Lessons from the Kindergarten

I've spent some days subbing in kindergarten recently, and I'd like to share some stories:

It was hot here last Monday.  We brought the kids back from PE, and the sweat was dripping off of one little guy.  We had the kids pack up their backpacks to go home and then lined them up to go out for a quick 10 minute recess before it was time to go home.  The little guy who was dripping sweat proceeded to put his hooded sweat shirt on.  "Honey, you don't need your coat outside, it's 80* today.  It's hot."
"Yes I do!  I'm all sweaty and I don't want to catch a chill!"


We were working on glyphs in Math.  If you've been out of school for a while, you might not remember glyphs.  It's a picture that you color in with coded colors, and it reads like a map.  Our glyph was a duck in a raincoat.  The children were to put three circle buttons on if they were 5 years old, or 3 triangle buttons if they were 6 years old.  They were to color the coat yellow if they like to watch tv on rainy days, or orange if they like to jump in puddles on rainy days.  The hat was supposed to be blue if they were a boy, and red if they were a girl, and the boots were supposed to be colored black if they had a pet at home, or green if they didn't have any pets at all.
I had gotten through the directions on the hat when I looked over at Gina, and she was coloring the hat yellow. 
"You're supposed to color the hat red since you're a girl." I said.
"No.  I won't."  She replied.
"But those are the directions,"  I stupidly said.  "Color the hat red if you're a girl.  You are a girl, so the hat is supposed to be red."
"No.  You do not wear red hats with yellow rain coats.  You wear yellow hats with yellow rain coats.  And yellow boots.  Would you wear a red hat with a yellow coat to school?  I don't think so...."


We were attempting to introduce the kids to ABC order.  We had sentence strips, and I was to give them four adjacent letters of the alphabet.  (E, F, H, G) and have them place the letters in order.  I covered up all the letters on the sentence strip except those 4 letters, and asked Patrick:
"Which letter comes first?"
"A"
"No, of these four letters, which one comes first?"
"A always comes first.  Then B, Then C, then D.  E comes fifth."

Love those kids!!