Christmas Music on Pandora Time!!!!

So many good stories from school!!! But first I just have to say that I'm now listening to my Christmas radio station on Pandora, even though it is 75° and sunny today!!! It seems so counter-intuitive. Especially since the first song was, "I'm Dreaming of a White Christams". I most certainly am! And the next song was "Let It Snow". Really? I need some temporate climate Christmas songs! Are there any English speaking countries close to the equator that would produce more appropriate Christmas songs for my current climate?

And second, I have to tell an embarassing story:
Today when I walked into my apartment building, I found that the lobby had been remodeled. I was really impressed. I know the construction they do here happens in less than a day, it's a little scary how fast buildings go up, but I thought it was strange I never saw them working on the lobby. They are that fast! I went up to Ariana's floor to pick something up, and when I got out, I found that on the landing there were lots of bikes and new welcome carpets. One of our families just moved in across the hall from Ariana, so this was new and different, but not totally out there. Then I rang Ariana's doorbell and this cute little 12 year old Chinese girl answered. I was super confused, but looking past her I saw lots of plants in the apartment. Ariana's apartment is practically a garden, so it looked like she got some new plants, but the girl didn't seem to know who Ariana was. I stared at the apartment number, which was the correct number, and again back in the apartment, but the girl kept shaking her head. I went back down the elevator super confused. I was about to walk across the lobby to go up my elevator, but then I decided to walk outside just to check ... Yes, I definitely walked into the wrong building. Whooops.

And now, all about my little ELLs! (Elves):

At the beginning of November, I started teaching the calendar. We've been crossing off each day as it happens but there are very few days left this month. I asked the students what they think will happen when we run out of days to cross out. I then pointed at the empty square that will be December 1st.
- One said, "Stay home, no school."
- One said, "Uh oh!" and just pointed in shock at the empty square, as if this was the first time it occurred to her that we would run out of days to cross out.
- One made the motion and created the sound effects for an exploding bomb. Apparently the world will end.

Our High/Scope Early Years program strongly encourages students to identify problems and work together to solve their own problems. So I wasn't surprised when one day at recess, two of our 5 year olds called for a "classroom meeting" to discuss a problem. Apparently the box they had been using to gather fall leaves to make giant leaf piles had been converted into a mini dumpster by some older students.
Student responses: "Ewww!" "Gross!" "Yucky!"
3 year old: "What to do, what to do???"
5 year old: "I know, we need CCTV camera. Up there! We will see who did this!" (CCTV is the national news network)

One of my elves is an expert chef. He makes all sorts of creations at lunch. At first I was a little freaked out, but he always eats everything he makes so I haven't stopped him yet. Still, the only acceptable combination I've seen is yogurt poured over banana slices. Other concoctions include ketchup on bread slices, fruit juice in chicken soup and many, many others.

Pop Culture References - I've had two other crazy moments in class. One was a Harry Potter Puppet Pals moment when two of my students were shouting their own names back and forth at each other, and then another student walked up and said her name just like: Snape - Harry - Snape - Harry - Snape - Harry ...... Dumbledore! The other moment happened on the playground where my students have been particularly interested in pretending to be kittens. I had one crawl up to me, sit down, say "meow" and point at his open mouth, JUST LIKE SIMON'S CAT!!! I'm trying to figure out where these students have seen these youtube videos!! Because youtube doesn't work here!


PS, Also now that I'm thinking about it more, after my last blog post, I swear I've found a zillion more Mandarin words that include some tone of "shi"! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.