Stupid bad day today. I had 7 classes. That's a whole lot. I have 3 private classes today so I won't bore you with the details of them. Just know that they're boring and they suck all that is joyful and alive in my spirit and replaces it with apathy, languor and ennui.
My first class is with four adorable looking 4 year olds. They were all princesses. It was a whole lot of pink and frill for that small space. Don't let all those adorable faces fool you though. 3 of the 4 are training to be future minions of evil. The fourth is lovely and pleasant and totally lovable. We made some ghosts and through them around because I had no buckets. Then we tried to do ghost races but really we just blew the ghosts around the table. We laughed. It was a hit. That's the great thing about this age, especially when they're all dressed up like princesses, they just want to be there and look pretty. We put faces on a pumpkin on the board and made it into a jack o'lantern. We made a scary spider and that was about it. They really weren't into a lot of stuff today. One of the girls, Yuri, the blue princess, often comes to class in a really foul mood. Today was no exception. The best part, which she still didn't participate in, was singing Spooky Loo, which is a Hallowe'en version of Looby Loo, which is a take on Hokey Pokey. It's a good one. The four of us danced, while Yuri watched on, pouting.
My next class is two really smart kids who are flying through the text. They're 8. The girl, Shiori, loved the ghosts that we made. I have one that I keep on me with a pink ribbon around it so that I know that it's mine. She was obsessed with it. She actually tried to take it. No such luck. It's mine. She has taken to saying "Teacher" as a security blanket. Every two seconds she's saying "Teacher, teacher" and that's all. Sometimes she wants to get my attention and actually tell me something or show me something, that's fine. But more often than not she's just saying it, over and over again. Today she was really excited about the things we were doing so she said it all class. We made monsters the same as yesterday with the numbers on the dice representing a body part to draw. Then we also made the spider craft that I do in the lower class. We also put the face parts on the pumpkin on the board only with them I blindfolded one of them and the other gave directions. It went well.
The last kids class was the best of the day. It's an interesting class of kids. They're between 7 and 9. Two of the girls are really smart and fabulous. Another hardly ever comes so she's totally lost most classes. There's two boys, brothers, who I really like, they're fun kids, but they're dumber than logs. Sweet kids though. Another teacher, Matt (different Matt, Matt Johnson from Tennessee), and I decided to combine our classes cause they're kind of close in age. Sort of. The two smart girls of mine came and the boys showed up late. He had four of his kids come. We had a great time. We played games like: throwing the ghosts in buckets (we found buckets), my team won; ghost races by blowing them down the table, his team won; a TP race where you have to go over then under the next person, then over the next and so on, but if it breaks then you have to re-start, my team won; then the piece to resistance was the faces on the pumpkin game (again) but this time we blindfolded the teacher and their students had to give them directions, his team won. It was a really great time. It made such a difference to have a lot of kids, as well as having the other teacher be there for extra energy. I was a little apprehensive putting my physical safety in the hands of the logs, but they actually came through for me, with the prompting of the other teacher of course. In all my team actually won the day because we had extra innings of the ghost toss so we had more points in total than the older kids.
Then I had my two other private classes, which actually didn't suck as bad as they usually do. It was a long day with no food and no time to breath. On top of my usual 6 classes I also had a trial lesson that I walked into cold. It's been happening more often lately that I'm having to walk into things completely cold with no resources with me because of no planning time or a last minute change in the schedule. It's taught me how to BS even better than I was able to before. It's still hard to tell though when you get someone who says they're a beginner and you start talking to them and they're like "My favourite movies are love stories. I don't like action films at all." That is sooo not a beginner level. I am a beginner at Japanese. I can say "Kore wa pen desu", 'This is a pen'. My specialty is when the name for the item has been borrowed from English or is a classroom object, other than that, I'm lost. That is a beginner level. "No, I can't snowboard." Teacher, "Have you tried?" "No I haven't" is NOT a beginner level. That was my trial lesson today.
