Animal Butts

Each year, the first week of school is usually spent talking about friendship. We play games, sing songs and talk about how to treat your friends. We help the children learn each others names and work toward making the classroom environment welcoming to everyone. One year, one student said to another, "Do you know animals smell butts when they want to be friends?"

If only it were that easy...

Keep Your Clothes On

Each year on the first day of class, I have the students help me make the classroom rules. I let them give me rule suggestions, and I write them down on the wipe board. I then create a poster with all the rules on it that we display in the classroom. Each year brings the normal suggestions, such as no running, no hitting, no spitting (I always kept my eye on the child who suggested that one!), etc. But one year I got the best one yet. One of my students politely raised her hand and I said,

"Yes, Susie, what do you think one of our rules should be?"

"Well, you know when the boys take off their shirts and lay on top of the girls and kiss them? That's disgusting."

Long pause.

"So then we should keep our clothes on at school..."

Thankfully another student raised their hand and added, "And our shoes too!"

"Oh, yes, our shoes too!"

I proceeded to write these rules down and kept on going. Needless to say, I couldn't even look at my assistant for fear of spiraling into a fit of giggles. I can't wait to hear the rules that this year's student's suggest. I wonder if anyone will beat Susie's?

Venus Rising

This is one incident I will never forget! One year I had triplets in my class. 2 girls and boy who happened to have older twin brothers (what are the chances, right?). This particular week we were talking about the planets and it was time to learn about Venus. As circle time progressed one of the triplet girls raised her hand. She then began to explain, "My older brother has a venus and John (her brother sitting next to her) has a venus, and my daddy has a venus!" John then proceeded to stand up and frame his "venus" with his hands. "Here's my venus!" he says. Oh my! I don't know how we made it through the rest of circle time.

P.S. All names have been changed to protect the innocent. :)

Well, here we go!

Ok, so last night at my book club, we were discussing the book Waiter Rant. The book itself came into being out of a blog started by a waiter who needed to "vent" about his job. Some of the stories are endearing, strange, and downright gross (as you can imagine). He remained anonymous for quite a long time and now has a published book. Just from sharing his stories.

Now, I'm not going to pretend to be a writer or even dream of publishing a book, but I do I like to regale my friends with stories of being a preschool teacher (they are too funny not to share). As I began to tell one last night, one of them said, "Oh, you need to start a blog!" And there it was. Could I really do this? Would anyone read it? And did it matter if they did? What a great place to tell my funny stories, vent, or just marvel in writing at the wonder of children.

So, here it starts. I will begin with some stories from the past and add new ones as the school year progresses (which is coming all too soon). I hope you get a few smiles from it. Enjoy!