internship

This week and last turned out to be a lot of fun with my students. While I know we are all thinking about next week (Spring Break!!!!) I've tried to make sure we have some fun in the meantime.
Today we worked on more vocabulary (they made their own words like in bananagrams):



And created wordles:

Ps....try googling wordles...it's a pretty cool idea and my 5th graders loved it!

My kids are also seriously impressive. During social studies we talked about war and religion (brought up by the kids).
They seemed so puzzled as to why wars happen, "Why can't they (meaning leaders) just talk out their problems, or play a game of chess or rock, paper, scissors to find a solution? Why do we have to go to war?"
Then they asked me how people "win" in a war, to which I responded with a not so cheery answer of "until one side gives up because they are losing too many soliders or they run out of resources to keep them going."
They gave me another puzzled look and said..."It seems silly to me to kill so many people like that." I gotta admit...they have a point. When it comes down to it, the idea of war does sound silly....why is it that we can't work out our problems without having to go to such an extreme measure?
Then today we were discussing the 13 colonies and my students had yet another puzzled look on their faces. When I asked them what was bugging them, they responded with a comment like: "I just don't get it....the colonists came to America for religious freedom, but now in the colonies they are punishing people that don't share the same religion as they do."
I of course tried to explain that the early colonists that came for "religious freedom" actually only came for their own religious freedom. They didn't like my answer very much and still couldn't imagine why the colonists would put others through what they went through in England themselves.
It's funny how 10 year olds can see things so clearly sometimes, while we adults seem to have on rose colored glasses. These conversations also have made me love my students that much more. They are so smart and have started discussing topics that I didn't even think about until I was much older.
Maybe there is something to learn from kids.....

-kel