Show and tell!

As you all know by now I work with younger children. This is a privilege and a delight as they will come out with the most random comments that will bring you to your knees with laughter. Before we go into our next story I think we should take a few seconds to give a little kudos to those teachers that hear these comments and have to keep a straight face throughout the day in front of a class of innocent faces.

OK now thats done let's begin.

Most will remember show and tell sessions from when they were in school. Designed to give every child a chance to show off anything they wished to, whether it be a drawing on a crumpled piece of paper to a gold plated signed and payed for life size model of their favourite disney character!

All in all this is aimed at making children proud of what they have achieved. The best however is when they bring in a trophy as the amount of pride that is present on their little faces when they say how they achieved this feat is priceless.

So our story begins on a usual Monday morning where Mr. N is once again suffering that Monday morning feeling, rushing around trying to get everything ready for his year 1 class (5/6 year olds).

As per usual there seemed to be not enough hours in the day to get everything perfect so Mr. N had very smartly organised that 'show and tell' would take place every Monday morning, giving him a little more time to get ready for the lesson (I know very savvy indeed Mr. N)

Well the 9:00am bell rang and Mr. N put on his best, most welcoming smile and prepared to face the week. The children all entered with a 'good morning' or a 'hello sir' all bringing in various items that they would like to show to the class.

Mr. N spotted his favourite item that children could talk about, a trophy!

A little girl (who we shall call L) stopped in front of him like the Road Runner (BOING!!!!!) holding her trophy aloft, 'look what I won in my Beavers group!"
"Wow this looks very interesting - I can't wait to hear all about it!" replied Mr. N.
Well she showed off her trophy to the whole class and spoke so eloquently about how she had earned this award above all others in the group. She explained that it was in the shape of a beaver as she goes to a Beavers group and this was the first time she had ever won it.



Mr. N was so proud of her that he promised she could go around the classes and show off her award later in the afternoon. L was delighted and Mr. N thought "Yet again I work my magic, when they thought they couldn't get happier in steps MR N!!!!"

THEN IT HAPPENED!!!!

L was having lunch next to the deputy head teacher, who is a very religious lady it must be said, and still brimming with pride stood on a chair in the middle of the dinner centre and shouted.

"Does anyone want to see my beaver?"

Mr. N who was helping his class get seated suddenly paled - as the deputy head went crimson.

"Now L" said Mr N "we shouldn't shout in the dinner centre!"

L replied "But I'm so proud of it, you said that I should show my beaver off to the entire school, so who would like to see it?"

THEN IT HAPPENED AGAIN!

A chant across the whole dinner centre, BEAVER, BEAVER, BEAVER!!!! getting gradually louder.

In the crescendo Mr. N was thinking "World eat me up!" Especially as The Deputy Head now looked like she was going to punch Mr. N in the face several times as recompense for this obscenity.

When all of the commotion had died down and Mr. N had spent a couple of awkward moments with the boss, the laughter in the staffroom rang out for weeks afterwards, Mr N still to this day has his very own beaver award!

Shout it out everyone:

OH THE THINGS THEY SAY!!!!

Once again if you have any funny stories that have happened at home or at school please share them or leave a comment. 

News!!!!!

OK we have all been there, on a Monday morning and wen can't think of anything that we could put on the writing table that would in any way enthuse the children to write. So we say "write me some news!" or "Write what you did over the weekend." I hated that when I was in school, I hate myself for falling into the lazy trap more than a couple of times over my career and don't blame the children for not producing their best work as a consequence.

Anyway enough of my pompous opinions!

Not so long ago there was a teacher we shall call Mr S. who had fell into the same trap. But, being a determined young man he was hell bent on making 'news' exciting. So with this sudden inspiration he strides to the library and found a book called Baloney. Now this book was named as such due to the main character speaks utter baloney! For example:

It all starts when a zimulis is misplaced. It is on a deski in a torakku on the way to szkola, and suddenly the torakku goes past! Henry grabbed his zimulis and jumped out, right onto a razzo launch pad. He opened the pordo and landed on the next razzo while it was blasting off.

Wow - how could you fail to enjoy all of that silly language? Thought Mr. S.

He read the book to the class and they loved it! They laughed and made up 'baloney' words of their own and Mr. S soaked it all in, then like a cat saw his chance and pounced!

"Could anyone think of a 'baloney' word and put it in their news?" He gave a couple of examples
I dropped my pencil became I dropped my pimputle!

The children lapped it up and instantly began to write the most strange and beautiful sentences.

THEN IT HAPPENED!!!!

One little boy called M was very excited to show Mr. S his sentence (as he normally doesn't like writing, so you can imagine how proud he was).

How great am I though Mr. S even the kids who don't want to write are loving it! GEEEEENNNNNIIIUUUUSSSS!!!

Then he read the sentence and near fell of his chair!

It read (and remember children write phonetically so it wasn't spelt exactly correctly).
"I stayed at home all weekend and played with my nob."
Mr. S "Oh M which is your baloney word?"
M "Nob!"
Mr. S "Are you sure you don't want to change that word M?"
M "I'm sure."

So then it got a little worse as Mr. S inevitably had to ask M to draw a picture of himself playing with his nob, just to find out what he meant by that word!

Then it got even worse as M drew a picture of himself playing a game with his brother, so he basically has nicknamed his brother as a knob!

I literally laughed for 2 hours straight hearing Mr. S tell this story.

Kudos to Mr S as he, even with this slight discrepancy, made news fun!

Say it together everyone:

Oh the things they say!!!!!