Kansas First Lady Stacy Parkinson spent the morning of Monday, Nov. 15, 2010, reading to children at the Hilltop Child Development Center on the KU campus. Parkinson read the children Up,

Maybe it’s because she’s packing up to leave Cedar Crest. The election’s done. Her husband won’t be compiling a budget, charting the state’s direction or looking to squeeze revenue from a struggling economy anymore.

Venturing off script is no problem these days for Kansas First Lady Stacy Parkinson, who looked up often Monday from her prepared remarks to converse comfortably with a pre-lunch crowd.

“You can eat green beans,” she said earnestly, addressing more than two dozen students, educators and guests at Kansas University. “They’re very good. If they’re vegetables, you should eat them.”

Parkinson hopes such lessons take root with the assembled students, the 4- and 5-year-olds in the “Prairie Dogs” colony at Hilltop Child Development Center. The preschoolers had gathered to hear Parkinson read “Up, Down, and Around,” a rhyming book that focuses on vegetables and how they grow.

Parkinson is honorary chairwoman for Kansas Reads to Preschoolers Week, a statewide effort that runs through Saturday and is sponsored by the State Library of Kansas and the Kansas Center for the Book.

Parkinson spent nearly five minutes reading aloud from the large-format book by Katherine Ayres, but spent much of her time asking children questions and sharing her own thoughts about the tomatoes, peppers and other foods that grow up from the ground, hang down from above or stretch around on vines.

Just for the record: Parkinson likes broccoli, loves green beans and considers beets among her favorite vegetables. The kids enthusiastically raised their hands to show how much they, too, enjoyed broccoli, beans and, to a lesser degree, beets.

Then Parkinson offered baggies filled with dozens of seeds of Kansas wildflowers to each child, some to be taken home and others to be planted outside the center.

“It’s going to be a really nice mix,” Parkinson told the kids.

“THANK YOU!” the children called out.

“Don’t open your Baggies up yet,” instructed Becky Strathman, one of the Prairie Dogs’ teachers.

Lessons learned, all around.