Flowers

To help straighten out our halos, the cherubs and I split our recess starting today. Instead of 15-20 minute recess in the afternoon, we had 2, 10 minute recesses today. There was one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I think it will help us ALL get through this last week and a half.

Do you remember when we had 3 recesses a day? There was the morning, after lunch and afternoon recesses. With all that recess, we still managed to learn something and I think we've all turned into pretty upstanding adults. Well, maybe not ALL of us...there was that one person in 1992 that had us all scared. You know who I'm talking about!

So, the little cherubs are running around playing on the equipment and frolicking in the grass, right? Well, the school district that Greener Grass Elementary has done some budget slicing and dicing. The grass might be tall enough to lose a kiddo in...nah, I'm just teasing. HOWEVER, the grass has been somewhat neglected and all those beautiful weeds that children like to pick and give as special gifts are everywhere!

I have 25 cherubs in my class. About 10 picked 1 dandelion and 10 of them picked at least 2-3 pretty weeds and fashioned them into a bouquet for their wonderful teacher. Ah, you shouldn't have...REALLY! You shouldn't have!


What do you do? One of my kinders asked if I was going to put them in a cup of water when we got into the classroom....
***NOTE: You might wanna stop reading here because this next part could be misconstrude as me crushing the spirits of children, but I say it to my own "womb"bats, so I'll say it to my transplants!***
After the little kinder asked me about putting the weeds into a cup of water, I said something completely honest to him.

Me: You know, Kinderboy, if I put these in water, do you think they will live? 

Kinderboy: Um...

Me: They are missing something very important. I want you to activate that prior knowledge on plants. What do plants need in order to live and grow?
(He gave me a bunch of very important things, but none were what I was getting at, so I continue) Plants, Kinderboy, need roots to soak up the water and food they need to live. Since we didn't dig this plant up by the roots, it's not going to live. Thanks for thinking of me, but next time, we'll let the pretty "flowers" grow and you can just point out the ones you would pick for me...

Kinderboy: Okay, Mrs. Bradner. (and he skipped off to pick some for his mom)

Now, I blame the school district for making me have this conversation with Kinderboy. If someone had just come and mowed the damn lawn over the weekend, the cherubs wouldn't have felt the need to pick a gazbillion "flowers" for me...