Last week, on Halloween day, I drove to a local school and read to a classroom of grade 3 and 4 students. I was dressed as an ice queen (that's what looked reasonable when I googled easy costumes at 10:30 the night before). The kids ate it up. I was introduced as an actress ... ooh, ahh, and boy did I act like one. I read books about Halloween and all things autumn.
This morning I went back to the same school only this time I read to a grade 1 class. This was going to be easy. I chose all my favourite books from the shelf behind Neal's art desk and drove out there for just after 9 am. My boys had woken up only minutes before I left but they knew the drill and actually seemed happy to get to a day of school. As a disclaimer, I did NOT dress up this morning. Maybe I should have.
The reading started out innocently enough, I mean, these are my favourite books, right? What could possibly go wrong?
Yah.
The first selection was I'm Not Going to Get up Today by the one and only Dr. Seuss. It was going just tickety boo until I heard myself reading the following:
"In bed is where I'm going to stay. And I don't care what the neighbours say! I never liked them anyway."
Score one. Ok, so I didn't write it (but the way some things go around here, I just might) but I READ it ... OUT LOUD. Funny eccentric girl.
Then I chose A Fish Out of Water. Great story about a little boy who doesn't listen to the man in the fish store and totals his parent's house. Ok ... moving right along ... Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Excellent. So appropriate for the morning, as I had already told the children that I had slept in (thus the I don't want to get up theme) and hoped it wasn't going to be a day like the one Alexander had had. So I read, with much enthusiasm and using multiple voices (have to use that English degree somehow every day you know) and that's when I heard these words being said:
"I hope you sit on a tack ... I hope the next time you get a double-decker strawberry ice-cream cone the ice cream part falls off the cone part and lands in Australia." I kept reading on ...
"On the way downstairs the elevator door closed on my foot and while we were waiting for my mom to go get the car Anthony made me fall where it was muddy and when I started crying because of the mud Nick said I was a crybaby and while I was punching Nick for saying crybaby my mom came back with the car and scolded me for being muddy and fighting."
In reality, she probably took him into the car and spanked him, since the book was written in 1972. She probably spanked all of them, as Anthony really tripped Alexander and Nick was being a bit of a brat. So, I finished up my three selections all about disobedience and violence just in time to hear over the P.A. system
"Students, it is almost 9:40 and it is time for our classrooms to make their way to the auditorium for the assembly about bullying."
I have relatives in Australia ... maybe I should think about visiting for a while.
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