E is for Evacuate

This week is "E" week for the Little People in my class.  We've been working our way through the alphabet since sometime in October, and it's hard to believe that we only have a few letters left.  I suppose there are some classes that don't really get into the Letter of the Week thing, but mine love it.  We have a few students a day do Letter of the Week Show and Tell, and for the most part with get a very nice variety of interesting things.  (Except for Q week.  On Q week we got a lot of quarters.  X week was also a bit challenging.) 

Every day I write the Letter of the Week on the whiteboard, and then try and draw a few things that start with that letter.  Even after all of these weeks they seem to find this fascinating, and in their fascination still display an equal mix of accomplished learning and cluelessness.  For example, when I draw the label for the picture I have drawn they get SOOO excited - as soon as I start to write "elephant", they start shrieking, "There's an 'E'!  There's an E".  As if the word that I'm writing next to the giant E on the board would start any other way.  But on the other hand, they are learning what an "E" looks like. 

Today on the board I drew an envelope, some eggs, and something else that I can't remember.  It's actually been surprising to me how few words I can thing of that start with "E" - you would think that a vowel would carry its weight a little more in the general Word World.

Today when got to the part of the day where we had Show and Tell, we have perhaps four who were going to share something.  Well, except for the child who had been complaining all day about not feeling well, and was sprawled on the back row of the carpet.  She chose not to participate in Show and Tell, and that was fine with me, since I had already had a problem with getting her to the back of the carpet anyway.  She had really preferred to sprawl on her regular spot right in the middle of the carpet, regardless of the fact that her little carpet neighbors were being mercilessly sprawled upon.  In fact, she had pretty much been sprawling in this manner all week, so finally I said, "Yes, I know you don't feel well, and I've already called your mother to pick you up, so now you need to go and not feel well at the back of the carpet so you don't kick your friends."  Amazingly, she finally cooperated with this demand, so I wasn't going to rock the boat and try to push the Show and Tell issue.

My associate teacher always does Show and Tell, which gives me a few minutes to get some things ready for center time.  However,  I always am paying attention to what is brought, and today there was an eagle, an envelope, and EEEEEE!  - a shriek telling me that Sprawling Child had just thrown up on the carpet.   And indeed, she had. 

Sigh.  So, as a result, we learned about the word "Evacuate", which also starts with "E", and took the kids out to run all over the baseball fields out by our room while the custodian came to take care of the mess.  

So, in the end we had several new words for the letter E.  "Evacuate" and "exit", a shriek of "EEEEEE!", and not just a little bit of "Ewwwww".

All in all, a very informative Letter "E" education for today.