And *THIS* Is Why I Teach 2nd Grade!

For the past week and a half, my class has been learning about holiday traditions in other countries. This is one of my favorite units to teach, because I absolutely love Christmas. I look forward to these lessons every year, because you can just see the excitement building in the kids.

Today we were learning about Sweden. One of their traditions involves the oldest child passing out sweet rolls and hot chocolate/coffee while wearing a wreath of lighted candles.  So, I gave the kids a wreath cutout to work on while I started making some hot chocolate. I plugged in my coffee maker to heat the water and started filling cups with hot chocolate mix. One of the kids saw me doing this and asked if we were planting flowers. (Huh?)

Now, I'm sure somewhere along the line a relationship was made between styrofoam cups and plants, but I really didn't understand why this child thought we were planting flowers. So, sarcastically I said "Yes, we're planting hot chocolate plants!" (I know...bad teacher.) The child totally believed me! Then, she started telling everyone what we were planting, and some of the other kids believed her, too. (And Christie, if you're reading this, Seth wasn't one of them!)

Sarcasm gets lost on some 2nd graders, but a few others knew I was just being silly. The poor little girl who thought we were planting hot chocolate plants was really disappointed to find out that we were just drinking hot chocolate. I felt so bad! Well, not really...I'm still laughing about it now! God bless 2nd graders!