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Thursday, April 2, 2015

April Fools - Kids vs. Teachers

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I love holidays. All of them. Well.....99% of them.

April Fools Day is the one holiday I actually don't like. Mostly it's just because I can never think of good pranks to pull on other people, so I just choose to be a bad sport about it and call the whole holiday stupid rather than participate.

But this year, I kind of did start to like it! All thanks to the fact that I have the cutest class ever. And I'm not even April Foolsing you.

My favorite moments, in no particular order:

1. When C bounced into class, eyes huge, and walked straight up to me.

"Mrs. Shimp," she said, "Today is April Fools Day. Did you know?"

"Yes!" I told her. In fact, I had remembered five minutes before school started, which just barely gave me time to take Lunch / Recess out of our daily schedule.

"I have an April Fools for you," she announced. "Knock knock."

"Who's there?"

"Interrupting cow."

Oooh! My favorite knock knock joke! I paused. Then - "Interruptingcowwho?"

She stared at me. "Wait. Wait, do it again."

"Interruptingcowwho?"

".....Moo! Wait. Do it again."

"Interruptingcowwho?"

"Moo! Ugh. Mrs. Shimp. Again."

"Interruptingcow-"

"Moo!"

2. When C came over to me again, and ruined my April Fools spirit with this sentence: "Mrs. Shimp? Lunch isn't on the daily schedule....are you trying to April Fools us?"

Whelp. There goes that. "No," I said. "I just forgot to put it up." And I put it up and silently vowed to never try to April Fools anyone ever again.

3. When M, my super-shy, super-quiet kid, walked up to me with the "I" card. "Mrs. Shimp, how do you spell is?" he asked. Then, immediately after, "April Fools." A sly, sneaky smile crept up on his face and I burst out laughing. So then, for the rest of the day, other kids were coming up to me with their own versions of the joke: "How do you spell a? April Fools!" "How do you spell he? April Fools!!"

4. When A suggested that I go get the most yappy, annoying puppy I could find, and tell Stephen that I bought a dog. This is actually such a good idea and I wish I had thought of it earlier because I totally would have done it!

5. When M, whose mom is quite pregnant, had this suggestion:

M: Does Stephen know my mom is pregnant?
Me: Mmmm, maybe? I think so. I've probably mentioned it.
M: Well, maybe you can April Fools him, and tell him that my mom had her baby. And then he'll be all excited and be like oh my gosh and then you just be like April Fools!

6. When, with 15 minutes until lunch, I suddenly got back in the April Fools mood. And when J came over to ask if I was going to read with her guided reading group, I said: "I think I'm actually going to get to all the groups, because we aren't going to lunch today."

Confusion. "Huh? We're not going to lunch?"

It was already hard to keep a straight face. I nodded sadly. "Yeah, the cafeteria ran out of food, so we won't be able to go to lunch. So we're just going to keep doing guided reading."

Now she was starting to look a little panicky, and B had heard and was staring at me with his mouth open. "What!?" he cried. "But I'm so hungry!"

"Me too!" J murmured. "So we really don't get lunch? They don't have anything left?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry," I said. "I better tell the whole class."

I thought for sure someone would remember that it was April Fools....but miraculously, no one did! Every single jaw dropped when I made my announcement.

"But I brought my lunch," H said. "Can I eat it in here?"

I shook my head. "That wouldn't be fair to the kids who were going to buy lunch."

"So no recess either??" asked IC.

"No, we'll have Recess still, just a little bit later," I assured them. "But it's okay you guys! I'm hungry, too. But just one day we'll be okay going without lunch."

M asked if she could call her mom to bring her food, and even offered to have her mom bring enough for everyone to have lunch. I told her that would be really nice and that she could call her at Recess. It made me smile to hear some of my kids who had brought a lunch offer to share with their friends who hadn't. They were all teaming up together so no one would starve and it was the cutest thing!

When I finally told them 15 minutes later, "Everyone line up.....we are going to lunch, April Fools!!!" they all ran up to me and wanted to give me high fives.

"Mrs. Shimp, you got us so good!" they screamed, happy as can be.

K shouted that that was the best thing I'd ever done, and L wanted to hug me, she was so proud of me.

If I had only known earlier that the best way to get popular with your students was to tell them lunch was cancelled....I would have done this a long time ago :)

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