I got played

Yesterday was my day to work with the First Graders.  I helped them write stories about a class project.  I taped together Chinese dragons that took too deep of a cut.  I worked long and hard on math family facts with one little girl. 

She doesn’t like to work with me, or anyone else.  We had problems like

** / ***= ____

She was to create the family facts for addition and subtraction from the objects in each box.

The numbers she could use for the above problem were  2, 3, 5

2+3=5

3+2=5

5-2=3

5-3=2

We had two pages similar to this.  Once she settled down, she did a good job.  And once she understood that in subtraction the biggest number always goes first, she loved it.  Score one for me, and one for her.

I then set out snacks for the class.  They were to work while they ate.  I then walked around and listened to them read.  One prima donna started sobbing when I asked her not to eat while reading to me.  She sobbed she was soooo hungry, she had to eat.  I said tough in a nice way and made her put the food down.  She had had breakfast, no starving child here.

But after recess again with a child N soooo hungry.  She took some of another child’s snack.  I talked to her about why, and it being wrong.  She told me she only had had a piece of buttered bread for breakfast.  And her lunch was a jelly, not peanut butter and jelly, sandwich with two pretzels.  I took N to a back table, found a snack and let her work there and eat.  I then talked to to Ms. H about her.  Ms. H laughed and said,”You got played.”  N is the spoiled rotten darling child who has everything she needs and wants. Ms. H knows the parents well.  No starving child here either. She doesn’t like what the parents put out for breakfast and refuses to eat until they give her what she wants.  This time she just wanted more of a tasty snack and took another child’s. 

I’ll know better next time.