7 & 8 year old boys, oh my!

Last week I was asked to substitute teach in my daughter's 7-8 year old primary class today. I was released from being Young Women president 7 weeks ago today (sob) which makes me available for such things. sigh. But I was up for the task. For pity sakes, I just served as the president to an organization of 40 young women and more than 10 adult leaders. Surely I could handle 45 minutes with a bunch of 7 and 8 year olds! Right???

When I entered the classroom, there was a boy STANDING ON THE TABLE. (Said boy shall remain nameless, but for purposes of this story, we will refer to him as Sam W.) I asked him to climb down and quickly arranged the chairs and asked the boys to take the front row. Silly me. I thought if they were right in front of my face they would have to behave. I know, I know....I have four daughters. I am so naive.

I remained un-rattled as I waited a full two minutes for them to be quiet so I could begin. They didn't even notice I was sitting there waiting for at least 1-1/2 of those two minutes. Finally, my 7 year old daughter tried to call the class to attention. It didn't work, but as the lesson suggested, I was prepared with an "attention getter", so everything was going to be ok. As the lesson directed, I had made "salt dough". Each child was supposed to form their ball of dough into an animal and then place it on the table at which time we would begin a discussion.

After being asked at least 17 times by one girl if she could eat the dough, I told her to go for it! Anywho, as it happens, I haven't made salt dough in awhile and probably needed to add a bit more flour. It was rather sticky and a little hard to form into animals. Most of the kids made snakes because, let's face it, my dough stunk and that was all they could manage. The table, now full of snakes, a turtle and a mystery "dead animal", made my transition into a story about farm animals rather unsuccessful. The kids immediately let me know that those "were NOT farm animals"! Did I mention that I forgot my watch??

The kids soon started asking if they could go wash their hands. There was no way around it. Had I made normal salt dough, their hands would have been fine but alas, they were a sticky mess. So the mayhem ensued as they all left to wash hands. Finally, they were back and I continued talking while rolling my sticky dough into a fence to surround the animals and talk about the safety of a fence for farm animals (leading into a discussion about how laws and rules keep us safe).

Soon, I realized my hands were covered with dough and that I needed to go wash them. I decided there was no way I could leave these 10 children alone for the time it would take to do it though. I decided I would just have to continue with dough hands. I went on for 10 minutes turning pages with wads of dough on my finger tips until I finally announced. "I HAVE to go wash my hands, can you guys be good for two minutes?"

Before I could even stand up to leave, every boy in the room was standing (getting ready to party I assume), and one boy stood up as if he were strumming a guitar and began "scringing" (that's a cross between singing and screaming). I decided the dough on my hands was the least of my worries and I just stayed put.

Did I mention I forgot my watch?!? So things are moving along, we're having a few decent teaching moments (I think) when I hear voices out in the foyer. I eagerly open the door to see if this means church is out and our lesson time is over. My good friend Rob was in the foyer walking his baby. He informed me there were still 10 minutes left at which time I may have asked him to go fetch me a valium.

Ten minutes later, I bore my testimony and for 45 whole seconds, it was quiet and they actually listened. On the way out, one of the boys said, "you didn't bring us any candy?!?! Our teacher always brings us candy." I said, "I'm not your teacher....and the 10 chocolate chip granola bars I DID bring for you are going to be eaten by ME on my way home to bring down my blood pressure!" O.k., I didn't say that. But I thought it.

I think I'm going to go bake some cookies for my daughter's regular primary teacher. Trust me, she deserves them.