Look! It's [S-Boogie's]Grandma!

Today I went to school with my granddaughter. I'd e-mailed her teacher and made an arrangement so that I could come in and teach a lesson about the two presidents that we celebrate on President's Day. I put up some pictures of the two, read a couple of books, we sorted some sentence strips that had information about each president on it. Then we cut and pasted similar information onto our own little sorters. And finally, we pointed to each piece of info and read it aloud to check that we'd sorted it correctly.

I'm glad I don't teach first grade every day. But it was fun for an hour or so. It was really interesting, however, to see all the types I see in 4th grade:

• I'm done, it's perfect, what do I do now?
• I'm also done--it's far from perfect, but it's done and that is the point, right?
• I didn't pay any attention to your directions and I'm not looking around my table to see what other people are doing, so mine is being done incorrectly--really, really incorrectly.
• I started, but now I'm busy using my scissors as a gun and firing off phantom shots around the room...papers? gluing? presidents? huh?
• Glue!! I love glue!! See this big puddle I just squeezed out on my paper?
• I don't have any glue, so I will just sit here and do nothing till some adult notices because helpless is my default.
• I'm done and see all the hearts and flowers I've drawn around the edges of my paper and I also colored George Washington's shirt pink because it has cute ruffles.

I actually feel a little better about 4th graders now, because I saw their shadow-selves in 1st grade today!

Then I went to lunch with my new best friends and [S-Boogie] and then we had recess. I left after they went in to finish the school day, and later when I returned to pick up my granddaughter, I walked across the parking lot before the doors opened. Just then, the crowd started to swarm out, and I heard a cute little voice shout: "Look! It's [S-Boogie's] grandma! Hi!!" I was greeted warmly by at least 21 people who charged out of the school to hurry home. Cool.