Time for a break

You  know we're nearing the end of the year and that it's time for Easter break when:

1. Our guest speaker for devotions asks the kids if they ever don't follow directions so they can get done with their work early, and the most earnest "Noooo!" comes from the student who just handed in this:

2. Students get creative on their science tests:

3. A spelling test looks like it's been through battle:

Happy Easter!

Life lessons from third grade

I've been learning some interesting lessons from my students:

Newborn babies are slimy.
Even more important than winning is losing.
Playing video games clears your head. 

Allow me to elaborate.
A few weeks ago, we were practicing spelling words. I read a sentence with a word that didn't make sense, and they were supposed to choose the rhyming spelling word that fit in the sentence and write it on their white boards. The sentence I gave was, "Newborn babies are shiny," looking for the word tiny. One boy wrote the word slimy.  I pointed out that slimy doesn't rhyme with shiny, and that it doesn't describe babies. (However, as Mom commented when I told her this story, new newborn babies are slimy! But that's not a discussion for third graders.)

A little later, I told them to write the word anything on their boards without looking, because it was posted on our Word Wall. I guess my directions weren't clear enough, because I glanced around the room, and saw several students trying to write the word with their eyes closed.

In Gym class, the teacher organized a volleyball tournament with all the third and fourth graders. At the beginning, she sat them down and had a chat with them. She said, "What's even more important than winning is..."
and I heard a little voice say, "losing?"
"...attitude."

Today I heard one of my boys telling his classmates that, "playing a video game every once in a while clears your head."