Zippity-Doo-Dah!

Kindergarten kids crack me up! As I was unpacking the stuff I needed to teach a guidance class yesterday, I bragged on the children's test-taking ability. You see, every class in the school takes a quiz at the end of my lessons. They simply have to put a thumb up or down underneath their chins to indicate yes or no, and this helps me know whether they understood the lesson or not. Well, with kindergarten students, having 100% fast participation takes some practice, as you might imagine. To reinforce effort in this department, I've been counting how many times I have to say the word "thumb" to remind someone to take the test. In this particular class, I hadn't had to say it one single time during our last class, and this is what I was praising them for. I told them that they were the undisputed test-taking champions of all the kindergarten classes in the whole school. "You didn't need ANY reminders to show me your thumbs last time, none, nada, zero, zippity-doo-dah! " One squeaky-voiced little girl said, "What's zippity-doo-dah?" I said, "Well, zip is a funny way to say zero, and I just changed zip to zippity-doo-dah." Spontaneously, a big group of children started sing-songing, "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zippety-doo-dah!" I thought that was so clever and quick, and of course the teacher and I shared a giggle over her students' silly antics!