A Picnic with Little Monsters

Last weekend was our spring picnic with the elementary students, grade 1-5. The kids were super jazzed for the 2 weeks before the event, and counted down the days excitedly. I was excited to interact with my kids outside of the classroom for once, where I didn't have to lecture them to keep writing or sit in their seats correctly. By the end of the day, everyone was good and tired, and I think we should have gotten a personal thank you from all of their parents for exhausting them so thoroughly. Here are some photos of the g-rated action.

This bird was a real party spoiler. We had just gotten into a rousing game of duck-duck-goose when this rather large bird started circling our circle, flying low enough to catch our interest and raise shrieks from the kids. I never saw a circle of duck-duck-goose broken up so quickly - the kids started screaming and running around, huddled together or trying to shoo it away, but in general just flailing about without reason. There was no resurrecting the game after that.

Here are some of the girls finding ultimate skipping stones for Clayton. He was deemed the best stone skipper, so the kids pooled their efforts and just gathered stones for him to skip. Some were as tiny as a fingernail, others so big clayt had to use two hands to try to skip them.

Here are two of the first graders - the biggest and the smallest. Enguun (the boy, who Clayt and I have named Goon) looks so sweet, but he is the bane of my existence in the grade one class. Degi (Delgerchimeg) is a mousy little thing and for some reason she is always smelling my arm when she comes up to my desk for help. First graders are interesting.

Here's Clayt, showing his brute strength wieghtlifting a first grader.

This is Aya, a six year old space cadet. She marches to the beat of her own drum, and here she is proudly waving her garbage flag, freshly pulled from the river. I took it and put it under a rock, so it wouldn't end up in the river. She proceded to pull out about six more, waving each around, getting people wet with river garbage spray, until I buried them one by one under rocks with the first one.

Clayt, the see-saw bully, terrorizing the girls in his class, making them shriek, until the one on the back actually pitched off sideways.

Here's a last shot of the whole gang.