This week was full of support letter assembling and mailing and quilt making. And finishing Season 3 of the Wire! I was pretty worn out by the time Friday rolled around. I was in such a hurry and so tired doing my support letters, I sent out a few without stamps. Oops...that's a little embarrassing.
The highlight of my week (which was overall fairly good) was definitely Thursday morning. Music class had been canceled, so I had told my class I'd bring my guitar. The night before I looked up chords to lots of songs we sing in class. We had a lot of fun singing the songs, and they sounded like a choir of little angels. Seriously. They sounded so good. We sang again in the afternoon, and at that point, the novelty had kind of worn off, so their singing was less enthusiastic. I wish I had recorded them singing in the morning. It gave me chills. Plus when I wasn't messing up on the guitar, I didn't sound too bad!
I also loved the chance to teach them a bunch of different things that I couldn't have done without having my guitar at school. Good old "teachable moments." I showed them how I tune my guitar and explained how the strings vibrate and how I tighten or loosen them to adjust the pitch. I showed them about the capo and had them listen to different keys and identify which ones were higher and lower. Also, it happened to be the first phonics lesson about the voiced digraph th (seriously, what kindergartener should have to be able to name that???). In the lesson plan it said to talk about how saying the digraph makes our vocal chords vibrate like the strings on a guitar. I hadn't read this ahead of time, but I was excited once I was teaching it and could show them on my guitar. Small joys, perhaps, but I'll take what I can get!
Funny story from the week: every Friday afternoon we do an activity called "Pretzels." Each student compliments someone for something they did during the week and apologizes to someone they wronged. They give the other person a pretzel, and at the end, we all eat and are happy. It's pretty fun, except when someone throws a fit about someone having more pretzels than them. But that didn't happen this week. I'm usually impressed by the students' compliments and apologies. Most of them can do a good job remembering something specific that happened. One person apologized to me and said, "Miss Seefeldt, I'm sorry that when you sent me to time out I stomped my feet." Another child said to his friend, "I like how you helped me when I fell down and stayed with me until my leg felt better."
One child's apology was a little odd. He said to another boy in my class, "I'm sorry for thinking in my head that you were a dirty, rotten, smelly person." I almost intervened and made him stop, but I wasn't sure what to say. I got really worried that the other child would get mad, because it sounded really, really mean, but the boy he was apologizing to didn't seem upset (actually, he seemed oblivious to what was going on). He handed him a pretzel. Then he handed him a second pretzel, and after a pause, said, "I thought it twice." The boy who said this is really, really funny. I wonder how much he knows he's being funny. He is completely deadpan, so if he knows he's funny, he does a really good job of hiding it!
This boy is also really smart and imaginative. He watches a ton of TV and movies. He always has a story about something inappropriate he saw on TV. "Yesterday on TV, I saw a lion attack and eat a zebra," or, my favorite, "Did you know that a girl was kidnapped by her own dad, and he wore disguises so no one would catch him?" He was talking about a Lifetime movie that my roommate had just described to me that morning and had watched with her grandma a few days before. What 5 year-old boy watches Lifetime movies? I guess one who hangs out with his mom a lot. He also told me his mom was going to take him to see Precious when it was out. I had just seen it, and I told him to tell his mom that Miss Seefeldt said he wasn't allowed to see it. Man, I think that would be majorly traumatizing for a child to see that movie.
Anyway, kids say the darndest things. That's for sure.
Well, Sunday evening is approaching, when my anxiety mounts as I realize another weekend has come and gone and I have to get up early and go back to school in the morning. Gulp.
The highlight of my week (which was overall fairly good) was definitely Thursday morning. Music class had been canceled, so I had told my class I'd bring my guitar. The night before I looked up chords to lots of songs we sing in class. We had a lot of fun singing the songs, and they sounded like a choir of little angels. Seriously. They sounded so good. We sang again in the afternoon, and at that point, the novelty had kind of worn off, so their singing was less enthusiastic. I wish I had recorded them singing in the morning. It gave me chills. Plus when I wasn't messing up on the guitar, I didn't sound too bad!
I also loved the chance to teach them a bunch of different things that I couldn't have done without having my guitar at school. Good old "teachable moments." I showed them how I tune my guitar and explained how the strings vibrate and how I tighten or loosen them to adjust the pitch. I showed them about the capo and had them listen to different keys and identify which ones were higher and lower. Also, it happened to be the first phonics lesson about the voiced digraph th (seriously, what kindergartener should have to be able to name that???). In the lesson plan it said to talk about how saying the digraph makes our vocal chords vibrate like the strings on a guitar. I hadn't read this ahead of time, but I was excited once I was teaching it and could show them on my guitar. Small joys, perhaps, but I'll take what I can get!
Funny story from the week: every Friday afternoon we do an activity called "Pretzels." Each student compliments someone for something they did during the week and apologizes to someone they wronged. They give the other person a pretzel, and at the end, we all eat and are happy. It's pretty fun, except when someone throws a fit about someone having more pretzels than them. But that didn't happen this week. I'm usually impressed by the students' compliments and apologies. Most of them can do a good job remembering something specific that happened. One person apologized to me and said, "Miss Seefeldt, I'm sorry that when you sent me to time out I stomped my feet." Another child said to his friend, "I like how you helped me when I fell down and stayed with me until my leg felt better."
One child's apology was a little odd. He said to another boy in my class, "I'm sorry for thinking in my head that you were a dirty, rotten, smelly person." I almost intervened and made him stop, but I wasn't sure what to say. I got really worried that the other child would get mad, because it sounded really, really mean, but the boy he was apologizing to didn't seem upset (actually, he seemed oblivious to what was going on). He handed him a pretzel. Then he handed him a second pretzel, and after a pause, said, "I thought it twice." The boy who said this is really, really funny. I wonder how much he knows he's being funny. He is completely deadpan, so if he knows he's funny, he does a really good job of hiding it!
This boy is also really smart and imaginative. He watches a ton of TV and movies. He always has a story about something inappropriate he saw on TV. "Yesterday on TV, I saw a lion attack and eat a zebra," or, my favorite, "Did you know that a girl was kidnapped by her own dad, and he wore disguises so no one would catch him?" He was talking about a Lifetime movie that my roommate had just described to me that morning and had watched with her grandma a few days before. What 5 year-old boy watches Lifetime movies? I guess one who hangs out with his mom a lot. He also told me his mom was going to take him to see Precious when it was out. I had just seen it, and I told him to tell his mom that Miss Seefeldt said he wasn't allowed to see it. Man, I think that would be majorly traumatizing for a child to see that movie.
Anyway, kids say the darndest things. That's for sure.
Well, Sunday evening is approaching, when my anxiety mounts as I realize another weekend has come and gone and I have to get up early and go back to school in the morning. Gulp.
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