I think I've told you before about my all-time most favorite in the world teacher,
Mrs. Husted. She taught my fourth grade class and ran the library in our tiny little rural grade school.
She made us all feel special and she had the best teaching ideas! Every Friday after lunch we recited or read poetry. To illustrate multiplication, we added our boxes of toothpicks to a boot box partially full of toothpicks from fourth graders before us.
At Christmas time we learned about Mexican Christmas traditions with a day long fiesta!
The girl in front on the left--that's me with the mismatched floral patterns! They would have worked so much better together if one had been a small print. If I knew then, what I know now......
We commandeered the gym all morning with "la Posada," a reenactment of Joseph and Mary's journey in search of a place for Jesus to be born. (Yes, in public school!). 'Joseph' and 'Mary' wandered around the town (gym), asking each group of people if there was room for them. Finally, a good and generous 'innkeeper' will agree for them to come in and the party begins!
We had Mexican food for lunch and later broke open the Santa pinata we had made in class. Have you ever made a pinata? It's quite fun--especially if you're in fourth grade. The base is balloons, covered with layers of strips of newspaper soaked in glue. When that is dry, the pinata is embellished with strips of fringed crepe paper for clothes and beard, construction paper face and belt buckle and the arms and legs were made of cones of cardboard covered with fringed crepe paper. Creating this magnificent pinata took us several days, adding to the excitement of the coming celebrating!
The guys in our class of ten wore vests and sombreros and the girls wore head scarves, long dresses and ponchos to give the day a more exotic feeling. I don't dare say realistic and mislead you
and I wanted to be sure you knew that we did not normally wear long dresses or headscarves to school! It
was in the 70s but we were neither hippies, nor commune dwellers. I'm sure my dress was my Christmas dress (cause that's how they were back then--long!) and I must tell you that I made the poncho myself for my very first 4-H dress review! I think. Maybe! or maybe not. Time changes the mind so....
3 comments:
Oh...this is great. Don't you wish there was a Mrs. Husted and the time to really teach things other than a test in all of our kids lives? The world would be a much better place!
Love ya
P
Your posts are always fun to read. You have such great memories and a great memory!
My youngest learned about Jesus' birth today in public school. He also learned about Hannukah. I'm not sure what they'll learn about tomorrow. I think they try to cover everyone's tradition/belief in the class. That should be about 4 or 5 different threads.
Post a Comment