Red Rover's resurgence

There is nothing like playing with kindergarteners. They are precious. We have short afternoon classes with our kindergarten students and on Fridays I teach the gym class. I used to dread these classes a bit because of how wild the kids were--I basically spent 3/4 of an hour yelling myself hoarse and running around like a madwoman trying to keep 30 5 year-olds from seriously maiming one another.

Fortunately, with the kindy graduation, the 7 boys we called the Wolf Pack have moved on an 8 new and slightly less maniacal children have joined our kindy classes. Now, Gym is like the MOST FUN I HAVE EVER HAD! I spend the rest of the day enjoying the subsequent elation and twittering to anyone that will listen about how awesome our students are. Ryan's been coming in with me for extra support and we do lots of silly stretching and jumping and running with the kids and they're so funny! Some of them can't coordinate a jumping jack and others can't balance on one foot so they fall all over the place and giggle. And then they love to just run around and dance, and a couple always want to hold hands with me, so we'll just hold hands and run around in circles laughing.

The most fun though, has been playing Red Rover. Do you remember it? So much fun. The students actually grasped it really quickly and got really into it. This week, my team was the Strong Rainbow Dragons and Ryan's was the Horse Dragons (dragons obviously being very popular right now). Of course, there is all the normal running and pushing and screaming, but the funniest part is seeing how each kid reacts differently. The most precious little girl in my class named Claire, who is always blissfully calm and sweet, skipped over when the other team called her name and made a very feeble but good-natured attempt to push through the other team's defenses. Then one tiny boy, who I wasn't really sure even understood what the whole point of the game was, dashed over to my team and went right under my arms to get to the other side. It was so funny and clever that I couldn't really scold him for his efforts.

If you have need for a great laugh and some very good fun, Red Rover is really the thing. Of course, just acting like a five year old for a short while will do the job, too.