Germy...

Curse you homeschooling! You gave me the crappiest immune system ever! 

And thus we arrive at day 4 of student teaching, well, day 3 and 1/2, since I got sent home sick today. I guess I got cocky, thinking that after four years of being in and out of classrooms I would have built up some kind of superhuman immunity to kindergarten grime. I'd like to blame it on my sterile sheltered childhood, my mom never arranged play dates with kids possessing or with the possibility to contract chicken pox, malaria, or west nile. Terrible mother, really.

But kindergarten has a reputation for having petrie dish qualities, and no matter how I try to avoid them, six year-olds have an uncanny way of making sure you have no choice but to handle every contaminated surface in the building. 

For instance.

Consider Child A, who we'll call....Child A, (I'm no fool).  Every single day, standing outside shivering during morning duty, Child A will skip/run/trip over to me and plunk down her shoe in front of me. Child A's shoe laces have never in the course of the entire semester, been dry. I don't know how they get wet, even on the sunniest of sunny days, her shoe laces are always soaked. Soaked! Now tell me why a child who cannot open a sandwich bag, zip up her jacket, punch a straw through a juicebox, or "unzip" a banana can deftly untie the best double knot I can make? And I say to Child A at afternoon recess when the incident repeats itself, "Child A, you are the only person in the whole wide world that can undo one of Miss Martin's super duper double knots. How?" And she'll say, "You're funny Miss Martin," and skip/run/trip away.

Another for instance.

Kinders have to use counters for math to help them with one-to-one correspondence and make sure that they're able to connect the number on the page with the number of objects in front of them. In our room, we use these little penguins as counters. Remember now, they are "Tools, not Toys," so the purpose of these penguins is to be taken from the "ice burg" (Styrofoam bowl), onto the table, and back. No inbetweeners. 

But today I look up and see the bottom half of a penguin protruding from Child B's nose. The little black and white feet balanced nicely on a sticky milk mustache. "Child B!" I say, "Take that penguin out of your nose, that's nasty!" 

Child B complies, very politely handing me the penguin. Thanks.

 Finally we have Child C, who knows that she can't open her own go-gurt. She has go-gurt everyday, and I fully understand how tricky those are to open for little fingers. And she knows that too. So tell me why, WHY, she has to suck and chew on the go-gurt first before she hands it to me? Hmm?

So it caught up with me today. Yay for a half-day! 

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Psalm 51:10