Fish + Sharks

Well...I've been busy.  Thus my lack of posting.

I never knew that a kindergarden graduation took sooo much work?!  It's still not for two weeks but we've been rehearsing and practicing and preparing since, oooooh, mid-April...(not kidding).

And also, I haven't really done anything recently that would warrant a good post.

Why?

Because it's been literally (and I literally mean literally) raining for two weeks straight...nonstop.  So much so that it warranted a typhoon warning.  Halfway through school on Wednesday they came over the intercom at 10:40 a.m. and said "Teachers, feed your kids lunch now, because they're going home at 11:10 for typhoon warning."  After that, the kids were completely wild and ridiculously crazily excited;  but not as much as me!  It was a fun and long day to be stranded at home with dumping rain outside.  And we were told we were in no danger and these kinds of things happen all the time.

But amidst all the chaos of the last two weeks...I somehow managed to turn 27...!?

I wanted to wear my orange shirt on my birthday, but it proved too hot to wear anywhere outside of my air conditioned room.  Oh well.

It was a fun and low-key day.

After work we quickly got on the train to go to Hsinchu and hit up a nicer Chinese restaurant at a huge mall.  It's odd though because they don't serve drinks other than tea...so we got drinks at McDonald's and carried them into the restaurant with us.  If there was a problem with that we would never know... blessings of the language barrier.  Plus, it was my birthday: back off!

Also...

I shared my birthday with one of my students, Junie, who is exactly twenty years younger than me.  It was fun because her mom brought a gigantic cake to school with an arrangement of lots of fruit on top.

Thanks to all for the birthday wishes!

Now to the reason for the post...

About two months ago in a moment of crazed classroom hysteria with Frank stabbing Oscar with a pencil and Alison crying because I took her Pretty Pretty Princess game cards she was playing with during class...I had to quickly think of an activity to distract these kids.

Thus, the birth of Fish & Sharks. 
Also known as "Chutes & Ladders" to the rest of the world.

I quickly drew a game on the white board and just went with it as I drew and it has ended up being a classroom phenomenon played every Friday from 11 - 11:30 (I use it to review the week).  

  There's three teams, each of which have a magnet of a different color.  They roll a huge foam dice and get to move the number of spaces... 

  

Doris, above, threw the dice out of camera sight, but I thought it was a fun picture.

And some kids take their dice rolling (or slamming) very seriously, as seen above.

They move the number of spaces and if they land on a "W" they have to say a vocabulary word.  If they land on "P" they have to say a phonics sound. "S" means they have to say a sentence.  If they land on a fish, they get to move along the trail farther along on the board.  And if they land on a shark, they have to follow the trail down to farther behind on the board.  I didn't think it would actually become a "thing" because most games last about 4 minutes as their attention spans can't handle anything longer...but they're obsessed and look forward all week for Friday to play.  

Also, we started a ritual where whenever I say "Fish and Sharks" then half the class goes "Yum! Yum! Yum" while the other half screams "AH! AH! AH!" three times.  It's actually pretty funny...see for yourself:

"Yum. Yum. Yum" 

(also, notice the boy with two feet in one sock. Kids are crazy!)

"Ah! Ah! Ah!"

Who knew that sharks (an eternal fear of mine since I accidentally saw parts of Jaws at the age of six on TV) would one day serve my purposes in teaching little Chinese-speaking kids the english language.  

Somewhere, Jaws is smiling.