my kids are so much fun. I love teasing them. they come in and ask me "can I pleeeeeease not work today? I wanna color."


"sure," I say.


"really?!?"


no, not really. I tell them it's my job to make their brains hurt. "awww, but miss laura!" they say.


I have a kid who pouts. she folds her arms across her chest, drops her head, sticks out her bottom lip and pouts. she grabs the seat directly to my left every day and nudges her chair along until she's sitting right under my nose. "hi, miss laura," she says in a quiet little voice, and then tells me all about what she did in school today. she's taken to wandering around the room, jotting down notes about people who say mean things in a tiny yellow notebook.


I have a kid who doesn't stop smiling. I spent an hour one day last week trying to teach her to round. we must have done 40 examples. sometimes she got it; sometimes she had no idea. every time she didn't get it, she'd say "I almost know it. I can just feel it's almost there." then she'd give me this big grin and we'd start all over.


I have one with an attitude. she doesn't like reading. she doesn't like language arts. she hates math. everything we do is boring. I haven't found out what she does like yet, besides talking to her friends when she's supposed to be working quietly and ignoring people who tell her to stop talking and do her work.


filling the gaping holes in their knowledge is a delightful little task. today I gave them a stack of grocery store ads and had them do the family shopping, keeping the total cost within $50 and covering all five food groups. tomorrow we'll be playing plural and possessive noun games and using christmas lights to practice percentages. thursday I'm going to bring in my spare change jar, which contains seven different currencies, and I'm going to sneak-teach them geography under the guise of math. haha. woe is them. I have big plans for their poor wee brains.