From the Mouths of Babes

I thought we'd read Curious George in kindergarten. It's a good book, really. Over the course of a few days, I read them the book, we did some language-related activities using the story, and on the last day they got to do a coloring page.

Said coloring page was just something I found on the internet. In the picture, George is holding the Man With The Yellow Hat's yellow hat. So... I have them get out their crayons, we settle back down on the circle for some serious coloring time. I pass out the pages.

One of the cutest, smartest, tiniest kindergarteners looks down at his page, looks up at me, looks down again, looks up again and says, "Sara, the hat is covering his dick."

Oy.

I really, really, really wanted to be teacher-like and talk seriously about what words we use and do not use in school, but it was hard to do that because I was overtaken with a sudden case of the giggles. I had to turn my back so he wouldn't see that I was really very amused by his somewhat-inappropriate-for-school comment.

I talked it over with the kindergarten classroom teacher (a local, yup'ik, veteran teacher who I absolutely have immense respect for and hesitate to call a coworker because, let's face it, she could kick my ass in a head-to-head teaching competition, even if she's not certified), and she said, "Oh, don't worry, I laugh at the stuff they say all the time."

One of my other coworkers said "Hey, you could have complimented him on good use of the correct gender posessive pronoun," because, you see, Yup'ik doesn't have separate words for he and she, or his and her. But that would have also involved keeping a straight face.