Librarian Shaming.

I guess we should have known this was coming. Here's my first library confession!

What....why?

My youngest child was born in 2000.  Let's be honest, she has no memory what so ever about 9/11. She has however reached the age where she understands what it means when some talks about it.  Well, I am not often caught off guard by anything the kids say to me, but 9/11 this I was.  

A third grader was checking out her book and when she turned to leave she said,

 

"Happy 9/11, Mrs. Honey"

I am sad to say that I had nothing to say back.  Very rarely am I left speechless, but that day I was.  I was so shocked I didn't even correct her before she made it out my door.   

Teacher Crack.... Not even once

Would you like to track your package?  Hell yes I'd like to track my package!

I love to order things on line. I have ordered just about everything online from shampoo to dog food.  What do I love even more then ordering things online?  Tracking the things I have ordered. The minute tracking history is available for my online purchase, I am online tracking it.  I will check my order two to five times a day. Every time I check my email (which is also a lot), I'm tracking my package status. I like to know where my package is every step of the trip. 

And death to those who do not deliver by their expected delivery date!  

Bring it on!

Every year the students can be pretty predictable. I've had most of these kids since kindergarten, so I know how most of them will behave or not behave in my class. But there's always the new kindergarteners and no one can predict what they will be like. So about the middle of the first week a note appeared in my mailbox from the counselor.

It said:

"Please know that when you have "student" in your class that he will throw fits when he gets mad. He will lay on the floor and hold his breath and it may look like he is having a seizure, but please know he is fine and in no danger. Please ignore this behavior and try not to draw attention to it or allow other students to make a big deal of this. Please just make sure he is safe (make sure no one will step on him) and go on with class."


I have heard that he threw a fit in the lunch room and held his breath till he passed out. You got to admire his follow-thru.


All I can say is bring it on!

One Breakfast Meat to rule them all!

At the beginning of last year my principal asked me to help out with breakfast duty the first week of school.  Well after the first week, I just kept going back and helping out.  I've never had lunch duty and I always eat in the library during my lunch, so I've never really watched the kids eat. So during my time on breakfast duty I made a few interesting observations.

First, with a handful of sausage links, I think I could rule that school.  These kids are serious about their breakfast meats.  As soon as they sit down, they start eyeing everybody else's tray. When they find someone who hasn't taken a bite of their sausage, they start with the question, "you gonna eat that?"  This will be asked repeatedly by several kids. It's best to sit down and take a bite immediately so the other kids will leave you alone.  I'm thinking about loading my pockets with sausage links and whipping them out throughout the day to keep the kids in line.

Second, have people completely stopped teaching their kids how to eat?  I have noticed that when we have pancakes or waffles that the kids have no idea how to cut them up with their fork into bite size pieces.  They wil either pick it up with their hands and eat it or they will stab it in the middle and pick the whole thing up, while tilting their head sideways to eat off the fork.  Are people not making their kids eat right or are they only serving them foods they can eat with their hands?


ALL HAIL MRS. HONEY, THE SAUSAGE QUEEN!

Kindergarten Name Game 2013 Edition

Well it's the first day of school and we are once again playing the kindergarten name game.  One of the kindergarten teaches brought me her class and while we were going over names and she told me that one of her students had told her their name was POOTY.  Yes POOTY.

You might be a teacher if.......

1. You obsessively count the number of kids with you at all times to make sure you haven't lost anyone.

2. On any outing, even with adults, you ask if everyone has been to the potty before you leave.

3. Your wardrobe includes a decorative sweater for all major holidays.

4. Your shoe collection is reduced to two pairs of identical, sensible flats. One brown pair and one black pair. (If you ever accidentally wear one brown shoe and one black shoe and don't realize your mistake until the end of the day, you might be ready for a mental health day!).

5. You truly believe that hand sanitizer can cure any ailment.

6. You want everything to come in equal numbers so that they can be divided up into buddies, with none left out.


I will be adding to this list as I go along. If you have any suggestions please mention them in the comments.

Spoiler Alert

One of my pet peeves is when kids yell out and ruin a good story. So I decided to make something visual to remind the kids not to ruin a story. I found mini milk jugs at the grocery store and bought five of them. One for each table. Then my family drank the milk. I experimented with different ways to make "fake" milk. I found that if you mix white school glue with water, it looks just like milk. So I put just a little "fake" milk in each jug and made a sign that I taped on the side that says "please don't spoil the story." Then I had a lesson where we talked about what it means to spoil a story. Now if someone spoils a story, they get one of the milk jugs put on their table. If your table has a milk jug, everyone on that table has to go last. If every table gets a milk jug then that class does not get to do the fun stuff that I plan for the end of their class time. We did this for practice this week and all I had to do was hold it up and shake it if someone forgot. I had very few interruptions.

I missed that part

Today I was teaching story elements to 1st grade and we were discussing characters. We read the story "Click, Clack, Moo, Cows that Type." After I finished the story I asked the kids to name the characters from the story.

Mrs. Honey, "Can you name a character from our story today?"

Kid: "Dr. Seuss."

What? Did I miss that part? Exactly where in the book "Click, Clack, Moo, Cows that Type" did you see Dr. Seuss?

What's your name again?

I had a new kindergartener today and as I've talked about before I often lose when playing the name game with them. I knew the little girl's first name from a previous class but had not put it into the computer yet, so I needed her last name.

"What is your last name?"

"Jacqueline"

"Can you spell that for me?"

"K-E-N-N-E-D-Y"

"What?" How do you confuse Kennedy and Jacqueline?

I can only assume that Jacqueline was her middle name. But who knows?

It keeps getting better!

While I was writing my Valentine's Day post a student came into my library to bring me a Valentine. Now usually I get one of the kid Valentine's that they hand out in class.  Which cute even though I know I only got one because they had extras. But hey at least they thought of me.  So that is what I was expecting when this student entered the room.  I have never been so wrong. The student handed me a blank piece of notebook paper folded in half,  with the directions from the kid to "do it yourself, Happy Valentine's Day!"

Valentine's Day 2013

I thought I'd include a few pictures from Valentine's Day. If you look closely you might just find a picture of Mrs. Honey hiding among the balloons! Also check out the balloon in the third picture. Seriously, who sends a balloon to their kid that's says I want you Valentine? There is just something really wrong with that.

The Dark Days of Elementary

I started this post to describe the most hated two days in elementary; Valentine's Day and Halloween. I then realized I missed a couple of other horrible days for elementary school teachers. Altogether there are four days every school year that strike fear in the hearts of elementary teachers.

Number one on my list would have to be Valentine's Day. First of all it's a pointless. It's suppose to be a holiday celebrating romantic love between two people. Instead, in my world it becomes the holiday where parents try to see who can buy the most crap for their kids. At our school all deliveries are sent to the gym until party time. By noon the entire gym floor is covered in flowers, candy baskets, balloons, and every stuffed animal you could possible imagine. There have also been a few instances of jewelry included in those deliveries. I mean really flowers and jewelry for elementary school kids? Another reason to hate the holiday? Candy! Now don't get me wrong, I live on candy 90% of the time. Sugar runs through my veins on a daily basis. But that doesn't mean I want to deal with 20 kids hyped up on it all morning. It's like having a roomful of meth addicted chihuahuas who all need to go to the bathroom. It's not pretty.

Next on the list is Halloween. Another holiday that is celebrated by eating as much candy as you possibly can before puking. Also if you're really lucky and it falls on a school night you get a roomful of kids who stayed up late eating candy and running around town the night before. There's also the chance that a kid might accidentally stumble onto your house during their candy raids. In that case they will then have to tell you and everyone they know that they know where you live.

Finally, the last two on my list; April Fool's Day and St. Patrick's Day. Now don't get me wrong I love a good prank, but these kids just don't get it. Here's a standard April Fool's Day prank from one of my elementary kids:

"Mrs. Honey, there's a spider on your shirt."
"Really?"
"APRIL FOOLS"

Repeat at least fifty more times before the end of the day. Apparently anything can count as an April Fool's joke as long as you yell "April Fool's" as loudly as you can afterwards.

As for St. Patrick's Day? Really? Unbridled pinching of anyone who happens to forget and doesn't wear green. The carnage is hard to take. It's madness!

Before I close, I do want to add one note of happy about Valentine's Day. In my town we have a local family business that has donated a balloon and a small snack pack for each student who doesn't receive any gifts. So in our school everybody gets a little something and nobody goes home empty handed.

Pajama Day

Pajama Day is always so fun for the kids. There is something just so exciting about doing something that your not suppose to do like wearing pajamas to school. Of course a hundred kids plus 5 teachers wearing pajamas is not enough of a clue for me that it actually is pajama day, so everyone of them has to point out to me that they are indeed wearing pajamas and that it is pajama day.
This year one of the teachers told me that one of the kids asked if they were going to wear their pajamas to the library. She asked him if he had brought any other clothes. He told her no, so she asked what did he think they were going to wear to the library if they didn't have any other clothes at school. He just looked at her and asked again. She shook her head and said yes they were going to wear their pajamas to the library.
Also this year we had a preemptive pajama day. One day about two weeks before the official pajama day I was walking the halls and saw a little boy skipping to class in Spongebob Squarepants pajamas. I turned and watched as he walked down the hall without a care in the world. When I saw his class after lunch, the pajamas were gone. His teacher told me they called mom and dad who bought him a change of clothes. Apparently, he told them it was pajama day and they just believed him and let him wear his pajamas. Honest mistake you say? Yeah, not really. He has a step brother who also lives with them and is also in kindergarten who did not show up in pajamas.
On a side note, please stop sending your five year old to pajama day is one piece, footy pajamas. It's just weird.

My Heart Will Go On

The I survived series of books have become very popular in my school. It really amazes me how kids do not get the concept of historical fiction. Either everything is true or it's all made up. They do not understand how a made up story can use real events from history. The other day I was checking out the book "I survived the sinking of the Titanic." The student turned to me and asked me... "Rose was the only one who survived that, right?" It took a minute before I realized he was referring to the movie Titanic. "Honey, that was a made up movie. The Titanic was real, but the people in that movie were mostly made up". I'm still not sure he got the idea.

I told this story to another teacher who also pointed out the fact that a 4th grader probably shouldn't be familiar with a movie that shows sex and nudity. Hopefully he watched the edited TV version.

Oh how I love thee. Let me count the ways....

This was from a kindergarten teacher who had the students create this page about how much they loved their mothers. This child obviously loves his mother very much!

Mrs. Arty is at it again!

It's sexy penguins time!

Delivery Men

I am a big believer of on line shopping. In my opinion if you can't get it online you probably didn't need it anyway. I have recently discovered that Walmart will ship almost anything to you for free. Since we live almost 30 miles from the nearest Walmart and with the price of gas it is far cheaper for me to order household products and have them delivered straight to my house, then to drive all the way to the nearest Walmart. So during Christmas break I put in a large order for dog food, kitchen cleaner, ink cartridges and a few other odds and ends.
I saw the delivery truck pull up to my house a few days before Christmas. I went to meet the delivery man at my front door and found him trying to body block my packages from the prying eyes of about half a dozen neighborhood kids. Only one of those kids belonged to me but my house seems to be very popular with the neighbor kids. Partly because I have the biggest yard and partly because we have a trampoline. So anyway the delivery man was trying to hide my boxes from the kids. When I opened the door he told he was sorry and was trying to hide them from the kids. I said "don't worry, it's just dog food." We then heard the kids collectively groan and turn around to head back to the trampoline. Like I told my daughter later, "I always have the good stuff delivered to school."