23 June 2010

OMM!

Compliments of a rising first grader in one of my classes today, my new favorite exclamation: "Oh my mother!"

Now, I tend to find it humorous when four and five year olds exclaim, "Oh my goodness!" (even more so if it doesn't fit the context...). But "Oh my mother!"? I must admit that, despite the fact that my younger friends tease me about being "old," my twenty four and a half years of existence had never blessed me with this lovely phrasing.

So, here's the context:

We read two books in the first week's lesson for the rising first grade class: Morris the Moose (the virtues of which I clearly outlined in a previous post!) and We're Going on a Bear Hunt. The former book gives my students a chance to practice reading on their own, with support from whatever adult is attending the class with them. The latter, however, I have the pleasure of reading aloud to the group, and then, right at the end of the class time, acting out.

This week's dramatization was grand: eleven bear hunters and I marched around the room, swishing through tall grass, stumbling through a dark and gloomy forest, and tiptoeing into a scary cave! Of course, once we found the bear in his cave, we hightailed it back home - and under the covers - and declared our bear hunt over. Admittedly, some of my more, shall we say, excitable young gentlemen wanted to continue "hunting," but I sent them home instead.

Even before we began the dramatization however, a very small - and usually shy - young lady made my day! It was during my first reading of the story, which I may have dramatized a bit myself. The bear hunting family had swished through the tall grass, squished to the other side of the oozy mud, and even splashed across a river. But then, they happened upon a "swirling, whirling snowstorm". And, as one of my students had so wisely pointed out earlier, they weren't wearing coats: "The baby is even in her jammies!"

At this point, from the front row, totally out of the blue, a small voice exclaimed, "Oh my mother!"

And I tried not to giggle too much as I shivered my way through the howling wind and swirling snow.

1 comment:

thera said...

ha! omm,i love it!