Today my 1st-graders and I passed out Halloween stickers to staff around the school, and one student wanted to give me a sticker. He chose a sticker that said "BOO!" and (inadvertently, I think) put it right on my, er, boo. Later, a couple of my first-graders were getting WAY too frustrated with themselves when they were unable to write their cursive letters as perfectly as they wanted to. I wanted to show them that I don't always write mine perfectly, that everybody makes mistakes, it's not that big of a deal, etc. So I had them dictate sentences to me and I wrote them in cursive on the board. Then I started pointing out all my mistakes/sloppy strokes. They quickly got the hang of it and took over and showed me the rest of my mistakes - had a lot of fun with it, actually! When the ultimate teachable moment arrived, I said, "Do you know why I made those mistakes?" One student said, "Because you're old?"
Yesterday I dressed a little nicer than usual (i.e., it's time to do laundry and all I have left is my uncomfortable dressy stuff). As soon as one of my 3rd-graders saw me, he said with enthusiasm, "Now that's the way to dress, Miss Kerri!" He went on, basically saying in his own way that I should dress more professionally. Today I wore my usual garb (navy blue pants, long-sleeved tee - it's not that bad!) and he said, "Miss Kerri, tomorrow you should dress nicely again." My comfort argument did no good.
Yesterday we played an alphabet-version of Twister with some big-ish letters on the floor and I had fun twisting my students into pretzels. It was neat to see them having fun with it and not fighting with each other when they fell on each other. The rush of power went to my head and at one point when every hand and foot was on a letter, I said, "Now everyone put your nose on the letter W." They actually tried, and it was hilarious. One 3rd-grader got close to pulling a groin muscle, I think. When I said at the end of the game, "That was fun," he said, "It was not!" with wide eyes and a half-smile.
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