I'm thankful for...

In recognition of the coming holiday, we wrote a list of things yesterday in class that we are grateful for. I told the students what we were going to do, but I clearly didn't do a good enough job of modeling what I was looking for, because the first response was, "I'm grateful for Spiderman!" I wrote it down. The other kids took their cue from the first one, and we soon had a list of all the superhero and cartoon characters known. After they had exhausted the supply of cartoon characters, one girl varied slightly from the format and said, "I'm grateful for my Cinderella dress." I was so excited. I said, "Clothing! Great!" and wrote it down.

Little girl: "No, I'm grateful for my Cinderella dress."

Me: "Yes. That's clothing. We need clothing to keep us warm."

Small but stubborn girl: "No, I'm grateful for my Cinderella dress."

Larger and stubborn teacher who is holding the marker: "Yes. Clothing. Great job. Anyone else?"

Since we didn't quite meet the objective I had in mind, we tried again the next day. I did a better job of modeling. Me: "For example, I'm grateful that I have food to eat and a place to sleep." It went better, although we got a lot less responses. Apparently I had not understood the relative importance of superheros and cartoon figures.