Mr. Sketch

Ryan’s Kindergarten class continues to amaze me with their vast intelligence. Again, I work with two year olds all day and so a class of Kindergarteners is just years ahead of a class of two year olds to me. Yesterday was a volunteer parent day for me in Ryan’s class. They are getting ready to hit their 100th day of school on Tuesday, where they are going to do several things in 100’s. They are going to eat 100 things and have an art project that has something to do with 100 things. Last week was the end of the first semester for the Kindergarten classes. They have 4, 9 week sessions instead of 6, 6 week sessions. Report cards were sent home with a Parent/Teacher conference day shortly thereafter. Ryan brought home a really great report card and when I went to the conference, his teacher showed me some of his writing samples and journal entries. He is doing such a wonderful job sounding out words and learning how to read and spell. We are so proud! Yesterday, during my volunteering, the kids worked on comparing the L and M sounds. In addition Ms. Clark talked to them about how they have done so well learing how to spell their first name and now they are going to begin learning how to spell their last names. The kids all know how to recognize their last name, but not all of them know how to spell it. Ms. Clark had written their last name in big outlined letters for the kids to design and color. She asked me to go get the box of markers on the cabinet in the back of the room while she continued to talk to the children. Mr. Sketch Markers! Man, the kids are going to love these I thought. The first group of kids that came to the table to design their last name cards immediately took the tops off of their markers and began smelling them. It was so funny! I remember doing that myself! I don’t actually remember Mr. Sketch markers in my classrooms, but my mom had some in her classroom. She had them in these little Styrofoam holders that went into a little sleeve that kept them from falling out. They always smelled so good! As I helped Ms. Clark by removing some things off of the walls and cleaning up the paint center, I watched the kids smelling their markers. Good thing these markers are not harmful . . . the large amounts of inhaling that was going on . . . their designs were not getting done since they were all smelling so much.:) Ryan in particular-Washington was the second to the longest last name in the class. I had to remind him a couple of times to stop smelling and do his project:). As the children finished up and showed me their beautiful masterpieces, they smiled at me with their bright shiny teeth and their colorful noses:). It was too funny!