Hugs, songs, and a surprise comment

5 year olds are about the cutest people on earth. Today I taught about 4 songs to a lovely class, collected MANY hugs and a few colorful hearts drawn and cut out just for me, and enjoyed just admiring their beauty and intelligence. Oh, sure, there were the usual “Please sit down NOW” commands and “Are you doing what you are supposed to be doing?” questions (I love the look that comes over their faces when they are somersaulting across the rug instead of filling in numbers on their “math” page – Huh? Oh, yeah……) Today I again asked myself if I am going to miss subbing. I will miss days like today.

There was one surprise today. I was teaching “The Penguin Song” (which has now been learned by about 600 young children in the area – I like to imagine them all meeting up at a park and suddenly belting out this song, followed by 1,000 other kids joining them in the “Pizza Hut Song”. My legacy 🙂 ). I’ll preface it by saying that no matter what level is ALLOWED, there are always one or two kids that move to a more rambunctious level. IOW, if silence is required, little George will blurt out comments and questions. If quiet talking is allowed, little George will shout. If everyone is supposed to sit still, little George will crawl, sneak, walk, or roll. If everyone is allowed to walk around, little George will tag others, run, jump, somersault, touch stuff that shouldn’t be touched. You get the idea.

So – the Penguin Song is FUN because it calls for silliness and motions that encompass the entire body. But of course, our “little George” had to kick his feet higher and wider than anyone of the 600 have ever needed to.  So – here we were in the middle of singing the song, and the boy NEXT to little George suddenly yells out, “He just kicked me in the balls!”

That stopped me. I paused, debating how to address the situation, trying not to laugh, and noting that about 4 other VCRs (VideoChildrenRecorders) were repeating the comment, while a few more were expressing their offense. I decided to tell “little George” to move over and be more careful and then jump back into the song. The other boy – not terribly hurt, lost his frown within a couple of phrases.