Three Ditties…One Day…One Kid

It’s no secret that funny lives in my First Grade classroom, and probably in First Grade classrooms all over the country…all over the world even!  I’m telling you, if you’re ever having a bad day, find a First Grade teacher and ask if you can spend the day with her.  You will LOL all day long….well, actually, you’ll bite your tongue or turn your head to hide the fact that you’re LOLing all day long (or, if you’re like me, you’ll run around the classroom looking for paper to write it all down).  The point is, you’ll laugh, and the best part…the kids have no idea how funny they are. 

Typically, funny will be spread pretty evenly among several children throughout any given day.  On this particular day, however, funny lived in one kid…he had his funny on and I have the following ditties to prove it.

Ditty #1

It was the 106^th day of school and I was a bit frustrated with my class because, on this 106th day of school, they are still not starting their sentences with capital letters.  Grrr!  (In case you’re wondering, I really don’t obsessively count school days…we do it as part of our Calendar routine, so in the primary grades it’s kind of a big deal.)

I give the kids my best (and very well worn) “It’s the 106th day of school, and I’m still seeing sentences that don’t begin with capital letters” lecture (cue Charlie Brown’s teacher).  The kids are looking at me like they are just as shocked as I am that on the 106th day of school their classmates are committing this heinous crime against punctuation, when the fact of the matter is that most of them are totally guilty!

About two whole minutes after this lovely lecture, I find myself working with a student who…no surprise…has not a single sentence on his paper that begins with a capital letter.  Grrr again!  I point to his first sentence and say, “Buddy, how do we start a sentence?”

He looks at me like oh, oh, oh, I totally know this, and says, “At the beginning.”

Doh!  Now how am I supposed to argue with that? 

Ditty #2

Fast forward about an hour.  We are in the middle of a Language Arts lesson about animal action words.  You know…how animals move.  We are discussing how, instead of just saying “The bird flies” we could say “The bird soars” and instead of saying “The cat plays with yarn” we could say “The cat wrestles the yarn.”  This is a bit hard for them, but they’re doing okay. Then my friend raises his hand and says, “A pig makes bacon” and he starts giggling…and then everyone starts giggling.  He’s totally cracked himself (and everyone else) up and, needless to say, our animal action words lesson was OVER!

Ditty #3

Fast forward another hour. It’s after lunch now and we are engrossed in our lesson.  Oh, who am I kidding?  I was engrossed in the lesson, though about five kids, bless them, were at least humoring me by pretending to be engrossed in the lesson.  The rest?  Well, let’s just say they were, well, not engrossed in the lesson.  However, the room was quiet, very, very quiet.  It was, that is, until my friend pulls something out of his pocket, holds it up like a prize, and says, “Look what I found!”  Now, this is not a teacher’s favorite thing to hear because it typically involves something gross, but this kid’s on a roll, so I bravely look his way to see what he’s got and he’s proudly displaying an orange.

In all my years, I don’t know if I’ve ever had a kid “find” an orange.

Me:  “Hmm, an orange.  Where did you find it?”

Him:  “At the lunch tables.”

My mind goes straight to picturing some poor kid who quickly went to the bathroom and then came back to find part of his lunch gone!  Though you know what?  I kind of like the way this kid thinks, so consider yourselves warned…if you see me coming your way, I highly recommend putting all of your food away because I just might “find” something I like! 

Times like this make me wonder if kids like this leave all their funny in the classroom, or if there’s even more funny at home.  And, boy oh boy, would I ever love to hear the funny they save for home!