draws them, Ben, the contractor, takes the drawings and buys material to build the building and then I take pictures of the buildings and share with others about how our buildings are special and fun. If only it were that simple.

Our next activity involved movement, and it was lead by Ben. He got the kids moving around the room to music and stretching different parts of their bodies. The attention span of these kids is 5 minutes max, so this was a good way to keep them going. Then we broke up into groups, The Design Dogs, the Construction Crocodiles and the Marketing Monkeys. Each team would design, build and market their building by going to different stations around the room. When a group was not at one of these stations, they learned about different materials, by touching and feeling, or reading books about buildings and design.

The end of the day involved more movement activities led by Ben, and then high fives and good-byes. All three of us were exhausted by 11:00 am. We were only with the kids since 9:15. Well, let me re-phrase that, Pepe and I were exhausted, Ben has his own little 2 year old at home and does this everyday.