Tales From First Grade

Well, it's been an eventful (read busy) month.  I just noticed that I hadn't blogged in a very long time, so I thought I'd pass on some funny things that happened in my classroom today.

First, one of our Aboriginal Support Workers came in to tell my students about the fall gathering that our school would be hosting this Friday.  She told the students that some elders would be coming to tell stories and some of the students would be making soup and bannock.  One of my little boys put up his hand and asked who was coming.  He was told it was aboriginal people.  The this he asked "So, what, are they French or something?"  The ASW, trying not to laugh told him that they were aboriginal and pointed out one of our aboriginal students and said like him.  This was a nice try, but the aboriginal boy is not quite to the age where he has self-identified with a specific race yet and he seemed alarmed and said "Who, me?"  You would have thought we told him he was a dog the way he reacted with disbelief.  We dodged around that question for a little while before the first little boy accepted that French people were not coming to do some storytelling, set up tee pees and make bannock.

Later, during story time, I had just made a good start on The Gingerbread Girl, when I caught a whiff of something unholy.  I mean, it was bad enough I had to breath through my mouth.  I chose to be the bigger person (well, I already sort of am) and ignore it.  However, when I got a repeat performance about 30 seconds later I decided I was going to asphyxiate before the story was over if I didn't address my students about this little breach of etiquette.  So, I put my finger in the book to mark my place and lay the book on my lap. I said, "Boys and girls, someone is farting and it smells pretty bad.  I'm not going to point a finger at anyone, but you know who you are and you need to stop or go to the bathroom."  A couple of people agreed that it was pretty stinky in their vicinity as well.  Nobody confessed, but you don't have to look very hard at a 6 year old's face to find the guilty one.  I knew exactly who my little bomber was.  Luckily, my plea for clean air did not fall on deaf ears and the pollution stopped.  Well, at least until story time was over.

I'll leave you with a picture I got from one of my students after I had a bad day.  She told me she made it for me just because she liked me.