Kindergarten is Back...With a Spider in the Bathroom

Kindergarten started again this week.  We are at a brand new school site and I have 30 students.  Also, I'm the school's Garden Coordinator, I started a Masters Program, and I got engaged.  All of these things have happened in the past week. This year will be a wild ride!

I'm happy to say that after five first days of Kindergarten I am no longer surprised at how crazy it is. The kids are cute and hilarious, and I've loved getting to know their personalities.  I have one student who I am calling "The Squirrel" because she shoots around the room, gets into everything, and is outrageously cute.  Another student has (so far) spent every day wandering around my classroom crying as loudly as possible, begging me to call her mom. :(  And yet another student cannot use our Kindergarten bathroom because he is afraid of spiders.

The spider situation came to light today when said student came rushing up to me with a desperate look on his face.  He had already made one unsuccessful trip to the bathroom where he realized he was unable to unfasten his belt.  He oddly stalked back into the room, approached me and said,

"Can you do dis belt fing? It's really hard!"

I undid the belt, and he went streaking back out in the direction of the bathroom.  This happened right at the beginning of recess when all of my other students were sprinting in sweaty circles outside, while a student from another class was throwing a tantrum that I was called to assist with.

In the midst of all the chaos I forgot that my one student had gone to the bathroom. (Safety note: That bathroom is right outside my classroom which is next to the fenced in playground so he wasn't lost or unsupervised).  Near the end of recess I noticed the same student pacing in and out of the bathroom, muttering to himself and sporting a concerned expression.

My school principal was in the midst (due to the aforementioned tantrum) and he mentioned to me,

"Hey, why is *Johnny* still going in and out of that bathroom?"

I realized that he was right, and that Johnny had been inexplicably wandering around the bathroom area for a longer amount of time then is usually necessary.  To top off the scene, he now had his belt half-way off, and he was pacing back and forth with it dangling from the belt loops on one side of his body.  The principal thought his concern might be getting his belt back on, so he pulled him aside to coach him in putting his belt through the loops on his pants.

He managed to get his belt back on, but then immediately came up to me and asked to go to the bathroom again.  The situation was getting stranger and stranger so I finally asked him what was going on.  I told him he had spent plenty of time in the bathroom, and I wanted to know why he still had not gone.  He threw his head back, dropped his hands to his side, and gave a loud and exasperated sigh as he said,

"BECAUSE der is a SPIDER in der!  And if a spider bites you you will DIE!  And you hafta go to da hospital and get shots and I HATE shots!"

A true five year-old dilemna: Do I pee my pants, or face a bathroom spider?

From the way he was acting I pictured a tarantula in an elaborate web hanging over the urinal, but as I went into the bathroom to scope out the scene I could see no spider.  Johnny waved me over to a corner near the door, the farthest point from the bathroom stall, and pointed up at the ceiling.  There, in the tiniest crack near the window, was a small spider running back and forth.

"You see!!?  It's wight der!  Can you watch the spider so I can go pee?"

"You want me to keep an eye on the spider while you use the stall so it doesn't go near you?"

"Yeah!"

So that is how I found myself standing in the corner of the bathroom watching a small spider while a student went in the stall and FINALLY used the restroom.

I can't wait for day three.

*As always, names are changed.

La Llorona

To completely understand this story you're going to have to do some additional research.  It is imperative that you understand who La Llorona is, otherwise this will make little sense.

La Llorona

Thanks, Wikipedia!

(My most reliable source of information)

Essentially, she is a crying ghost-lady that tries to steal children (from what my five year old students tell me).

The other day I was sitting with a group of my students (Yellow Table, to be precise) who were working on writing in their journals.  Ideally, the children will draw pictures and write stories about past experiences, and then I will write back to them in their journals to draw out more information and encourage them to expand their writing.  In reality, my students always want to write about being at the park with Spiderman, or at Chucky Cheese with a princess.  When I remind them that they have to write about something that really happened to them they will put some sort of absurd spin on it.  Typically it goes down like this:

Me: "Tell me about your drawing!"

Student: "I am playing soccer with Spiderman!"

Me: "Hmm, is that something that REALLY happened?"

Student: "Oh, yeah, well, one time I was watching Spiderman and then I was dreaming about him playing soccer with me so that is why it really happened 'cause I dreamed it."

Sometimes I battle with them over this, but on this particular day I wasn't really in the mood so when my student told me he was drawing La Llorona I did not try and convince him to do something else. (I mean, there are only so many times you can write about going to the park!)

I asked him to tell me what La Llorona was doing, and he elaborated, "She is chasing me on my skateboard.  She is trying to get me because I was not being a good listener.  She steals kids.  My skateboard is a fire skateboard and it makes me go fast so I can get away from her.  The fire is on her head."

There were four other children at the table.  Two of them were very familiar with the tales of La Llorona, and two were not.  Upon hearing the first student's idea the two more familiar with the story immediately jumped on the bandwagon and began drawing their own versions of their encounters with La Llorona.

"This is me with La Llorona at a birthday party at the park!"

"I am playing soccer with La Llorona...at the park!"

(Always the park)

The other two students; however, sat confused.  "Who is La Llorona?" one little girl asked.

One student offered the explanation, "Oh, she is a lady who has a face like this," makes terrible face, "and hair like THIS, scribbles all over paper with black crayon, "and hands like THIS!" makes gnarled-claw hands.

"But why does she have yucky hands?"

"Because she is trying to steal kids and take them from their moms when they are so bad or they don't clean up their messes!"

She considered this for a moment, then turned to me and asked, "Is it for real?"

I was at an impasse.  This was the same little girl that would not put her feet on the floor for the entirety of St. Patrick's day because she was terrified that there was an actual leprechaun in the classroom.  As far as make-believe characters go she took them pretty seriously.   I could tell her yes, possibly scarring her forever, or tell her no and completely undercut a cultural story that was really important to several of the other students.  I turned the question around on her and asked, "Well, what do you think?"

She looked at me, looked at her friends, and said, "No, I don't think it's real."

The student with the original La Llorona inspiration threw down his black crayon (which he had been using to add some extra tangles to La Llorona's hair) and shouted, "IN MEXICO IT'S REAL!"

She looked at him, smiled and said, "Oh, that's OK then." and everyone continued to color.

Well, crises averted.  My students still believe in La Llorona, but think she is safely tucked away in Mexico.  

I win at teaching.

Love Potion

One of my student's parents invited Lee and I to come over for dinner a couple of weeks ago.  They are the nicest people in the world, so we readily accepted, although doing so required me to reveal to my student (and; therefore, my entire class) that I have a boyfriend.

Five year olds have a really hard time understanding what goes on in people's lives in between college and marriage.  I get questions all the time about this, such as, "Who do you live with?  Where are your kids?  Do you have a mom?  If you aren't married, then who do you sleep with?"  They have no concept of life after college but before marriage.  So while I don't hide the fact that I have a boyfriend, I don't really advertise it either because it is confusing to them.

Once word got out that I had a real life boyfriend that I LIKE like weird things started happening.  Granted, some of my students could not have cared less.  As long as I keep the legos available and the juice supply plentiful they have little concern about what I do.  However, a couple of the girls in my class were completely fascinated with my new-found relationship status and it caused them to act like, well, a bunch of school girls.

They began stealing off to corners of the playground to whisper and point at me.  I would catch snippets of conversations with words like boyfriend, love, gross, married, and the like.  When I approached the girls and asked them what they were talking about they would all laugh and cry, "NOTHING!!! But we know about your boyfriend!!!!" (I briefly considered giving them a life lesson on "playing it cool," but decided against it, as maintaining a straight face to cover your tracks is not a California State Standard).

Eventually this behavior spilled over into playtime, where for several days in a row all this gaggle of girls did was make lists.  Endless, endless lists.  At first I was fine with it because they were writing!  Hooray, a teaching success!  But then another one of my students, who walks a fine line between only caring about juice and being vaguely interested in other parts of my life came up to me and said she needed to say something important.

"Maestra Robin," she started, "I want you to know that those girls are making up a secret potion for you to drink."
"Oh really?" I said, "What kind of potion?"
"It's a kind of potion that makes you fall in love so you will kiss your boyfriend."
I considered this and then asked, "Why do they want me to kiss my boyfriend?"
Exasperated, my student threw her hands up in the air, "BECAUSE they want you to get married!"
"OK...." I carefully continued, "and why do they want me to get married?"
This particular student did a double take over both shoulders to make sure no one would hear the terrible plot that she was so carelessly revealing to me, "They want you to get married so they can be FLOWER GIRLS IN YOUR WEDDING!"

Well, there it was; the whole sordid plan spelled out for me.  A flower girl is a most coveted position for five year old girls, and it appears that they will stop at nothing to secure it.

I decided that this had gone on for long enough, so I sauntered over to the table where two girls were furiously scribbling away on two pieces of paper.  When they saw me they gasped and covered their papers, which I plucked out from underneath their hands to examine.

"What is this for?"  I asked.
"NOTHING!!!!" they both cried.  "Really, it's nothing."
"It doesn't look like nothing, " I replied, "It almost looks like you are trying to make some sort of...potion?"

Their facial expressions vacillated between disbelief and fear before one of them offered, "Oh yes!  It IS a  potion!  A potion for my BROTHER so he will fall in love with HIS girlfriend and kiss HER."
"YES!" the other one cried, "Her brother has a girlfriend!"

"Well, here's the thing:" I said, as their heads hung, fearing that they were about to be found out.  "If you're going to make lists for potions, you're going to need to write in Spanish."  Their eyes flashed up to me with shock.  They had gotten away with it!  They were making secret potion for me and I had NO idea.  They were so smart.

"OK Maestra!  We will!" (Cue the exchange of knowing glances)

Later I was able to get a copy of the secret potion ingredient list.  After some difficult decoding, this is what I think it says:

Salt, butter, milk, juice, sparkles,
pieces of pepper, cinnamon, crayons,
nail polish, ice, markers, soap, bean,
leaves, blood, Capri Sun's (apostrophe S?), germs, candy, brother's potion (nice try), glitter, magic, lipstick, hair. Water, lemon, orange juice, flower seeds, hand sanitizer, rock, feather's (there's that apostrophe again), play dough, eraser and pencils, blocks, grass, spit, boogers, bread, wax, stickers, wood, fruit, gum, strings, food, coffee, nails, rubber, fur, mucous, legos, plastic, tea, 6, glue, and buttons.

Thank God I'm still alive.

Today I learned Sudanese

There is a student in my English class who is hilarious.  I'm talking laugh-out-loud, I can't even contain myself, hilarious.  His speech pattern also adds to the amusement, as he enunciates e-ve-ry sin-gle sy-la-ble in e-ve-ry word.  Try envisioning a robot, or one of those text-to-speech functions on the computer, but with a really cute little kid voice and you have a good idea of how funny and adorable it is when this little guy talks...about the military.

He is obsessed with the military.  And ninjas.  AND Japan.  And Beijing, which he thinks is in Japan.    He feels it is his duty to inform everyone about all things pertaining to these themes.  No matter what our topic of conversation he will some how bring it back to something having to do with a military tactic that involved a ninja war in Beijing, Japan (See, Bullies).  Not really in a gory or graphic sort of way, but more in a History Channel sort of way.

Today we walked into class and he immediately sat on the rug, shot his hand into the air, and gave me the giant eyes, please call on me before I explode from suspense, type of look.  I could not resist because I knew it would be awesome.

Child: "Ms. Robin!  I have something to share with the class!"
 

Me: "OK, come up here in front to share."
 

Child: "Everyone. pause for effect.  I can speak Sudanese."
 

Me: Knowing that no other child had any idea what he was talking about.  "Yes, Sudanese, like, an African language from the Sudan, I'm assuming?"
 

Child: "Yes.  And I know a song in Sudanese."
 

Me: "Really?  Um, are you going to sing it?"
 

Child:  BLAUIIU BIUAINGN OIGUISONEV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  Really, he just belted out a ton of Sudanese? words at top volume with a slight change of musical notes.

When he was finished with the song many of the other children started snickering, and I had to interrupt them to say, 

Me: "Hey!  We wouldn't laugh at someone for speaking English, and we wouldn't laugh at someone for speaking Spanish, so it's not OK to laugh at someone who might be speaking Sudanese."
 

Child: "I learned about the Sudanese and the war they had in 1982.   They were fighting with a military which had a very large gun, called a Black Hawk Down.  There were helicopters that are also called Black Hawk Down.  I learned about this from a movie."
 

Me: "Was the movie called, Black Hawk Down?"
 

Child: "YES!  I know all about the Sudanese and about the wars in Beijing, Japan."
 

Me: "OK, thanks so much for sharing!  You can go sit down now!"

And that's how I learned my first Sudanese song.

Maybe.

Bowling for Bullies on Bulls

This month our school is focusing on standing up to bullies and bullying prevention.  It was my job to prep my English class before our morning assembly which would introduce this new month-long focus.  Here is how the introduction went:

Me: "We are going to an assembly about something very serious.  It's going to be about bullying.  Does anyone know what bullying is?"

Child 1: "Yes, it's like when you have the pins, and you throw the ball like this (ball throwing motion) and then you knock the pins over!"

Me: "No, that's BOWLING.  I'm talking about BULLYING.  Does anyone know what that means?"

Child 2: "Yes, bullies are what you ride.  I've seen my dad ride one, and they have the things like this (motions horns growing out of head)."

Me: "Close...that is a BULL.  Does anyone know about BULLIES?"

Child 3: "One time, I saw in the Karate Kid there was a big karate bully and he had an ARMY of karate bullies!  I like Japan."

Me: "Yes, the mean kid in Karate Kid is a bully.  A bully is someone who tries to hurt someone's feelings on purpose.  It makes people feel sad."

Child 4: "Yeah, like if someone says, 'Oh, I like your shirt!' that is on purpose and then there is a bully!"

Me: "Right...let's go to the assembly."

The Egg Business Circa 1992

My brother and I had various money making schemes growing up. They originated with us trying to sell our toys to each other, or food out of the refrigerator to my parents claiming we were a "toy store," or "restaurant" respectively.  We quickly learned that trying to sell people their own property was not only questionably unethical, but not all that lucrative.  We were looking for the big score, and we knew we had to expand our horizons in order to make any real cash.

Enter the chickens.  My parents were kind enough to give us a 4H-ish experience growing up that included chickens, ducks, rabbits, dogs, and cats.  We had a chicken coop at the end of our property that my father spent HOURS trying to wild-animal proof (It took a couple of tries and we lost a few fowl in the process).  Once the Taj Mahal/ Fort Knox of chicken coops was completed those chickens must have felt a knew-found sense of security because the eggs started flowing.  I mean, A LOT of eggs.  Sometimes several dozen every week depending on the rotation of live chickens at any given time.

After hearing my parents complain about us having too many eggs my seven year old business savvy was alerted, and I realized we (the chickens?) were sitting on brown and white gold mine.  (Not all eggs are white, for those of you who didn't grow up in the sticks).

My business plan was as follows: My brother and I would take our red wagon, fill it full of eggs, pull it up and down our street where we would go door to door selling the eggs for 50 cents a piece.

Well, the plan was doomed from the beginning.  Observe:

We didn't live on a street.  
We lived on a dirt road.  We didn't take into account the forces of physics involved in dragging the rickety wheels of a little red wagon over the rocks and pot holes of a back-country road, coupled with the fragility of an eggs shell and the cold, hard metal of the inside of the wagon.  Not to mention, our "neighbors" were neighbors in that their homes were also on the dirt road, but they weren't RIGHT next door.  There was a lot of ground to cover between the houses.  Predictably, the first day of the egg business resulted in our product lying in a scrambled mess at the bottom of the red wagon.


My Brother
Brennan's involvement in the business was more of a PR stunt than anything else.   He was SUPER cute, and he had several speech impediments, which I knew would endear any would-be egg buyers.  However, at only four, there was no way he could deal with the difficult addition that was necessary for the egg business, plus he didn't have any knowledge concerning the value of US coins.  He just knew that they were "money" but that was about as far as it went.   Several times I caught him putting the "money" in his pocket, and not in the predesignated corner of the wagon that would serve as our "bank" because he liked money, and he knew that having it in your pocket was a good idea.  This enraged me, and caused me to accuse him of being a thief.

The Price of the Eggs
As someone who, almost twenty years later, buys eggs on a semi-regular basis it's now obvious to me that my price of 50 cents an egg was ludicrous.  Especially because they had zero quality control, and, especially during the summer months, there really was no telling weather or not those eggs were edible.  I was essentially taking advantage of the egg monopoly I had created, and I got too greedy.

Eventually we scrapped the egg business.  We were overcharging, and let's face it: It was a pain to haul those eggs up and down that dirt road.

Safe Touches

This week I am required to give my students lessons on Safe Touches, or as they are known in my class: "Yes Touches, No Touches, and Confusing Touches."

The touching curriculum comes in a special canvas bag (it's purple, if you must know) and includes a giant binder with old, yellowing pages and an even more ancient VHS tape that claim to have all the resources I need to teach my kids about keeping their bodies safe.

My trusty binder told me that the first Safe Touches lesson was to include the viewing of a fifteen minute video, followed by a brief discussion about types of touching and whether they make people feel happy, sad, or confused.

This seemed easy enough, and as I brought my students back in from recess I settled them all in for the video which was supposed to not only provide them with the necessary skills to protect their personal safety, but give them lots of insight regarding bullying, manipulation, and "stranger danger."  The lesson would, surely, be flawless.

Except for one tiny detail: Upon pressing the play button it became evident that I had committed one of the greatest errors a teacher can make.  I did not watch the video before I showed it to the kids, and boy, was it a doozy.

For starters, it was painfully obvious that the video was made in the late seventies/ early eighties.  The cinematography, the costumes, the haircuts, they all screamed of a time when shorts were shorter and they mustaches were plentiful.

Secondly, (and this further proves the aforementioned reference to the eighties) I'm pretty sure the same people that made the movie Laberinth made this "Safe Touches" video.  Laberinth, in case you grew up in a cave/ were born anytime after 1989, is a movie about a girl who somehow casts her baby brother into a world of goblins (puppets) and then she has to go through a laberinth to find him again.   It stars Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie.  Director? Jim Henson.  Seriously, it is the weirdest movie ever.

Anyway, the Safe Touches video features "Thadeus," a freckle faced boy who keeps getting picked on by a big kid at school.  Thadeus' special flashlight takes him into a magic world where two talking frogs, a CARP (yes, as in, strange fish) and a squid teach him lessons about "Saying No, Getting Away, and Telling Someone."

My students could not get past the weirdness of the video.  Here were a few of their questions:

"Why is his name Fatty-ass?" (Thadeus rhymes with...)
"Who is the fish?" (Professor enter name I don't remember here)
"Why does the fish have a square on his head?" (He is a professor)
"Why does the fish have a mustache?" (Carp have mustaches?)
"Why does that rocket have legs?" (Because it's a squid)
"Why is there smoke everywhere?" (Would be stalkers, strangers, and "no-touchers" creepily emerged from some unexplainable, near-by mist whenever they were referenced).

When the video had ended I spent the remainder of the lesson answering many of the above questions. 

No time to talk about personal safety when strange men with short shorts and large mustaches are approaching a young boy learning life-lessons from a fish sporting facial hair and a graduation hat while his friend, the rocket with legs, looks on.

I think I'll do the rest of the lessons without the videos.

Tic Tac Toe?

Many of the kids in my class have gotten interested in playing Tic Tac Toe.  I think it's a great game for my students and I encourage them to play it when they have free choice time.  My student "Johnny" has been watching his peers play the game and he REALLY wants to participate, but he doesn't understand how it works.  If someone is ever nice enough to try to play with him it usually turns into a fight a couple of minutes in with the other student crying, "He is CHEATING!!!!! He will not let me put my letter down!"  Ultimately, the other kids get frustrated and don't want to play with him.  Not wanting to squash Johnny's Tic Tac Toe dreams, I often end up "playing" against him.  The other day our game went like this:

Johnny: "Teacher!  You wanna play Ticky Tac Toe wif me!?"
Me: "Sure.  Do you want me to draw out the grid?"
Johnny: "NO!" he snatches the tiny whiteboard away from me "I will do it!"

So "Johnny" draws a board that looks like this:

 

Johnny: "OK, teacher, I be dee X and you be dee Os.  I GO FIRST!"

He took to his little whiteboard then, and diligently drew a smattering of Xs and Os all over the page.  In Johnny's version of Tic Tac Toe his opponent never actually touches the writing utensil.  The entire match is played out according to his wishes.  While he was writing the letters he squealed with glee, "X!!!" and "O!!!!" as he became more and more pleased with himself after each successful printing of a letter.

When it was done it looked like this:

 

Johnny held the board up to me and grinned at me as he began his celebratory screaming:

Johnny: "I WIN!!!!!!!! And you lose!" 

Me: "Umm...YAY! You wrote a lot of Xs and Os!"

Johnny: "YES!!!! I am Spiderman!"

Me: "Yeah, he probably writes lots of Xs and Os too."

Adsense and Fart Noises

I now have ads on my blog.  Google Adsense determines which ads to place on my page based on the content of my posts.  I know it's not an exact science, but I'm sure they use some sort of program that picks up on frequently used words and chooses the ads based off of those.  As I glanced over the ads on my side bar today, I noticed something funny:

Online School, Grades K-12 (because I work in education!)

Sacramento Coupons (because I live in Sacramento!)

Teacher Certification (because I'm a teacher!)

Best Friend Quotes (because I have friends!)

and

Fart Noises (because I far-- wait? WHAT?)

Yes, FART NOISES.

I have no idea WHAT I have been writing to make Google Adsense think that I have readers that are interested in locating artificial fart noises, but if that sounds like something you are looking for (and Google seems to think you are) you're welcome!

*****POST EDIT******

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!  After adding this post about the fart noises ad the ads changed again to include Fart Sounds, and POOP NOISES.  This is awesome.

The Best Part of the Holidays

First of all, I can't find my camera, which is making the blogging a little difficult, but a large-scale search involving the depths of the couch cushions and the bottom of a pile of laundry is being launched tomorrow, so to be continued on that.

More importantly, Christmas season is here!

I really love Christmas.  I love the smells, I love snow, I love scarves, I love the trees, and the presents, and the magic.  (I really do think it's magic).  This year; however, I've found something that I think I love most of all:  The Holiday Target Lady.  You can check out all of the commercials here, but I warn you to do so with an empty bladder.  I nearly pee myself every time one of these flashes across the TV.