Off/Topic

When you work with children you get some wild and wonderful ideas from them. Their little minds are bursting with creativity and unfettered by societal constraints of what is realistic and what is not. However, you occasionally get a child who so far off topic and in their own little universe it is funny.

Up until this week the tale of the slug has been my favourite one of these.  This child was in my booster group and we had spent days walking in the snow, looking at frost, talking about all the sensations of cold weather, using our 5 senses so that he would be able to write a vivid description about the snow. This is what happened:

Teacher: What is this?
Child: My description.
Teacher: What is it about?
Child: A slug.
Teacher: A slug.
Child: His name is Ralph.
Teacher: What?
Child: The slug. His name is Ralph. He wears a top hat.
Teacher:(sighing) What were you *supposed* to write about?
Child: (indignantly) I did!
Teacher: Where?
Child: In the first sentence.

And sure enough, the saga of Ralph the top hat wearing slug began with the sentence Ralph the slug was cold so he went inside. There you go. Illusion to snow made, let's crack on with the fascinating tale.

This week another of these off topic tales has emerged with another child I work with. His class is called Spain (as all our classes are named after countries) and they have been reading Michael Morpurgo's book Toro! Toro! and watched the film of Ferdinand the gentle bull who loved to smell flowers.  I should have known there was trouble when the child kept forgetting who he was in the story. You were supposed to  be desribing how Ferdinand felt when he was captured and on the way to the bull fight.

Me: How do you think he was feeling? How would you feel?
Child: Scared. I don't like to fight I might get hurt.
Me: Yes I am sure he was scared.
Child: The bulls horns might stab him.
Me: Honey, you ARE the bull!
Child: Oh yeah.

So when they had to write a description of the Matador this is what we got:

The matador was tall and he liked cheese and crackers. Cheese and crackers was his favourite food. He ate cheese and crackers all the time. He ate cheese and crackers so much that he turned into cheese and crackers. When he was not eating cheese and crackers he was bull fighting.

Bit peckish, are we? Thinking about your pack lunch then, hmmm? It turns out no.

Me: You must really like cheese and crackers.
Child: No. that's food for matadors.

Silly me. So when you work with munchkins sometimes you get the strangest things in response. It may not make sense to you, but on Planet Kiddo, it works out perfectly.