SAINT PATRICK'S DAY

It's been awhile since I've been in an elementary school on Saint Patrick's Day.  Yes, I forgot to wear green.  So you can imagine my surprise when, as soon as I walked in the door, a random third grader walked up and pinched me with no reservations.  And that was one of about 86 throughout the day.

In addition to consuming leprechaun juice and leprechaun treats (green Kool-aid and green Rice Krispy treats), we had a Saint Patty's Day activity planned.  We had letter cut-outs spelling SAINT PATRICK'S DAY on the board.  I had the students rearrange the letters found in those words in order to come up with as many new words as possible.  They found "a", "is" and "it" right away.  As quality as those words are, I challenged them to come up with some longer words.  We've been talking about rhyming a lot lately.

"What letters could we put at the beginning of "it" to make another word?"

This gave us "sit", "kit" and "pit".  They were quite proud of themselves.

A very bright student named Ricky then surprised me.  Kindergartners surprising me: pretty standard. 

"Saint Patrick's Day.  Can we make the word 'tricks'?"

Nice work, Ricky. 

"Yes we can!"

Well, then we were on the whole rhyming stint.  Carly offered sick.  Becca offered ticks.  Jake offered picks.  Kelly offered kicks (which has an extra k, yes).  Then, you probably guessed it.

"DICKS!" yelled Jordan.

Oh, Lord.  Chances are, these kids don't know what a dick is.  If I refuse to put it on the board, they'll know it's "naughty".  Then at recess, that's the only word I'm going to hear.  They'll probably make a chant out of it or something.  

So, I bit the bullet.  I crossed my fingers, praying that no one would pass the classroom within the next five minutes.  I wrote "dicks" on the board.  Yes, I wrote it small and it was the first word I erased.

P.S. There IS a store called Dick's Sporting Goods.  This is me rationalizing.

Signed,
Miss V.