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."