Birthday Week!: Papa Edition

It's birthday week here at londoncasey, where once a year we celebrate the 50% of my family who managed to be born during BIRTHDAY WEEK. It is, I think, exciting for all of us. Next up is my father, Dan. For his birthday he gets a blog about some tykes....


In spite of numerous leaving parties and speeches and class parties and general end of the year-ness, I am still at school. This is because I decided to work for the summer camp. Down in the junior camp ("down" because we're in the basement) we've got a surplus of tykes. On Monday morning we were expecting around 25, but as I was registering they just kept coming and coming and coming. When the dust settled we had 35. Maybe 10 doesn't seem like that big a number, but in terms of tyke corralling, it is significant. Fortunately we've now got six staff people, so it has actually been a pleasure so far this week.

We do, however, have one child who is literally a hand full. When he wants to be he is an absolute sweetheart and I genuinely enjoy working with him. That being said, when he starts acting up there is very little that we can do. Explaining quietly and in a deep voice while making lots of eye contact that throwing things at other children is not okay only makes him laugh. When he gets worked up he starts getting violent as well. This morning, and I don't even remember what set this off, I was holding him back and trying to get him under control. He kicked me, pinched my neck, and bit my hand- all of which I could handle and while it wasn't enjoyable didn't really phase me. Then he bent my glasses and I lost it.

I injure myself often enough that I don't mind some bruises or cuts (I have a foot long self inflicted bruise on my thigh right now from where I accidentally tripped and fell onto a bench in the hall during lunch last week. That was embarrassing. I threw food everywhere. One of the year 1 children came up to me after I had cleaned up and sat down again to tell me not to worry because he had fallen down as well and he was okay now.) But don't touch my glasses.

I felt weirdly exposed with my glasses broken. The right earpiece was bent wide to the side. Nothing was actually broken off but it meant that in order to stay on my head the ear piece needed to be outside my ear rather than behind it. If I looked down, say, to talk to any of the tykes, they slipped down my nose. Linda took the boy away from me immediately after my glasses got bent and I rushed outside to try and get myself under control. I cried. Liz came out and gave me a hug. Chetna came over and gave me a hug. I gulped some air and let myself be led over to the shooting range where the Senior camp was later going to do some archery. So that was cool. I at least managed to hit the target. (And didn't further injure myself like I did the last time I did archery as a 9 year old when I somehow managed to shoot the fletching into my index finger.)

We called the kid's mom and sat him in the room next door away from everyone else. (With the door open so we could still see him.) He calmed down quite a lot once he was by himself and ended up sitting there for over an hour while we waited for someone to come and pick him up. I suspect that being in a dark, empty space was probably a good thing for him- less stimulation. By lunch time he was back to being his charming, smiley self. But we still sent him home. 

I went to an opticians after school and they were able to bend the ear piece back, more or less. They hang behind my ear now but the fit is still looser than I would like it to be and probably now is the time to get a second pair of glasses so that I am not completely bereft if this happens again. 

Um. Happy Birthday, Papa! I understand now why you used to get to annoyed when I went for your glasses as a kid....

There's a wedding this Friday, have you heard?

Royal wedding fever has well and truly hit. Yesterday I had the privilege of helping the librarians with their bulletin board about the wedding. We nicked a white paper table cloth, printed out a bunch of pictures of Kate and Wills, found some red, white, and blue ribbon and set about making a truly ridiculous board complete with a frosted wedding cake and (my favourite part) 3D cake toppers of the royal couple made out of even more white table cloth.

I love the librarians, and we had a great time chatting in our haste to get this done before the library was being used for a meeting about how we were essentially in a Changing Rooms episode and how we could each take turns to play Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen. Also, I got to walk around on top of the bookshelves and wield the mighty staple gun. So I was pretty pleased with all of that. (I apologise for the lack of photographic evidence of the royal wedding themed board, we did *intend* to take pictures, but that didn't quite end up happening...)

Today was nursery assistanting day, which unfortunately coincided with the jet lag hitting me. So I woke up to a phone call from my boss 15 minutes after school had opened to the children asking me if I was going to be coming into work that day. (!) An hour and 15 minutes later I arrived just in time to help set up the nursery's English Tea Party. Which was both delightful and adorable. We set up tables outside and put flags on them as table cloths. Each of the nursery classrooms made different foods so we had cucumber sandwiches, flag bedecked fairy cakes, frosted biscuits, crisps, Victoria sponge cake, etc. The children were all wearing crowns and it was both very cute and very British.

The area around the Royal Parks is getting absurd. Yesterday I went to go check out the media circus outside Buckingham Palace. There's a whole structure that's been built there to house all of the television crews. Lots of fancy lighting, giant boom mics, and crowds of people trying to get into the background of things being filmed. My favourite part was watching a horse drawn carriage complete with two top hatted drivers that went up and down the arcade getting filmed again and again from different angles. Don't forget to run along the side of the carriage and record the horse's hooves! Oh, you got that already? Cool.

Hyde Park has some giant screens that they were testing this afternoon as well as beer gardens (Pimm's Gardens, really. This is England after all), sausage and burger stands, and whole fleets of port-a-loos. (Still England.)

I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow. The wedding is at 11am, and given my late rising this morning and the potential for transport failure, meh. We'll see.

Anyhow, that's the news from these parts. I hope you enjoy the bunting! (Edit: bunting has been removed due to annoying music and the wedding being past. Pretty dress though, didn't you think? My favourite part was the little flower girl holding her ears during the flyover. I think all weddings need a slightly grumpy youngster involved.)

Conundrum

This blog is brought to you via Sir Ken Robinson. If you don't yet know about RSA animates, well, then, you're in for a treat. Go watch that (it's just under 12 minutes long) then come back here and we'll get this discussion started.

I watched that this afternoon. Sir Ken has long been an...idol? of mine. I don't tend to have massive work crushes on people all that often, but MAN I think his mind is amazing. And kind of genius, super interesting, and ooh, do you think he'd let me work with him??

Part of why I get so excited by his ideas is his sense that collaboration is both how people learn best and also what our workforce and economy are looking for now (and in the forseeable future). Collaborative environments excite me tremendously and I do my best to create a classroom environment that encourages and promotes that.

Today was my first class back with the French kids. We've been on half term holiday and so I've not seen them in two weeks. It's always been an awkward time for a class- an hour long music lesson after this bunch of four year olds have already spent all day in school. It's not a recipe for focus and alert attention. So I tolerate a fair bit of scurrying around and try to work with the energy and ideas that they've got.

We started in with our usual hello song to which one of the children started snorting like a pig. "Ah, I see B's turned into a pig over the holiday! Shall we all sing like a pig?" So we oinked through the hello song. I asked some of the other children what they had turned into over the break and we snapped like crocodiles, snorted like pigs (again), and barked like puppies. B. then curled up into my lap. I took that as an opportunity to see if I could remember the words to "rock a bye baby" or not. Part of me was wanting to take cues from the children and use whatever they offered. To "yes, and..." what they brought to class. Another part of me was hoping that lullabies would, well, lull them if not to sleep, then at least to a calmer frame of mind.

The thing that *really* gets me about the second half of this story is that we were songwriting today. It was meant to be a collaborative creative process (and largely was) and even with that intent, with that idea in my head and having watched this video this morning, I still ended up trying to get them to fit into a box.

B. doesn't speak a whole lot of English. He clearly enjoys class, and he clearly has a lot of energy. Does he have ADHD? I would be surprised, which doesn't mean that he focuses all that easily or that he doesn't spend a large portion of the class spinning around in a circle on his bottom.

Today we worked with drums and a set of chime bars to reinforce 'Sol' and 'Mi' as well as to continue working on rhythmic solfege and writing music up on the board. I. has totally got it, she's on the ball, she pays attention, and she only spins around on the floor sometimes. (She is also four after all.) She's the only girl in our class.

B. kept playing on the drums when he'd been asked not to; I took his drum away four times or so over the course of our lesson. Yet he was the first one to come up with lyrics "sit, watch, sit and watch" Great! Really good! On pitches that we'd been using and the rhythm we'd been practicing! Fantastic!! Then came "No, no, no piano" Also, correct pitches, sung in tune, a variation on the rhythm we'd been focusing on, really really good work. Slightly concerning lyrics that you kids just came up with there, but we can definitely work with that.

But he kept rushing off over to the chairs and climbing on to the stack of them, something I never allow them to do. He would drape himself on top of the other children, take my drum, go and grab a pile of sparkles that had been left on the floor that I was holding onto until after class because of their distraction. Clearly he wanted to be doing other things, who am I to be telling him not to? (You know, besides his teacher...) B. sets off the other boys and at one point all of them were screaming and wrestling. I was frustrated, I was annoyed, I slammed my hand down on to the floor to get their attention. To scare them.

I intentionally frightened a classroom of four year olds today.

What??!?

What is the ultimate goal of my class? Is it to encourage a love of music and an interest in exploring sound? Yeah. I would say so. But it is also to prepare them and give them concrete musical skills to take to their next level of lessons. I'd like them to have fun, and I would also like the kids to feel like they have ownership of their own music making. I don't want to stifle creativity, but I would also like to have the kids listen to me. And I really don't want to go around frightening small children.

There is so much more to think about here; this entry alone has about 5 threads running through it that I need to unpack more fully: my philosophy of classroom management, the nurturing of creativity and collaboration in children, rambunctious little boys versus teacher pleasing and focused little girls, entertaining versus educating (surely surely that can be the same thing??), and learning to make lessons that are engaging and fun and interesting even after a long day at school.

So much to learn.

Tykes To Catch Up On! (Again)

The tykes are still tyking along. But this time it isn't just random tyking around, this time we have direction. Namely towards our Christmas show on Thursday!

Here, let me tell you about it:
1. The Nursery Tykes are singing songs about Stars.

For some reason this year for both halves of the show (Nursery and Reception) I managed to decide that there should be PROPS. A LOT OF PROPS. Not really sure why it turned out that way. (No, I know why. It was because between props and actions or learning lines, I decided props and actions would be easier. Not sure if that is accurate or not yet.) Right. STARS. Prop-wise for Nursery we've got four fishing poles (bamboo garden stakes) with stars hanging off the end for Fishing For Stars, and five giant stars (think 2.5' wide) for Five Little Stars. Oh, and every class is making festive hats and wands with stars and practically silent jingle bells.

All of these props have been decorated by the tykes, so what that means is that they are all covered in not particularly well glued on glitter. Which means that now the entire school is also covered in glitter. Anywhere I walk while carrying the props is now covered in glitter. All of my work clothes are covered in glitter. My hair is covered in glitter. My trousers are covered in glitter. The glitter is covered in glitter.

Glitter, glitter, glitter.

And that's not even taking into account Reception's props. (Really only the Silver fish which are, of course, decorated with glitter...)

2. Last Thursday we had our first full rehearsal with the Nursery and the Reception tykes all together in one place. It turned out that due to some miscommunication between me, the head of Early Years, and the kitchen staff that instead of an hour in the hall, we had 20 minutes. But that's okay! We'd make it work! Because the tables were also already set up for lunch, we also had a lot less space than I was expecting which meant that when we actually got around to starting I was completely encircled by roughly 100 tykes.

On Thursdays I work as a nursery assistant, which is nice because I get to spend more time with that class of tykes, but is also kind of frustrating because I don't always know what is going on and because it is not *my* class, if things are dragging I don't feel like I can say "Right, we're doing this now" because that would be stepping on the head teacher's toes. Basically I am still adjusting to working for someone else, so it was with great relief and joy that I was able to be in charge of that rehearsal.

Everyone rocked their songs. We ploughed through them and they kept quiet when it wasn't their turn to sing and they sang loudly when it was their turn to sing and they all followed me when I got their attention by patting my knees and I had all of them doing the vocal warm up together and applauding and oh! I felt like I was being lifted up on a cloud made of endorphins and awesome.

3. I feel a bit bad about how many props and bits and bobs I've been handing off to the teachers to figure out how to make, but may I just say that they have come through with flying colours?! The nursery tykes all have different seasonally related hats- one class has gold reindeer antlers made from cut out hand prints, one class has felt Santa and elf hats, and the last class has 3D Christmas trees held together with sparkly pipe cleaners. The whole effect is adorable and awesome. The reception tykes all have their animal hats, and while people have been thinking that the polar bears are mice (I would object by asking what on *Earth* mice have to do with Christmas and winter except that the other two classes are fish and ducklings respectively so I suspect that I wouldn't have a leg to stand on with that argument) they all look fantastic.

London is a Snow Globe

We've been having a bunch of snow fall this week. Each morning I've been checking to see whether transport is running and wondering if we were going to have a snow day. Frankly, I've been hoping against a snow day because A) we need the rehearsal time and B) I, um, really like my job? Anyhow- London has been pulling through with very little delay in transport (particularly for tubes and buses. The trains out to the suburbs have been hit a bit harder, but even with serious delays- the trains have still been running.)

This Thursday, during my incarnation as a nursery assistant, we started out the day with our annual Pantomime show for the early years in the hall. (See previous post.) The tykes *loved* it, screaming their heads off and standing up in order to point out the bad guy and give as much information to the characters about what was happening as they could possibly muster. The show was Jack and the Beanstalk and in the first act when Jack and his mother were talking about being poor and oh, so very broke- one of the front row tykes kept saying "I could give you the money!"

D'Awww.

In the afternoon we usually have games all together with the other nursery classes and I wasn't sure if we were going to or not because the hall was full of people and outside was covered in snow.

Silly me, I shouldn't have worried. We had an EPIC 40 minute long snowball fight and sledding session.

Highlights included
1. Dropping snowballs on to tyke's heads
2. Ganging up on the teachers who took longer to get out of the classroom. And by "ganging up" let's please be clear that I mean "ambushing."
3. Squealing tykes
4. Squealing teachers
5. Sliding tykes down a small hill while using plastic building blocks as sleds
6. Our PE teaching marvelling aloud that we get paid to do this...Sometimes I'm amazed at how lucky I am. (All the time. All the time I'm amazed at how lucky I am.)

Tuesday Tykes

I was thinking Tuesday morning as I was coming in to work that I just really didn't want to be there. You know, waking up early in the morning when I'd prefer to be sleeping, not *entirely* sure what the state of the songs are this week and sort of dreading needing to figure out how to put this Christmas show on. (I made a mistake with the nursery tykes in that I am not excited about the songs that they are singing, but it's too late to change them now and it's important to make sure that they're still having fun and learning the songs. It's a bit of a slog like that.) So...feeling a bit down and cranky.

But then?

Then I got to work and had my performance review meeting where we made a list of things I'm going to be working on this year, all three of which I'm excited about because they're things I actually want to do and that will actually be helpful. (Learning to use solfege through Kodaly training and working with the reception classes on it, making a resource bank of rhythm and instrumental games or exercises for teachers to do when it isn't music specialist time, and creating a progress grid based on national guidelines for tracking how well individual children are doing with music.) I was given a drawing made by one of my nursery tykes for me yesterday (tyke love! Yay!), and spent half an hour making up prototype hats/costumes for the Christmas play. The duck hat is covered in feathers and googly eyes and everyone that I've asked (including some of the most literal people around: nursery tykes) have correctly identified it as a duck! I spent the afternoon working with one of the nursery teachers to organize the stage set up for the show, the running order of the songs, and and figuring out what props we need.

So we're set, and I got to spend my morning doing arts and crafts and singing. So clearly, I'm back to feeling like the luckiest person ever that I get to do what I do.

(Yeah, that's bragging again...sorry)

The Tykes are BACK!

Or rather, I am back with the tykes. In any case half term is over and we're together again at school. Christmas preparations are in full swing! The tiniest of the tykes are doing a medley of songs focusing on the theme of Stars! Because...that's Christmassy. Right?

Did you guys all know that in the UK jumping jacks are called star jumps? I totally called on that knowledge to create an impromptu bit of choreography for the tiniest tykes when they were getting super restless during my class. We had two other songs to learn, but they clearly needed to move, so I ended up standing them all up and then doing star jumps through the first two lines of Twinkle Twinkle. Then, emboldened by that, made the little hand actions into full body actions and called it a dance. Which we're now totally going to do during the show. (I love being in charge!)

On Tuesday I woke up at 5, decided I had another hour to sleep before my alarm went off, and then woke up again at 8. Since I'm meant to be *at* work by a quarter after 8, that was kind of a problem. After scurrying through some of the fastest day preparations I've ever done I managed to make it to school only an hour late. At which point I used 5 minutes to craft the wonkiest star puppets ever. (I love that I have to get to work on time in order to cut paper and stick things on to Popsicle sticks.) We used the puppets in "Five Little Stars," another one of our star themed songs for the show.

Today there was a tube strike (again) so I was late (again). It took over two hours to get from my house to school. Not to worry, I hit the ground running and started the bigger tykes off on their Christmas show tunes! All was going well through the first class- the songs have a super peppy backing track that meant that the tykes were like "Again! Again! Miss Casey, we want to sing it again!!!" Which, really, is all you could ever dare to dream of for a tyke's music class. So I was feeling nicely set up for the other two classes. However, when I sat down to start the second class I found that somewhere between the bottom of the stairs and the top of the stairs- the CD had broken in half.

Er...

I have no clue how that possibly could have happened given the fact that it was in. a. case. But oh well. I winged it. (To less acclaim than I was hoping for, but you do what you can.) So we're puttering along. The show is the first week of December (or maybe it works out to the second week of December...single digits anyway.) So we have our work cut out for us.

Kids are Gross. Seriously.

I'm about to share two graphic, gross stories. I think they're funny, but if you're easily grossed out and have never been around children before ever: they may offend your sensibilities.

1. In English class this week one student ripped out his tooth. His front tooth had clearly been loose for a while and it was bleeding a bit so I sent him to the bathroom to get some water and some paper towels. When he came back I took a look to see how loose it was, and while half of it was clearly off, the other half of it was still hanging in there. It was clearly going to pop out that day, but wasn't quite ready yet. I thought about offering to yank it out for him but figured that if there wasn't already an official school policy about tearing children's teeth out of their mouths, that if I did help him out with it- there soon would be. I sent him off to the bathroom again to get more paper towels and when he eventually came back it was with with a distinct air of triumph, a bloody stump, and a front tooth in the palm of his hand.

This, of course, derailed the next five minutes of the lesson.

2. On Thursday during my incarnation as a nursery assistant I heard rather a lot of chattering coming from the tyke's toilets and so went to investigate what the party was all about. I couldn't get past the door because the stench was so strong that I had to turn around and gag. Two of them had simultaneously done the foulest poos ever and were then just sort of hanging out there for a while.

"Miss Casey? Will you wipe me?"

No.

No I will not.

If you're old enough to pour your own water, put your own shoes on, and dress yourself- you are old enough to wipe your own butt.

So I gave a little tutorial from the door (turning my head to breathe and gag again) and congratulated them as sincerely as I could when they held up their used toilet paper for me to inspect. "Well done girls. Now, for the love of god, will you please put those in the toilet and flush?"

The next tutorial I gave was how to properly and thoroughly wash your hands.

Gender roles at Garden Time

In the playground my floaty, thin scarf was liberated by one of the tykes. She ran around with it over her face (it was see through) haunting people as a ghost. A little boy lifted up the side of it to poke his head under as well. She yanked the scarf away and ran off to haunt some others, and since neither child seemed put out I didn't say anything about sharing.

 

I kept an eye on her to make sure my scarf didn't end up in one of the mud puddles and eventually the scarf morphed (as all good dress up items do) from being protoplasm to being a princess skirt. She pranced around with it held tightly around her waist, dancing about the garden. The same little boy came over and lifted up the side of it to poke his head under...and this time? Was it okay? It's still a scarf. But since it was representing a skirt,and since he was a boy, and since she clearly didn't want him to put his head under her skirt...do I put a stop to it? Or is that just me projecting adult thoughts and motivations onto a pair of three year olds? (I suspect the latter) At the same time, at what point do we start teaching boys that when a girl says no, she means no. At what point do you go beyond saying "be nice to everyone and respect every one's space" and into "but particularly girls' because there is a massive history there that you don't yet understand."

 

I wouldn't have been that bothered by it, only giving that encounter a passing thought, except that I kept watching her the whole garden time (I really didn't want my scarf getting muddy) ("why didn't you take it back?" you may ask. I don't know. I just didn't.) And later on when the reception tykes rushed onto the field one of the bigger boys came over and grabbed her, wrestled her and kissed her. Is that still okay? Is that still rough housing? Or is that something where I should step in and say not okay. She fended him off just fine, and maybe I wasn't paying attention to other combinations of children where one is fending off another, maybe it is fine and this is just part of what happens. But should it be? She can take care of herself, but should she already have to?

Tykes Odds and Ends

Last week during a lesson in one of the nursery rooms I managed to use a hula hoop to knock over a bunch of test tubes containing coloured water. (Isn't that a wonderful set up for something? It seems like all of those things together would be the beginning of a fabulous surreal story, but really it was just a watery mess.) I felt bad that I had just spilled water everywhere including all over the Montessori materials on the shelves- but all of the tykes kept saying "It's okay, Miss Casey!" in that particular voice that you use to console a three year old when they've made a mess in a clearly accidental way. Like wetting themselves or something like that.

Good to know they've been listening and taking it in.

I know it's only October, but we're already moving in to working on the Christmas show. This year we're getting ambitious and having the show on a proper stage at an away venue instead of just in the hall/cafeteria at school. Also, (because I think they can do it) both the Reception Tykes AND the Nursery Tykes will be doing their own Nativity plays. I use the term "nativity" very loosely: one is about a kind scarecrow and his animal friends and involves Mr and Mrs. Claus; while the other does mention baby Jesus but is mostly about a bunch of stars.

I know I'm talking about religion a bunch on this blog- but it comes up fairly often at school. It's a religiously diverse school and I'm still not used to the fact that there isn't a separation of church and state in this country. Fine lines to tread and all that.

I wanted to make sure that all of the classroom teachers were on board with the Christmas show plans and I wanted to make sure that if there were any concerns that I heard them now, in October, rather than learning about them in December or, even worse, not hearing about them at all and just frustrating/angering some of them. So I've been running the scripts and songs by the teachers and getting feedback. Most of the teachers are keen to try something a bit more challenging, but it is interesting what sort of traditions people hold on to in a school where the longest serving teacher amongst the Early Years staff has only been here for 5 years. (I guess that is plenty long to make a tradition.) Fortunately at this point we've still got enough time to change the plans pretty drastically if we need to.

Halloween? Pssht. Thanksgiving? Whatever. It's jingle bells on rotate here! (Side note: I have, legitimately, had Good King Wenceslas stuck in my head for the better part of this past month. I have no idea why.)

Tykes Music Club

I'm teaching two music clubs on Wednesdays now, which is a great deal of fun. I'm continuing the tykes' music club and then following that I have a new Key Stage 2 (8-11 year olds) composition club. And OH! I'm excited about that one. But lets talk tykes first....

I have nine of them in the club. They are squirrelly as tykes are wont to be, so maybe this wasn't the most brilliant idea ever? (Or maybe it was genius. I'll reserve judgement until I have them again next week.) What happened was this: I was digging around in the resource bookshelf in the music room and found a book called A Sackful of Songs by Jane Newberry. It has some delightful songs in it and I thought "wonderful! I won't be recycling material that these tykes have already seen before!" before choosing a gem called "Scary Monster!" (exclamation point helpfully included.)

This song, like many songs for tykes, involves changing actions. Always a good thing since that gives them an opportunity to control the song and get creative with it. The song is about a scary green monster roaring. Or laughing. Or crying or jumping or you get the point.

So we roared for a bit and that went fine. A couple of tykes were really in to the roaring and a few more were staring off into the distance. It seemed like it was time to move on to another action. So we stomped for a bit and then the song turned out to be about dinosaurs and then dragons and then back to monsters again before little C. piped up with: "I want the monster to eat me."

Very matter of factly like that.
(Exclamation point helpfully not included.)

So I "ate" C. by tickling her belly and then oooh did the floodgates open.

"Me! Me! Eat MEeee!!!" 


The tykes scattered all over the room and cowered gleefully under the tables. I said I wouldn't eat any of them unless they all sang- so they all sang with gusto while I crawled menacingly around on the floor tickling each of them in turn whenever I could reach them.

I feel certain I wasn't meant to do that, but I can't actually think of a good reason why except for the whole running in the classroom thing and the fact that I have now set a precedent. (I think it is really the precedent that is going to bite me in the butt.) On the other hand I got them to sing the song enough times so that they all have a handle on the tune and the words and I did that without bashing it repetitively into their skulls while they sat down in a circle. Six of one, half a dozen of the other?

Tyke Camp

We're into the third week of Tyke-ness. I've continued to be privileged with really excellent helpers. Last week's theme, unintentionally, was "messiness" admittedly one day we did schedule "messy play" but the rest? That was just because we're such lucky ducks.

We've done bunches of cookery...stuff. We made coconut ice (essentially dessicated coconut, sugar, and food colouring), jelly, pretzels, and today we made cheese straws.

Can I suggest something? if you're cooking with children, maybe don't start with something that a) you don't have the correct measuring tools for and b) you don't know what consistency the dough is meant to be. In spite of having no clue what I was doing the cheese straws somehow, miraculously, turned out just fine.

We've started presenting cooking in a TV show style way: we set up a table at the edge of the classroom and cluster them all on the floor around and call them up in pairs to do any stirring or mixing or rolling or what have you. This has been fine so far since most of what we've been making has had a barrier (i.e., a spoon) between the tykes' hands and the food. For the pastry today, though, we were mixing with our fingers which is when something occurred to me: the floor? In the classroom? It is *filthy* and the tykes? sitting on it? Keep putting their HANDS on it. So we had them washing their hands constantly- once so they could touch the dough, again because they couldn't get to the dough without touching the floor again, once more because seriously: don't touch the floor, a further time because do you want to mix the dough? DON'T TOUCH THE FLOOR!, and a final time after their hands were all floury and buttery from the pastry.

Last week with the pretzels I decided that next time I'm going to be a bit more emphatic about what shapes are allowed. No, you don't get to stand at the table for twenty minutes making a snake and then making a ball and than making a snake again- other tykes have not had their turn! Make the first letter of your name and then SIT DOWN. If you want to play with dough? We have some beautiful, perfect, homemade, blue play dough right over there. Yes, it's been there all morning. Right there. On the table. Over there. That table, in the corner. Yes, that one.

You can roll and flatten and roll that dough to your heart's content. But this? This needs to be put into an oven.

Seriously kid.

Right, that blob? That's what you made! Well done!

Now, shoo.

We've done some arts and crafts as well. Lydia brought in this brilliant science activity book so we had Science Day! (you can tell on the weekly schedule which things I have invented and which I've copied and pasted from earlier schedules made by other people. Mine all have exclamation points...) We made air rockets with card, tape, and paper straws. We made climbing lizards (looking a friction don'cha know). We've painted pasta and made pasta necklaces, made ingenious hand print and glitter fish puppets, spinning spiral mobiles, and huge STACKS of colouring in.

This week is quite a bit smaller so I've only got one helper a day instead of two. Because there are so few kids I've started taking specific orders for colouring. It turns out that there are brilliant databases for printable colouring pages. Anything you could possibly want to colour in can be found on the Internet. Thank you, Internet.

I tell you about all of these exciting activities we've been doing (and I haven't even mentioned the trips to the playgrounds and the science museum!) but you know what they get really, really excited about? And play with for literally hours on end? The train set.

Three year olds are awesome.

(PS. "Messy Play" involves covering the tykes in smocks, sitting them down at a table, and putting trays of stuff in front of them. Specifically corn flour mixed with water, shaving foam and glitter, hair gel and glitter, and shaving foam and sand. They liked it okay but I LOVED it. We had a very fastidious set of tykes that day. Most of the corn flour + water mix that ended up on the floor was entirely my fault. As was *all* of the shaving foam that ended up in the tykes' hair and on their faces. I'm so embarrassed...)

The Tykes Have A Summer Holiday

At school we have a summer camp for the tykes. It's actually totally reasonably priced and so we end up with some kids from school, some starting school in the autumn, and some from the area. For this week and the next two I am the head teacher/leader/whatever for the junior camp. It's been great fun.

I kind of keep forgetting that I'm in charge so my two wonderful co-teacher/leader/whatever folks have been a fabulous help. I don't forget in the sense that things don't get done but in the sense that a decision will have to be made like "hey, it's raining and we are scheduled to go to the fountain to go wading...that's not going to work. What should we do instead, Casey?" and I pause for a fraction of a second before thinking "Oh! Right! I'm in charge!"

Camp is pretty unstructured, we've got an activity in the morning, lunch and the great kid switch, and then a trip or activity in the afternoon. It's relaxed and focused on having fun. That being said, I'm so pleased that Linda and Lydia are my assistants the first week because they've got so many excellent ideas and it's great to have such wonderful people to get my sea legs with. Here are some things I've learned so far:

1. Free play time is great, but make sure the supplies and activities available for free play vary each day, otherwise the tykes'll get bored. Even the most fun activities are less fun when they are always there.

2. Tykes enjoy some structure. For instance- the obstacle course we built inside during the rain storm was great fun for about half an hour at which point there needed to be a change- the tykes were going from happy to manic and that's not fun to be around nor to experience yourself. We switched to circle games like duck duck goose and The Farmer in the Dell and that allowed us to extend the activity another half hour. Very good to know and learn for scheduling purposes.

3. Just because the schedule you inherited had lunch at 11am, that doesn't mean it's a good time to have lunch. On Monday the kids a: weren't hungry yet and b: finished lunch so early that we had to tuck another extra activity in there before the moms came to pick the morning kids up. Fortunately we sorted that one out right quick.

4. Songs are an excellent transition activity. And though it is the middle of the summer and muggy as anything- it's always a good time for "5 little snowmen fat" which is the current favourite song amongst this week's tykes. I started singing with the tykes on Tuesday while Linda and Lydia were setting up the cookery activity (yes, "cookery" activity) and it worked so well that I've put it into the schedule.

We made gingerbread men and decorated them. The kids counted the cups of flour, tablespoons of butter, cups of sugar, etc. and then each got a turn to mix the dough with their hands (before the eggs were put in). They rolled the dough and cut the cookies out. It was very successful. We didn't have any proper measure cups/spoons/weights so we were eyeballing the dough and estimating everything. Linda was shaking the powdered ginger in and, because everything reminds me of a song, I started singing "shake shake shake, shake shake shake, shake the ginger, shake the ginger" At about the same time as the tykes started singing along I suddenly realized that the actual song was "Shake Your Booty" by KC and the Sunshine band and maybe that wasn't wholly appropriate...

Today we made paper plate masks and painted them and sprinkled them with glitter. I probably sang something during that too, but I don't remember.

Tykes Run Around Like Crazy

It's been a busy few weeks in tyke-land. Last week was Sports Day! There were a variety of races and then a picnic complete with "ice lollies." The parents have to stay behind a barrier and the kids run around in a somewhat organized fashion while their photographs are taken. It's kind of silly and a bunch of fun.

The tykes were divided up into a groups of yellow, blue, red, and green and then led around to various events by their teachers, classroom assistants, or very responsible year 4s. I was in charge of Circle Ball and Leader Ball, both of which were played with bean bags... Circle ball is essentially a relay race around a giant circle, and leader ball is the same thing but in a line and with the added difficulty of throwing and "catching" the bean bag. (I don't think any of the tykes caught any of the bean bags ever.)

My station was supposed to take 15 minutes with another 15 minutes for a snack and water break. Unfortunately a round of circle and/or leader ball takes about 30 seconds...so we did it four times in a row! With much jumping and hollering of encouragement.

Can I just take a moment here to tell you about P? P is a lovely little nursery girl who bears an uncanny resemblance to a basset hound. Huge, beautiful brown eyes and the largest jowls you've ever seen on a three year old girl. She spent the first half of the year consistently confused and bewildered looking, but over the last term and a half or so has brightened up considerably. It turns out that jowly three year old cheeks when they smile? Are the Best. Thing. Ever. And P was having a grand old time at sports day, racing around the circle in her hilarious torso swivelling run with the biggest grin ever on her face. I freaking love P.

So that was sports day. The week before we had had International Day! International day is a trip. The school is almost absurdly multicultural, and in addition the parents can sometimes get absurdly competitive. This is all to the good on international day when everyone shows up in their own traditional costumes and two of the nursery rooms get given over to FOOD. Piles and piles of delicious, amazing, fabulous food. The two rooms are divided up amongst countries or regions and then decorated by the various families, each trying to out do the others. Mmmm. Korean sushi, home made hummus, fried plantains, empanadas, crepes filled with nutella, delicious piles of things from the Indian and Middle Eastern tables, and I don't even know what I was eating from the Austrian table but it was cheesy and awesome. (Man, now I'm hungry again.) The poor kids are given hot dogs in the cafeteria while the teachers and parents get scrumptious food...

It's not ALL about the food, it's also about the costumes! And because the parents need a chance to photograph their babies- we had a parade. The parade also included a short musical performance which was my responsibility. It was really rainy that week and usually International Day spills out into the garden, but because of the mud we planned to have the parade and performance in the library. Except that someone then made the decision that it was bright enough and dry enough to do the parade and performance outside even if the eating still had to take place inside. This meant that it was totally unorganized and the tykes ended up streaming out through a filter of their parents which meant that I had to figure out how to A: collect all the tykes and B: distract them from "Mummy!" so that they would sing their songs.

A few minutes and some very over exaggerated warm up exercises later I pushed the encroaching crowd of parents back and we got along to singing. Whew. They were delightful, and if their are now some videos floating around of me jumping up and down and looking ridiculous- well, that just goes with the territory.

Do you remember my little Italian Boy? His family is moving back home after this week so he won't be around for Open Music Day on the 30th. On sports day his mom apologized to me that she was taking him away early (I encouraged her to come see our class this week) and explaining to me how much her son loves my class. He has apparently taken to singing our songs to himself as he wanders around their home. He also gets disappointed whenever we fail to sing his favourite song ever "copy cats" so she asked me for the lyrics so that they could sing it together.

I love stories like that. Just love them. And the lyrics were put in his box that afternoon.

The Tykes!

I have a bunch of books full of resources and they're way fun. I've made some note cards with this set of information on them: The year group I think they'd work best with, the name of the song, the book title and page number, the classroom extension activities that could happen, the resources needed (i.e., percussion or props), and the learning objectives.

Some people have recipe folders. I have this.

Anyhow- something I should keep in mind for next time- when choosing the songs for that weeks lesson, try to make sure that they aren't just different words to the same tune...

Fortunately I caught that mistake and dodged that bullet before the lessons actually began for the day. What we *Actually* ended up doing was this:

We warmed up with our basic body warm up (I start by clapping or drumming on my knees to A: get their attention aurally and then switch to other actions/sounds to B: have them all sync up and watch ME.) We then went into singing a C Major triad. I actually hadn't tried this before, for some reason assuming that it would be too difficult or something weird like that. We sang with hand motions (belly= Do, chest=Mi, eyes=Sol, and above the head= Do again) and not only were they excellent with the pitch matching, they also LOVED it. I mostly had them going straight up the triad but they went along with me when I mixed it up a bit and kept saying "again! again!" when I tried to stop. We're calling that one a winner.

So then we got out a pretend kitten. A very small kitten. One of the things that I'm meant to be addressing with the tykes is their own creative response to music. So this was an attempt at that- what sounds do small kittens make? What other pets do any of you have? A dog? Big or small? Small? How does it sound? What about a Great Big Dog now? Any other pets?

Then we sang our hello song (that was a vocal warm up, btw- lots of different ranges and different types of voices) Then we sang it with various animal voices. The BEST ones? That hadn't even occurred to me as being a useful thing to do? Any animal with a staccato sound like a crocodile: "snap!" because that meant I could hear if they were doing it in the same rhythm as the song or not- and mostly? They were. Neat, huh?

With the nursery tykes we started a song called "Copy Cats." Now here is where we run into problems- you know my initial warm up? The clapping or knee slapping followed by quick changes in actions that they all have to follow at the same time? Yeah. They're very well trained. They're excellent at it. You know what that means for 3 year olds though? That they cannot *repeat* after me. If I'm leading something they can't echo- they just do it at the exact same time. The concept of echoing me is one that I have efficiently and effectively drummed out of them. Oops.

On the plus side it turns out that they can echo each other- so we spent some time doing that and that worked relatively well. They can echo each other now, but they still don't know how the song fits together. Is it bad that I am leaving that for the classroom teachers to deal with? "Here's the CD, guys. Have them learn the song! See you next week!"

The Reception tykes had their own challenges and victories. They're studying "Transport" this term so I found this fun song to the tune of "My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean." Sample lyric:

"Oh have you been out in a sailboat

to float on the ocean so blue

where octopus live underwater

and dolphins swim following you

Sailboat, sailboat, oh come on a sail boat with me, with me

sailboat, sailboat; so many new places to see!"

Following versus include tube train, space ship and (oddly) big wheel.

In the first of my three Reception classes we used an activity rug as the boat and had children stand in for the sail, octopus, and 3 dolphins. They then moved when they heard their character's name when the rest of the class sang the song. It was a great hit and one of the children responded with "It's like a play!" Darn tootin' it is!

The reception classes have always had very different personalities so it should come as no surprise that the next class didn't even get to the acting it out stage. As soon as I was done singing/introducing the written verses to the song- the immediately started in with their own. We had a car that went over a bridge and under a tunnel, a bus that went in a tunnel and then home, and finally a burrowing car that went to the centre of the earth while being chased my ghosts and then shooting diagonally off into space. Admittedly that one didn't really end up fitting the tune...

The *third* reception class, on the other hand? They are spazalicious. We learned the song, tried the acting it out thing, and then gave it up for a lost cause and spent the 7 minutes or so practicing making a circle.

One FINAL story to end this epic tykes post:

"Miss Casey! We had jelly for lunch!" (Jelly, by the way, means Jell-O) The tykes are roughly belly height and because this is garden time this means that I had about five tykes hanging off of me.

"Was it all wobbly like my belly?" I ask, because this allows me to shake off at least two of them.

"Miss Casey? My Mommy's belly is big like yours too!"

Yeah. I totally walked into that one.

Chaperoning for a Living

Due to a lack of a sufficient number of chaperons for the Nursery tyke's field trip, there were no music classes today. This is because I was drafted in to help a trip of 60 three year olds go to the Wetlands. Man, that was fun/exhausting.

Highlights:
"Miss Casey! We're going on a school trip! ... (pause wherein he realizes that I am sitting across the aisle and one row in front of him) Miss Casey? Are you going too?!"

There is a little Italian boy who only recently started attending nursery at my school. Up until about two weeks ago he was wailing every morning and frequently was taken home by 10am because he was so upset. This little boy? Today? WOULD NOT SHUT UP- he had a massive grin on his face and was chattering away to me and though he was mixing up his Italian and English a bit, most of it was understandable and ENGLISH. How do kids learn this fast?! I'm in awe.

We took nets and hunted for creatures in the pond, we strolled around wetlands and looked at "ducks" (Any ornithologist or even mildly interested bird watcher would be appalled that we referred to everything as "ducks.") had lunch in the "sunshine" and then spent a good hour or so in the playground!

The! Playground! Was! AWESOME! (And that's me saying that, not just the kids.) I was in charge of watching the gate so that none of the tykes could escape. Fortunately, the giant bouncy dragonfly/see saw allowed me to have an unobstructed view of the gate while simultaneously allowing me to bounce constantly for an hour. Except for a short period of time when I was required in the "secret lair" (a bunch of child sized underground tunnels with skylights in the hills above) the tykes were moving swiftly through the "secret lair" (did I mention it was child sized I was all "yeah. Okay guys. Hold on a sec. (crawl, crawl, crawl) I'll catch up in a second!")

There was also one of those zip line things, a bunch of smaller seesaws, a rubberized pit for running around in, and a lot of plants/bamboo for hiding in and then popping out and saying "boo!" from.

Over on the giant dragonfly we did a lot of singing (they *were* missing music class after all.) The whole thing was pretty precious. And exhausting. In the class that I was helping most with all but two of the tykes fell asleep on the bus ride home. I ended up carrying one back into the school and he just kept snuggling his head into mine- which was very sweet except that he seemed to most want to push my head over to the side, knock my glasses off with his forehead, and burrow his skull into my nose. Like that was comfy?

Best Lesson of the Week

On Wednesday I had an *excellent* lesson with one of the reception classes. It was one of those things where it all just worked and I'm still excited about it, so here you go:

This class has an autistic boy (Q.) in it. He likes music and catches on quickly but frequently will respond in a way that, while showcasing that he is paying attention and enjoying himself, is disruptive to the rest of the class. Like humming the tune of a recording we're using over and over again for the whole lesson or rolling up the carpet in time to the music (the tykes are supposed to be sitting on the carpet...) So he's someone to keep an eye on and I always try, to the best of my ability, to incorporate whatever he's brought to the lesson while still getting the point across to the rest of the class- but he does end up sitting out fairly regularly.

So this Wednesday I had a small djembe with me and Q. started hollering out "That drum is Thai!" I tried to tell him and the rest of the class that it was an African drum but Q. kept insisting that it was Thai. Now, probably I could have just left this because is it important? No. But I didn't just leave it, I looked on the label and it turned out that the drum was actually made in the US, so I told the tykes that.

"Who else is from the US? Raise your hand!" there are two American tykes in the class so that left three of us with our hands raised.

Enter Q. "You're not from America, you're from Spain!" Oh, am I now? Cool. "No! Not Spain, space" Ah. Excellent! We can use that! So we made rocket ships with our arms and shot them up into space while vocalizing up a scale and then the rocket ship was shooting from side to side so we sang along with that as well and then the rocket ship crashed on to...wait, what planet is Miss Casey from? Can we have a vote? Right, the moon won so the rocket ship crashes on to the moon: BOOM!

But N. wasn't happy with that (which was just fine for my vocal warm up because it meant that we got to do it all again! ) and so the second time we blasted off from Earth, flew around space, and then N. caught our ship and placed us gently on the moon where we met some aliens. Cowboy aliens, actually, since Miss Casey is a Lunar American. Then we put on our cowboy boots, made some alien noises, and galloped around on space horses. Physical and vocal warm up? Done!

Then I taught the song about flowers that we're going to be working on for the next couple of weeks. The actions can get quite complicated and the song is very pretty as well so the class naturally broke down into two groups- the dancers and the singers. (They did this on their own, by the way.) They were doing such a good job at that point of offering their own suggestions for things that I decided to leave it up to them what colors the flowers were- which then led to another whole class vote between "very red and bright" and "purple and red." (very red won by a narrow margin.) They sang with such big voices and were so. in. to. it. I had the most fun I've had teaching ever and actually bounced down the stairs to find Linda immediately after the lesson to recount the whole thing to her.

The best part was that Q. was totally engaged and actively participating the whole time.

Go tykes!

Tykes' Teachers Get Assessed

My mid year assessment was meant to have happened weeks ago, but due to a number of reasons(unexpected visiting doctors during "people who help us week" and an instrumental concert) it happened today.

Linda was my assessor and even though I have now been at school for a year (official! I started last year right after spring-term half-term break and half-term break starts next week so I have now done a full and complete year cycle.) I had yet to go through an assessment. Now, Linda and I work together every week- we teach club together on Wednesdays and we've done quite a lot of planning for the department together- so Linda ought not to be intimidating. She wasn't really intimidating so much as the concept of being assessed was intimidating. In spite of regularly being told by my co-workers that I am doing a good job, I am still convinced that I'm due for a talking to at any. moment.

I had filled out an Official Lesson Plan form with things like "Key Learning Intentions (WALT)" ... and "Plenary" .... I think this is one of those places where if I actually had teacher training I would know what these things meant. As it was I listed what concepts we were covering and how we would review the songs at the end of the class.

The lesson went well. We worked on Staccato (short and discrete) and Legato (connected) in the form of Frogs and Snakes as well as continuing work on our "Do You Know The Story" song.

We've already listened to staccato sounds and jumped like frogs on the down beat, and last week we listened to legato sounds and moved our hands like undulating snakes. This week I introduced the idea of using our voices like Frogs and Snakes (super short, barking out each syllable individually or completely slurred together). We started by repeating the names of our teachers in the style of whichever laminated picture I was holding up that we we were working on and then moved on to repeating all the tykes' names in that manner as well.

Following all that we reviewed "Do You Know The Story" and tried out writing and singing some new verses. Then we sang the verses with "frog" (staccato) voices and "snake" (legato) voices.

So there you go. There were some warm up and ending things as well- but pretty much- that is what the meat of one of my lessons looks like. The kids did a very good job with the staccato/legato contrast and though I really should have set up the writing of new verses in a different way a couple of lessons ago- they still came up with some interesting and fun verses today as well. Mostly about Power Rangers.

Part of the assessment is immediately sitting down with your assessor and talking about how the lesson went. There is also a written portion that Linda gets to write up tonight. She said that I had an exciting and engaging manner with the kids and I that I was very clear with both what I was doing and with what I wanted the tykes to do. Also that the lesson plan was excellent. (Woo!) She said these things a couple of times and a couple of different ways and I'm sure my facial expressions were concerning her but I couldn't relax until I got to hear what I needed to work on. (Casey! Relax!)

What I need to work on is classroom management- I'm very positive with the tykes- praising good behavior and pointing out kids who are correctly modeling what I'm looking for, but I need to gain more confidence and the authority or presence or whatever that is that means that the kids do what I ask them to the first time I ask them. Also- the teachers in the classroom. A lot of the time a considerable amount of noise is coming from the classroom teachers or assistants who use my class as an opportunity to catch up on things around the room like typing, tutoring one of the tykes (seriously?), chatting with the other teachers, microwaving the tykes' lunches, and today: stuffing a bunch of plastic bags into another plastic bag. (The bags were so loud that I actually did ask her to stop, which was fine, but everything else? Not so much.)

The other thing I need to work on is Plenary (apparently the final section of a traditional three part lesson...huh. I still don't know what WALT stands for.) And Linda and I are going to continue to work on that. We came up with some good ideas that might help both issues- namely small group work and giving creative or quizzing tasks to pairs of tykes. So all in all? Good.

Tykes and Firehoses

On Tuesdays I am meant to be doing planning with Linda and only sticking around for two hours. This has never been the case, I've always stuck around longer than that. Recently, because I finally figured out the utility of lesson plans and sort of figured out a good system for doing them (we'll see if it keeps working. If it does then I'll say that without the "sort of"), I have found myself chaperoning field trips. This morning that involved a trip to the Fire Station!

Gosh, golly fire stations are fun. I was arguably more excited than some of the reception students that I was brought along to chaperon. Definitely more excited than poor Z whose face was pure misery the whole time. She found the whole thing rather frightening, and that combined with the frigid weather and lengthy trek to and from the fire station meant that Z was not a happy bunny.

J on the other hand? MAN fire stations are COOL.

"Did you know that the fastest car in the world is longer than a bus?"
"Is it?"
"Yes, and it can go faster than the fire truck!"
"Wow."

All of the children got to climb into the fire truck, ask questions from Fire Man Charlie (isn't that just an ideal fire man name?), wear fire helmets, play with flashlights (oddly the highlight of the event), and this super-neat view finder with heat sensing...ness. THEN everyone got to try out the hose. With water going through it.

Some of the mothers were taking photographs and they got a little in the way of the fire hose. Guys? When a four year old has control of a fire hose, may I suggest that standing anywhere in front of the hose is a poor idea? J-N's mom got rather wet.

You know I said that everyone got to try out the hose? I mean it. I totally tried it out too. And it was *awesome* (though really it' just like a large shower head attached to a red truck...)

The Tykes Get Traditional

In my new effort to keep up to date with lesson plans and what not I have also tried to keep up to date with topic links so that the songs and musical examples have something to do with what the tykes are learning. One of the reception teachers pointed out that Traditional Stories was a couple of weeks ago, but WHATEVER. It was still this half term and that's close enough for me!

I found this wonderful song. Well, I've known this song for ages- but I found wonderful lyrics for the tune. Do you know "What do you do with a drunken sailor?" I love that song, I really do.

These words are for traditional stories. For instance (this is an example I made up and in the style of the lyrics but not from the actual song which is, I think, copy written)

I have a basket and skipped to Grandma's, I have a basket and skipped to Grandma's, I have a basket and skipped to Grandma's, Do you know my story?

or

I sold our cow and got three magic beans, I sold our cow and got three magic beans, I sold our cow and got three magic beans, Do you know my story?

or

My hair gets longer day by day, my hair gets longer day by day, my hair gets longer day by day, Do you know my story?

or

We wear our shoes out every night, we wear our shoes out every night, we wear our shoes out every night, Do you know our story?

Clearly I could keep doing this all day, but I'll stop now.

Some of the stories chosen in the real lyrics (that are on the CD) are less popular, so I started off the class by listening to the song and then finding out if they knew all of the stories. This turned out to be a fascinating exercise since what ended up happening was that in each class there were a couple of tykes who would volunteer to tell stories.

Have you heard a four or five year old tell a story? It's amazing. There are no "um's" or "ah's" and strange things are important- there isn't really any dialogue, but the structure of the story is all there. They understand how these things work. They know the stories. Well, the ones that they know, they know. Would you remember that Jack bought the beans from an old man? I mean, I think if I were telling Jack and the Beanstalk I would have remembered that there *were* magic beans, but not necessarily how they came to be.

The difference in storytelling style was made abundantly clear when I got to the third and final class because no one in that class knew the story of Rumpelstiltskin. It was up to me to tell them the story. Do I really remember how Rumpelstiltskin goes? No. I mean, sort of? My version was full of "So he was like 'blah blah blah' and then she was all 'blah blah blah'" Which is silly. And hard to follow. And not clear and concise and full of the important things like the tykes' versions were. Also, does Rumpelstiltskin burst into flame and then end when he is jumping up and down so mad at the Queen/peasant girl? Because in my version he did and the other teachers disagreed...