today I spoke to the 3rd graders

[adina]

You'd not believe how intimidating a group of 9/10 yr olds are.

My daughters class did a unit on small businesses. The teacher asked if anyone's parents owned a small business, and if they could bring in some sample stuff. I sent Syd in with some stickers, postcards, business cards, ect. Pretty much one of whatever I had lying around. They were super impressed, the teacher asked me to come in and talk.

We were scheduled for before Easter, then my oldest got hit with the flu and was on the couch for a week. We rescheduled for today. I had some book marks printed from whcc ( www.whcc.com ), and also took stickers, postcards and business cards, enough for everyone to get one of each.

I did a quick slide show, (the school has smart boards in every classroom, it was just like projecting, images were about 3-4 feet tall) set it to music, played that, then explained what I do, went down the list of words that they had talked about pertaining to small businesses. We also talked about photography, there were a couple kids that I had just photographed for taekwondo in the class. I passed out a bunch of stuff (which they loved) answered some more questions, and came home.

What was good: man, did they want to know about money. how much does this cost, how much do you make, stuff like that. So I threw some numbers out and impressed them. Also, they liked the stuff they got to keep. All of which is plastered with my info. They liked the slideshow too. I was a little concerned about that, with the age group. But I just threw in a mix, no maternity tho, and tried to include a lot of fun images, not so much serious stuff. I was planning for about 10 minutes of talking, which is what the teacher said is about average, I was there for about 40. The teacher was excited, and the kids were excited.

What was bad: mostly the fact that I walked. My car is in the shop till Monday. It's only 5 blocks, but it was 5 blocks of nerves.

I'm glad I did it. I've never liked being up in front of a crowd, but sometimes you have to suck it up. It helped that they were little people, and that a lot of them I know from various around town stuff.

I'm going to try and upload the slideshow to my website, and will post a link if I can get it figured out.

Now that I'm done, I think I need a drink.

[Frog]

Kids are scary! Sounds like you did a good job holding their interest.

[SmartWombat]

Kids are scary for different reasons - scarier for me was running a training course for a roomful of teachers.
That was a real challenge, every minute, every sentence, I was expecting to be marked
And it seems I passed

[Old Timer]

Scary yes, but so much fun to see the excitement on those little face. They are such sponges you have to be very careful how you express things they take everything literally. I use to do classroom visits several times a year at several different grade levels when I was Mayor. The main focus of my talks was what services the city supplied for them and how they could be good citizens.

[MJS]

I did the same thing for my daughter once. Good thing I've done the TV thing before, as you mentioned, the little ones are a much tougher crowd. I'm glad things went well.

[adina]

Well, it's a good thing I went when I did, my oldest is sick again. Today I will be disinfecting the entire house.