"Look what I made!"

During math time, a student came up to me from the Unifix cube station.  Students can practice measuring, or patterning, or just generally explore the materials.  He had a stack of 4 cubes, ordered like this: brown-white-black-brown.

"Look what I made, Mr. Graham!" he exclaimed.

"Oh?" I replied, noncommittally.  "What did you make?"

"A s'more!"

Ha!  Clearly.

Bathroom signals

In an effort to teach the students not to interrupt me when I'm working in small groups, I've taught them how to ask to go to the bathroom in sign language.  (It's also a good test of small motor skill, to see who can manipulate their hands successfully).

I was sitting at my kidney table, leading a reading group, and I did a quick survey of the room.  I was, erm, surprised to see one of my students sitting at his table, looking directly at me, with his middle finger extended towards the ceiling, palm towards me, sorta like this.

"Zachary?"  I said calmly.  "Whatcha doing?"

"I'm asking to go to the bathroom, Mr. Graham!" he replied earnestly.  "And I really gotta go!"

It's always best to ask before making assumptions.  I relearn that every day.

Strong hands

Shamelessly stealing good ideas from across the hall, I told my students that there are 2 reasons that they need to color their pictures in all the way.  Reason #1 is that it makes the picture more interesting (and really, it does).  Reason #2 is that it makes their hands stronger, to do all that hard work (and training their hands to hold those small crayons/pencils).  If their hands are sore, I tell them, it's only because their muscles are working and making their hands stronger.

So, this is more cute than anything else, but as I was passing by a table of working students, one of them looks up at me.  Rubbing his hands, he says enthusiastically, "Mr. Graham!  I can feel it!  My hands are getting stronger!"  And immediately his entire table clamors for attention, too.  "Me, too!"  "Right!"  "Mine too!"

I do like my job a whole bunch.