In some ways, Marlys Thom's classroom looks like a typical preschool. Toys and storybooks fill the room, and 10 toddlers spent one recent Wednesday morning cutting pictures out of magazines, eating snacks and reading a story about Curious George under her watchful eye. In other ways, the preschool is not typical at all. For every 3-year-old playing with a dinosaur, there's a teenager taking notes on a clipboard, leading a group activity or videotaping the class. And right down the hall, hundreds of high school students take courses in physics and government and music, some of them unaware that the toddlers are even in the building.

Thom runs what's called Preschool Lab, a class at Burnsville High School that gives students a chance to learn about child development while taking care of kids whose parents sign them up to attend.

Not every high school has one, but some Family and Consumer Science departments have run nursery schools for decades, particularly at large metro-area high schools.

Thom's lab and others like it help teenagers hone skills that will serve them well if they become parents, but the classes also draw many students who want to become teachers.

"You have to really keep up, because they move fast," said Amanda Olson, a senior in Burnsville's preschool who said she'd like to run a daycare someday.

And the classes are just as good for the little kids, some of whom will attend no other preschool before entering kindergarten.

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No running with these scissors: Four-year-old Maggie Nyhus concentrated on cutting out a picture from a magazine with the helping hands of Marlys Thom.

"You can play with your little neighbor kids, but that still won't get you used to being in a group activity setting, where you're going to have to get along with others," Thom said.

Parents love the low student-teacher ratios in the classes, though the short hours mean it's trickier for some families to arrange transportation, said Luwi Benson, whose 4-year-old daughter is in Burnsville High School's program. "When I pick her up, she's just gleaming with happiness because she's so happy about what she learned," said Benson, whose 15-year-old daughter also went to the preschool years ago.

At Wayzata High School, a similar program called Trojan Tots fills up every year, said Miriam Lejonvarn, a family and consumer science teacher at the school. "Preschoolers, once they hear about this, are really excited about working with teenagers," she said.

Burnsville's lab is a semester-long course offered in the spring. It's open to children ages 3 to 5, and parents pay $60 for 12 weeks of nursery school, which runs five days a week for an hour and a half. (It's too late to sign up for this year's program.) The high school students who take it are mostly juniors or seniors, and they must first pass a prerequisite course on child development.

Thom spends the first five weeks training her students. Then the toddlers start showing up, and the teenagers run the show for the rest of the semester.

Students divide into teaching teams and plan lessons with themes such as travel or the circus. They greet the kids, teach group activities and read stories to them, and walk them out the door at the end of class. Each student is also assigned to observe one toddler for the whole semester, then write a report for the child's parents, which Thom grades.

Thom says little but watches closely, ready to help handle a pair of blunt scissors or hunt for a lost toy. She gives the older students quick pointers if a youngster needs extra help, and she goes over self-evaluations with the teenagers after the toddlers leave.

"The first couple of days it's kind of like bedlam, because the kids don't know the routine," she said. But after a week or so, they need little prompting: The end of snack time means it's time for a story, and a few bars of music cues the kids to clean up and get ready to go home.

Still, holding a toddler's attention for more than an hour can require the finesse and speed of a magician, and the kids can get squirrelly toward the end of class if a teenager falters between one lesson and the next.

"I think the hardest part is transitioning from one activity to another," Thom said.

Sarah Lemagie • 952-882-9016