Drawing butts

Sometimes when you teach, you have to have a sense of humor. Okay, most of the time you do, or else you would probably go insane.


Today was a very funny day. Now, I might have had an extremely rough day if I had decided to be like those book burners that get rid of books just because there is an "offensive" part.... Instead, I went with it.


Let me explain.




Today, I taught in a 2nd grade class where the assignment was to first read a poetry book (the classics: Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, Bruce Lansky...) and then select a poem and copy it onto a  piece of paper.

Boy was I in for a treat! While perusing the books, some of the students found some very interesting pages. I was happy when they were giggling and engaged with the book, and then a little surprised when the pages they found included pictures of BUTTS.

One was a man with his pants down (about how he forgot to put them on this morning).  The other was a poem called Spelling Bee about a bee that stung the guy, and he's embarassed to say where he was stung and the last line is "Hello, you've been stung by a bee" and it is stung (little holes) into this guy's butt by a bee. 


Now, I had two choices: 
1) Make a big deal about it, and not allow them to do that poem, or 2) Go with the flow. The teacher chose these books, and they ARE child appropriate, and they're just butts. Let them read the butt poems.


I chose #2. (hah! #2, butt joke!)


Needless to say, they LOVED it. And a couple of the boys obviously chose one of those poems to write about (and draw). 


I told them they couldn't trace (I never allow tracing if I can...teaches them nothing!), and so I found myself giving BUTT DRAWING advice. "Just make a round W down here, and then two rectangles for the legs". Hahaha!

Then I had a kid ask me for another book.
Me: "Why do you want another book? Is it because you want to read poems about rear-ends?"
Kid: "No! We just want to read a BUTT poem!"




And then it was lunchtime.