Class Xmas Party

Today was our Christmas Party. I must say, it was a ton of fun. The class moms were excellent and took care of everything. One of the highlights of the party were the pinatas. Each class (3 in total) had one pinata. My class got to go first to break their pinata. Each child took turns swinging 3 times. After all had gone, not a dent was made in the pinata, so... Round Two of pinata whacking went on and still no damage done. Knowing that we had to break the freaking thing open, I decided to give it a go. On my second swing the stick cracked in two, causing one end to fly at my students, nailing one if them in the arm. I felt horrible, but what could I do. I looked over, and to my luck, one of my parents had video taped me hitting the pinata, breaking the stick, and hitting my student. Just my luck. I had to think fast so I just gave him th stick and told him to take a turn. Thank God all was forgotten after he got a couple swings in. I learned a valuable lesson: make sure you face away from students when hitting a pinata. Despite this event, the party was a ton of fun (even the parents had a blast). Tomorrow is a half day and then we get three weeks off!!! I am so excited. Christmas in San Diego and New Year's in Tahoe... life is good!

Funny kidz stuff

I realize that people wonder how the heck I can work with 4-5 year olds all day long and stay sane. At times I wonder this myself as I ave been known to not be the most patient person on the planet, but somehow I manage. I think what keep me going is how cute and innocent the kids are. They are so sweet and are always good for a laugh. While I know my story-telling abilities are usually shite, bare with me as I tell some of my favorite stories so far.

"The Elephant with Four Eyes"
One of my assignments I had my students do was identify and color their favorite animal. Basically it was an easy task of choosing a coloring sheet, coloring it, and then cutting it out and gluing into their Topic Book for "Favorite Animal". There was no creating the animal, or gluing anything to the animal, just pick it put, color it, and cut it out. This assignment was done during one of my free periods, so another teacher was supervising my class. When I returned to the class students were shouting to me "Miss Fudge, look, I like cats!" "See my tiger!" "Miss Fudge, I like dogs" and so on. As I walked around the classroom I went up to a boy John who said, "Look, Miss Fudge, I like elephants." As I looked at his elephant, he had strategically drawn on a piece of paper a line with to dots to each side (looking very similar to a penis) and had glued it (even though nothing was told to get glued to the picture) where the genitals would be. A bit shocked and puzzled as to why he had done this, I pointed to the line and two dots and asked, "John, what are these?" "Eyes. My elephant has four eyes." I wasn't quite sure how to respond but I also did not want to explain to him that those were not eyes, so now John's elephant has four eyes.

"F,f,f.... fish!"
Part of our curriculum is teaching phonics and words that begin with all the letter sounds. For example: c,c,c, cat and d,d,d dog. One day (of course when a parent was helping out) I was teaching the sound 'f'. I asked the kids to shout out words that begin with this sound. So began the shouting of words "f,f,f, four!" "f,f,f, five" "f,f,f, fox" "f,f,f, Miss Fudge" "f,f,f, F*#@!". As I heard the word come out of little Andy's mouth I could only look up to the mother looking at me wondering how I would handle this.. "No, Andy, give me a new one." "Ok, f,f,f, fish" he replied. "Great job," I responded, as I tried to move on as if nothing had happened, praying that none of the other kids would pick up on this 'f' word.

Love at the Age of Four
My friend Sheridan and I team teach a lot, so our kids all know each other very well and they know both Sheridan and I well. What this has resulted in is students wanting to go into each other's classrooms to share with both the other students and with Sheridan and I. This also has resulted in some very close friendships between the two classes as well. What four year olds do not know is the crushes begin at this age and they are very apparent. One of these crushes that has formed is between one of my girls, Cynthia, and one of Sheridan's boys, Jason. One afternoon Cynthia came up to me, "Miss Fudge, can I go to Miss Potter's class?" "Why?" I asked. "To give Jason a high five," she responded. "Why do you want to give him a high five?" I continued to questioned. "Because we're in love." Ain't four year old love cute?

Thanksgiving!!!

Being in a British school has left me outnumbered. Out of about 85 staff there are only 2 Americans (including myself). As a result, there are many American things that people just don't understand. So as November rolled around and Thanksgiving came up of course other people hadn't given two thoughts about what they would be doing on the fourth Thursday of November. However, seeing that I have yet to miss a Thanksgiving, asked Colter (the other American) if he would want to do anything. What started out as four of us going to dinner turned into a group of about 15 of us. The was a buffet dinner at a restaurant called City Diner, so we all went there. It was fun because for some it was their very first Thanksgiving dinner. Now, I will admit it was not as good as a home-cooked Thanksgiving and there were no mashed potatoes (I know?!?) but over all it was a good time had by all. It ended like any other traditional Thanksgiving dinner with people eating and drinking just a bit too much, we just didn't have any leftovers the next day. I have come to enjoy Thanksgiving because it is a time t bring people together to eat and drink a bit too much, but just have a good time. The best part of having it at a restaurant was no one had to cook or clean up.