bring it, friday

I'm a particularly superstitious person: I would never write a letter to someone in red ball point pen, I don't walk under ladders if I can help it. If I see three sets of twins in a day, I think it's a sign of something... I don't know what. And, Friday the 13th has always held some strong bad juju sway in my superstitious mind.

So, it was with a far-off concept, but a quickly approaching date, that our most recent Friday the 13 came upon me. Luckily, for me, in my line of work, the six-year-olds have no Jason, Freddy or or other weird personification attached to this date. For them, this year, the day before the actual Valentine's Day, it's just "Valentimes." We had a little party that some rad parents threw, all with constructable food projects, which many of them just ate instantly:

"Oh, D, what happened to that cool ant you made out of blueberries?" or, "...that cookie that you decorated?" any number of food endings,
the inevitable response was,
"Why? I ate it. ...What? I finished making it, so I ate it."

Of course.
Now, THIS is the kind of Friday, the 13th, I wanna have!



also when you're six, honesty is usually the route to pick, like in this card given out:
"i sort of love you"

The day before our class Valentimes celebration, my sister sent me the coolest box of snails (another year-long study for our first graders is snails and it's been such a neat trip with the kids.) When I first saw this box of little vintage, velvet, hand-rolled snails made in Japan, I knew I had to get my hands on them for the class.

Turns out, they arrived just in time for Valentimes. So, I "drew" some grass, used these cool labels T just sent to me, putting a little flower on each section, cut up little cards and attached the snail. Voila! The snail just looked like it was just rolling thru it's natural habitat. And the kids loved them. They're reactions to them, so cool:
"tee hee hee heee heee hee hee tee hee tee hee hee heee hee hee tee hee...."