A Kindergarten Teacher Blogging About Writing, Pollen and a Giant Bird

Today as I drove to work, I saw a sea of yellow pollen dust an inch thick covering everything from the cars on the road to the sidewalks. Yuck! That spells allergy time for me and a number of my students. Bless their little hearts, many came in today with red and swollen eyes. To make matters worse, it was around 92 degrees outside. At least the humidity hasn't set in yet. As I pulled in to park, I saw where someone had drawn the following on the back windshield of a car through the pollen: Who cares if everything is yellow? The sky is blue! Now that's a positive attitude if I ever saw one.

Once inside, I got settled and looked over my plans. Thinking I had time to run to the restroom before the morning bell rang, I ducked into the bathroom I share with the other kindergarten class. As I came back into the classroom, I saw the other kindergarten teacher doubled over with laughter. The bell had rung and the children were asking where I was. She told them I had gone to join the circus. One little girl responded "No she didn't. She's too old for that! She's 60!  I am not 60........yet! I have four years to go. I am going to have to start using wrinkle cream I guess...sigh.

 Later, as I was walking the children outside for recess, one little boy noticed an outside window that looked like it had been sprayed with mud mixed with pollen. He got all excited and hollered for the other children to come quick. He said "Some giant bird put bird poop all over this window! Come look!" In a minute they were all abuzz about a giant bird that was hovering over our school somewhere. All my students looked a little disappointed when I told them that instead of a bird, it was most likely a blower. It probably happened on the one rainy day when workmen were cleaning up around some construction going on near our building. I heard another child say as we continued walking "Well, it could have been a giant bird! You never know!"

The day pressed on and I had a parent volunteer come in today to help with a writing project we do each month. It is called The Wonder Year. There is a page for each month of the school year where the child can write a sentence and then I put pictures in it so the child will have a memento of his or her kindergarten year. As the parent was helping one child write a sentence in his book, I overheard her ask him " You said it two ways. Which would you prefer to write? Do you want to write "I hunted for eggs at the egg hunt" or "I looked for eggs?" The child thought about it for a minute and said " Which one's shorter?"  His little face fell when the Mom told him that the words are both the same length so it didn't really matter. I couldn't help chuckling.

As the day ended and I was headed to my car for the journey home, another teacher kindly pointed out to me that the back of my pants were covered with yellow pollen! I guess when I sat down on a bench during recess, I forgot to brush off the pollen. How kind of him to tell me after carpool, lunch, and two conferences  were over. I guess I paraded around with the yellow imprint of a bench on my backside for half the day. Oh well, what do you expect from a kindergarten teacher!