the best friday EVER

Friday is known in my classroom as Letter Person Day.

Now, if you know me at all, I'm sure you've heard that I abhor the Letter People. They rank second only to Cooking Wednesday on the list of activities that require lots of effort and are a complete waste of time. As a curriculum, the Letter People are fine for Pre-K (although I think they look completely creepy), but kindergarteners have to move faster than one letter a week... I know, heresy! At any rate, today was not only Halloween but LETTER PERSON DAY!!!!! Yes, the Letter People outrank Halloween with my class.

So, this morning I was in a particularly good mood and decided to pull down the two giant boxes of Letter People I've been hiding in my closet and blow them up to decorate our room before we went to meet the new one. I can't stand them, but I knew it would make my kids' day. As predicted, when my kids walked in and saw our room filled with Letter People, they flipped. I thought they might all pass out from sheer joy.

"Do we get to KEEP them?!?"
"How did they get here?!?"
"It's ALL of them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"Can we give them a hug?!?"

Our very own set of Letter People. Life is now complete.

And every bit of that story was just background for the rest :-)

We have Writer's Workshop every single day, and it's one of my kids' (and my) favorite times. On a normal day, everyone sits down and starts to write without much prompting... Halloween does not count as a normal day.

After our minilesson, they get up to get notebooks and instead of getting to work, they start talking, walking around, playing with friends, etc. Now, on a normal day, this is totally unacceptable, and Halloween is no different in my mind. I stopped them and let them remind me of the expectations, but within, oh, two minutes, they were off task again. At this point, I threatened to sign folders and take away part of recess... still no good. It is Halloween after all. So, in a moment of frustration I responded, "You have until 0 and then I am taking away one Letter Person at a time until you are following our kindergarten rules."

Before I could even start counting every single child was silently writing, and not a one of them moved until I called them to clean up.

I guess the Letter People are good for something after all!

(a very blurry view of our new cubby decor)