The Baddest Witch in the World (#sol18 Day 14/31)

I love reading out loud to my students. I freaking love it. From being a fluent role model to sharing characters’ journeys and emotions with the class – it fuels my days at school.

I also love how reading aloud leaves its mark on my classroom: I love it when kids are inspired to bring in their favorite books from home for me to read; I love it when kids reference books we’ve read together earlier in the year; I love how this seemingly small activity brings all of us together in the same place at the same time. Those 62 bright eyes shining up at me just makes these moments all the more precious.

Today’s read aloud time was longer than normal without our Guest Reader (we usually have a parent “Guest Reader” come in on Wednesday afternoons to share a book that was one of their favorites when they were a kid), so I had the chance to share two books with my first and second graders: Billy’s Booger and one more chapter of Ramona the Pest, which we’ve been reading for about a week. Both were big hits. The former for the obvious sheer awesomeness of the fact that someone wrote a story from the perspective of a booger. The latter for building upon our knowledge of our spicy young kindergarten friend, Ramona. Plus, on a more selfish side, the memories of reading the Ramona books when I was growing up kept smacking me across the brain as I read this one out loud this week. I love that.

So.

Now I will just zip past all of that background information to get to the good stuff. The juicy stuff. The seed of today’s little ol’ slice of life.

In chapter 7 of Ramona the Pest, Ramona’s entire kindergarten (both morning and afternoon) is celebrating Halloween. Ramona is dressed as a witch, complete with a pointy hat and a plastic voice-muffling scary witch mask. While she’s all amped up about being a scary witch and chasing every person that she can find on the playground, she continues to shout, over and over, in her muffled witch voice, to every one of her new victims, “I am the baddest witch in the world!”

This is a super fun sentence to say out loud. You should try it.

This especially fun when you, after repeating it in a cackle-y voice more than eight times, now say, “I am the baddest bitch in the world!”

Yup.

Thankfully, I was reading that section rather quickly (no good witch voice ever speaks slowly in these running-about situations), and I quickly backed up and reread. I’m not sure if anyone noticed. Actually, my teaching partner noticed and tried to cover up her snort with some coughs and a quick exit under the guise of getting some hand sanitizer, but as far as I know… the kids were none the wiser.

Who knows.

I may get some interesting emails from parents tomorrow morning.