Bananas and Butts

Today I had a chance to view my room, and meet the other kindergarten teachers.

I also had a chance to observe the inner workings of a kindergarten classroom in this particular school- unfortunately, since the class size is approximately 31 right now in both rooms, it's sort of the definition of chaos.

One very cute little guy in glasses and a bright yellow shirt spent a lot of his afternoon rapidly moving. He was on the floor, on his chair, on the table, hugging a friend, and back on the floor in less than 5 seconds. He also at one point was very upset, and shook with rage while pointing to a classmate saying, "He call me 'banana.' He call me 'BANANA!' " I looked at his friend, and then back at this adorable little perpetual motion machine. "Are you a banana?" I asked. "NO! I not a banana!" he replied. He looked at me like I was completely dense until he realized that he desperately needed to take off his glasses and twirl them while trying to tilt on one leg of his chair. Now that's classroom management...
(Note to self, when some of these children are mine on Monday-small favors: Banana is not one of them- work on routines)

Another highlight of the day was in the other classroom. A child who started just today (and therefore has the fortune of being a member of my classroom, due to the system designed by the principal- I get all of the late registries) felt the need to tattle on everyone for everything. One of his better tattles was, "Hey Teacher. Teacher! He was looking at her BUTT!" There is nothing like the hilarity of a classroom of five year olds who hears the word "butt," it slays them every single time. I think I'll have to invest in a little book called "How to Lose All Your Friends," by Nancy L. Carlson, or I'll be up to my eyeballs in this craziness of banana and butt allegations.