Lesson in a Nutshell

While teaching a kindergarten class a lesson on understanding feelings and why that's important, a "fortuitous accident" occurred, and it summed up the lesson nicely. I had just finished teaching the children 3 clues for understanding how others feel. Look at face, body, what's going on. We discussed reading facial expressions, body language, and the events happening around us. We also discussed how understanding feelings helps us be a good friend. Since the students had been listening and focusing impressively for a while, we all stood up and bounced around to get our wiggles out. The rhythmic chant we repeated over and over as we jumped was, "Face, Body, What's going on!" Well while I was hopping around, a couple of charms fell off my bracelet. Immediately kindergartners of all shapes and sizes dropped to their knees in an effort to retrieve the runaway baubles. As soon as this mission was accomplished, they crowded around me, passing out hugs and condolences. Realizing that this was exactly what we'd been learning about, I squealed with excitement.
"Hey Y'all!" I exclaimed. "Look what's going on! This is what our lesson is teaching us!"
A tawny haired girl blurted, "Yea! We looked at face, body, what's going on, and we could tell you were sad.
"And what did you do?" I asked.
"We helped you find your charms and gave you a hug."
"And why did you do that?" I continued.
"Because we wanted to be a good friend!" they enthused.
And that, my friends, was our lesson in a nutshell! I'd say that the charm bracelet mishap had perfect timing!

His Heart Was in the Right Place Anyway!

The other morning, I was setting up to teach a second grade guidance class as the children were returning from art. The teacher was getting some papers ready to grade and was preparing to leave the room while I taught her class. Beside me, I noticed a little boy with a cowlick walk politely up to the teacher and put something in her hand. Although he said something to her, I couldn't hear his words. With a grin, the teacher said to the child, "Why thank you! I'll enjoy this while I work!" Since it was obvious from my expression that I was curious, the child sedately explained that he had just given his teacher a salted caramel cookie (which happened to be invisible, by the way!). Playing along, I responded, "How SWEET!" With a nod, the boy started back to his seat, made a U-turn, walked back to me and said, "Here, I have another one." And he placed an invisible soft, warm cookie in my hand as well. What a cutie, and how my mouth watered and tummy grumbled as I began to teach the class!

Foxy Loxy

Puppets are a huge hit with most primary schoolers, so I bring a bag of them to my kindergarten guidance classes.  If I have animal puppets that match the characters in the story we'll be reading that day, I bring those. Otherwise, I bring "visitor" puppets who want a chance to get out of the blasted toy box and be loved by real children!  The other day, I had a story called Nobody Likes Me to read to the class.  It was full of animal characters, so I brought a big dog, little dog, cat, rabbit, lamb, and mouse. The hero of the story is a fox, so I was dismayed when I realized that he was missing from the puppet bag.  "Oh no!" I cried.  "Where's the fox?  I KNOW I took him out of the toy box because  I remember that he was the easiest one to find!  What happened to him over the weekend?  He must have run away!"  Then I heard the most clever words escape the mouth of a pig-tailed girl wearing rainbow stripes.  To the tune of the Baha Men's song, she  sang, "Who let the fox out... who, who, who, who?"  (Think "Who Let the Dogs Out?")  Now that's one little girl who was paying attention, making connections, and is one funny, smart cookie!

Awkward!!

We all know that kindergarten children don't always have the most highly developed filters, and that can make what they say and do surprising, embarrassing, precious, and / or hilarious. Well, yesterday a little boy asked a question that covers three of those four adjectives! As I was unpacking my teaching materials in preparation for a classroom guidance lesson, I picked up my ever-present Care Cat puppet. A sweet little girl piped up, "Miss Mimi, I cheered up my friend when she was crying."
"You were caring about her feelings," I responded. "That makes Care Cat so happy that he's purring!" And I reached over and had the puppet give the child a hug as I made a purring sound. In a split second, a handsome dark-haired boy sitting on the front row blurted out, "Did you just make that cat fart?" Thinking I'd heard him correctly but hoping I HADN'T, I ignored the comment and just kept unpacking. Of course this wasn't good enough, so he once again said, "Miss Mimi, did you just make that cat fart?" At this point his teacher, trying to keep a straight face, said, "The cat was PURRING, Sweetie." And then she ducked her head and pretended to be really busy with paperwork. I saw her giggle trying to escape, though, and that made it even harder to carry on maturely. However, I did my best, and without letting myself belly laugh, I started the lesson with no more embarrassing comments and questions popping up. You just never know what you'll hear when you work with kindergartners, and I'm sure that holds true for students of ALL ages! By the way, the answer I WANTED to give to the little boy's question was, "As IF!!"