Avenue Q

Every Monday, Abbie is to bring an item to preschool that begins with the letter of the week. This week, that letter is Q.

So far, we’ve had an easy time finding objects around the house for the Letter of the Week project. Usually I just dig out a stuffed animal and cram it into her backpack. Bear for B. Cat for C. I’m still hoping to find a gnu in time for G week.

This week was a challenge, though. As with all of Abbie’s homework assignments, I’m the one doing most of the learning, and I learned that there are almost no tangible objects that begin with Q. The only limitation on the item she brings is that it must fit into her backpack. I assume that it should also be appropriate for a 3-year-old to possess, so a winning quinella ticket is probably out. The item can even be a picture, which would’ve come in handy if I had a postcard from Quito around the house.

The first item that came to my mind was a stuffed quail. Abbie has several stuffed birds, but no quails. None of her generic birds resemble a quail, and sending her with a penguin and calling it a quail would probably just confuse her.

I considered sending a quilt. The kids have many blankets from their baby days. Many of them are very soft with frilly edges, which made them unsuitable to use with a baby, so they still looked like new. Quilts tend to be large, though, and Abbie’s preschool-sized backpack doesn’t have much storage space. Plus, I wasn’t sure which blankets technically qualified as “quilts,” and heaven help us if I send her with an Afghan and call it a quilt. I put the quilt on the backburner in case I couldn’t find anything else.

I figured I could send her with a book with a title that begins with Q. I went through all 1,968,853 books on her shelf, and didn’t find one with a Q anywhere in its title.

I started running down every word I could think of that began with Q. We don’t have any queens since Abbie doesn’t like dolls. Quick and quiet aren’t nouns. Quorum and quota are nouns, but I didn’t know how to represent them. We don’t own a copy of the Qur’an, or All’s Quiet on the Western Front either. I didn’t know how to make a quiche, much less how to send it to preschool with her. We didn’t have any oversized novelty Q’s or quotation marks. A qwerty keyboard wouldn’t fit in her backpack, and there’s no reason to inflict her with that bit of typing nonsense already.

Finally I gave up and grabbed a Q-Tip. I didn’t want to use a proper name, especially one that violates the laws of English spelling, but I wanted to cram a quilt into her backpack even less. I tore off part of the Q-Tip packaging, taped the Q-Tip to the back, and sent her to school.

When she returned, she had a slip of paper with suggestions of activites we can do that week to reinforce the letter of the week. Usually they give us a dozen suggestions, but this time all it said was to build a quilt from pieces of paper. Obviously they couldn’t think of anything better either.

X, Y, and Z weeks should be interesting.