1. A very earnest kindergarten girl told me that the best thing about my classroom was my Barack Obama puzzle. Of course I had no idea what she was talking about. She grabbed me by the hand and pulled me over to the puzzle shelf and pointed to a Martin Luther King, Jr. puzzle. Without missing a beat, she then pointed to the George Washington puzzle and said that she liked the John McCain puzzle too!
2. I found a bunch of pilgrim stickers in my file cabinet during the month of November. Thrilled with my discovery, I decided to buzz around the room and stick them on children’s journal pages as they finished writing. One of my little boys clapped as he gazed at the sticker. He turned to me beaming and said that he’d been hoping for a vampire sticker [like that]!
3. One of my beginning writers was sharing his journal with the class. He got stuck rereading what he’d written. As you know, all primary teachers are naturals at deciphering “transitional” spelling. I figured I wouldn’t be an exception to that rule. However, this time I truly was stumped. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what this child had written. Luckily, he brightened up and loudly announced, “Oh, Ms. Gruber, you don’t know how to read yet either! That’s why you’re still in kindergarten!”
4. During April our sharing topic was special people. One of my students shared her grandfather, a retired San Francisco firefighter. The grandfather told a variety of exciting stories about his job. His repertoire included an action-packed story about a time when he saved a cat from a burning building and then went back in to rescue a basket full of kittens. To wrap up sharing, he and the child took some questions from the spellbound audience. I expected questions about fires. Silly me, all of the questions were about the basket that held the kittens!

   What color was the basket?”
   Was the basket special?”
   Can we see the basket?”

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