They just need to be a bit older to really get it, I thought as I watched my class of three year old struggle to velcro the straps behind their heads tight enough so it wouldn't slip all the way down to their mouths.
Next year, watching them confidently help classmates fasten on a blindfold....only to have it slip down off their nose. It's just all that slippery hair, if they put up above her ponytail....
Then that third year some of our blindfolds needed repairs so I borrowed a few from another teacher for a few weeks. These soft, flannel blindfolds, with their stretchy elastic bands kept mysteriously appearing on the top of the blindfold basket. I kept putting my original ones back on top, trying to keep the borrowed ones only as 'backups'.
To prevent wearing them out, I told myself.
Yet multiple times I watched the children dig through the basket to bring up a borrowed elastic headband.
It's because they're pink.
It took until the end of the school year for me to just give up and admit that I'd failed. The blindfolds I'd lovingly made, spent hours piecing together, just didn't work really well and the students knew it. They saw something better and they used it.
And finally, finally I reminded myself that these things were supposed to be for them. To use, to enjoy. Not for me to smile about and think how proud I was to have made this great tool for them. They were for the children's pleasure, not mine.
So the next time I had to make blindfolds? Well they've definitely got elastic. They're made of nice, soft, fuzzy fleece. But they're not pink. I still don't think that was the reason they were the favorite....was it?
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