J is for Jellyfish

One of my favorite moments from last week was on Tuesday, when I taught letter 'J' to Prepa. Each week we learn a new letter, along with it's sound and select vocabulary beginning with that letter. Last week we learned J, and the vocabulary was "juice," "jump," and "jellyfish." Juice they already knew from the previous year with Miss Amanda, so that was review. To teach them jump, I lined all the kids up on the foot-high ledge outside the classroom. Let me preface this by saying that I knew from the beginning that this wasn't my safest teaching idea yet - it was just too 5-year-old exciting to pass up. On the count of three, I commanded, "JUMP!" as all my kids shrieked and gleefully jumped off the ledge and onto the ground. This occurred over and over and over again, for a solid six minutes. The game ended when a kid was pushed off the ledge before I even reached number three, and he solidly face-planted in the dirt. That was my cue to reinstate responsible judgement.

That left jellyfish as our newest vocabulary word. So on Tuesday, as I tried to draw Jell-O on the board and quickly realized how confusing that would be with Honduran-child pronunciation of "yellow," I decided to fully embrace "jellyfish" as our symbol of letter J. I drew a jellyfish on the board, told the kids what it was, and had them repeat the new word many times. Then I started to act it out. I can't really describe how I acted out jellyfish, especially since I can't describe the way a true jellyfish even acts. It involved flopping my arms and neck around and making bubble noises. Somehow, my eyes ended up closed. When I was satisfied with my performance, I opened my eyes, only to see that all of my Prepa children were imitating me and being jellyfish. My whole class was flopping around and actually embodying jellyfish.

That was that favorite moment.

Due to the success of our "J is for Jellyfish" lesson, I decided we had to film my class of jellyfish. Friday I announced to my kids that we would be making a video of "J is for Jellyfish." And on a whim, I explained that we would be sending the video to my mother, father, and brother (vocabulary that we had learned during the beginning weeks of school.) I also added that my mother, father, and brother would make a "J is for Jellyfish" video for my Prepa class. This news got them real excited - more excited than my family was when they learned over Skype on Saturday of the promise that I had made to my class.

Here's the short video we made. It's real cute. Apologies for poor quality, not quite sure how that happened.

Mom, Dad, and Jeremy, thank you so very much for rolling with this and getting so fully into it. Your "J is for Jellyfish" response video was adored by my children. We watched it four times in a row, and I suspect that we will continue to watch it for the next month. The kids got really really excited at several points in the video, which led to more happy shrieking.

*Update on our rat situation:
The exterminator came on Sunday to evaluate the rodent situation at our house. His extermination offer, however, was too expensive. So the husband of one of the school's owners came and laid his own rat traps and poison in our house. We'll see what comes of that.