Clean up time in preschool- let me set the scene.

Three or four kids have heaped every single unit block on the floor, calling it a stage. They are jumping around on the jumble, tripping on the cylindrical blocks, falling into the rubble, giggling and doing it all over again. Several other kids are rolling (bouncing, tossing) matchbox cars across the floor. Some girls were playing “babysitter” earlier and dragged a baby, 3 purses and about 75 plastic pieces of food across the room to the book area. The carpet is invisible-hidden under a layer of books that had been read to the babydoll by her doting babysitters who are now planted by the CD player listening to “Fire Truck” by Ivan Ulz for the 347th time today (and it’s only 9:45). And let’s not forget the fringe children, quietly playing with barns and animals at the table near the door. And while they appear harmless, make no mistake, they will mercilessly tear the face off of anyone who gets the baby elephant before they do, so we always have every animal of every size available in triplicate out on the table. This is room 101 as morning snack time approaches. I stand up and authoritively anounce, “Clean Up Time!” andthen stand, hands on hips (cause I’m the teacher, dammit) to view the grandeur of 14 little people communally tidying up in united Oompa Loompa fashion.
Only it never really happens that way.
In the reality outside of the one I’ve created in my head, all the kids scatter, doing everything in their power not to have to place a single item back on a shelf. I mean there are those priceless few who do actually start to clean up but usually they get trampled faster than a paraplegic in Pamplona in the scramble to avoid the dreaded clean up time.

Usually one of the teachers sets up snack while the other three manage a relatively timely clean up. The lead teacher is on vacation this week though, so there were only two of us today to facilitate clean up time. Forunately there were only 14 kids instead of the normal 20 or so, which meant we had to individually instruct 6 less children for every single individual thing they had to pick up.
“Go over there and pick up the matchbox cars,” just doesn’t work with 3 year olds.
“Go pick up the red car and put it away. Ok, now go pick up the fireman and put him back in the ‘People Box.’ Thank you! See that round block there? Go put that away…” and so on and so on until each toy is picked up and put somewhere that resembles its proper place. While I was wading knee deep in a tangle of kids all trying to put away the same block I looked over and saw one little girl (hereby dubbed Cheeto)staring dreamily up into the ceiling, one hand draped into a large container full of dollhouse furniture.
“Cheeto!”
She jumped and looked at me.
“Get your hand out of that box and help clean up some blocks please.”
Cheeto was cool with that request and crawled over to clean up. I, on the other hand, was doubled over and turning purple almost as soon as the words had come out of my mouth. See, Cheeto is one child who discovered pretty early on the joys of, um, let’s call it “self exploration.” She started doing it last year in my old classroom. So did a few other girls but in the others it has pretty much extinguished itself. Cheeto, on the other hand, has yet to pick up on the social cues that should indicate that people do not “explore” randomly throughout the day in public settings. We don’t say anything about it. It’s totally a natural and normal occurance amongst young children and there is no reason to discourage it or draw attention to it.
I’m sure no one picked up on the fact that I told the class “self explorer” to get her hand out of the box.
Except for me. And I’m pretty damn twisted.