April Fools Day in Elementary School...

Today was April 1st—obviously April Fools Day. My 5th graders were quite excited about pulling a few pranks on me. I on the other hand, warned them yesterday that I have no sense of humor, but I do have a huge pile of referrals that I would be happy to write if they tried to pull anything crazy. (This is a total lie, I don’t even know where the referrals are—but they believed me.)

Let me just say, the classes I have taught before in middle school/high school were always uneventful on April Fools Day. Usually one of my students would say something like, “Oh today was April Fools Day?” “Yep, its April 1st my friend.”

So, the day began. Our school has an all school assembly in the morning where we hear the lunch menu, say the pledges of allegiance and the Texas pledge. After the kids were invited to sit down, one of my students said to me with a very somber look on his face, “Mrs. Campbell, my dog died last night.” I love dogs, (and I am very gullible) and he knows this, so I said to him, “Ohmygosh, I am so sorry to hear that.” He looked at me and said, “April Fools!” Ugh. And so it begins…

Next, during recess a group of my darling girls, came up to my 5th grade counterpart and I; they were holding various body parts, one her head, another her elbow, another her knee, and one more was limping. (Strangely enough, my class is notorious for getting injured on the playground during recess. I usually have about one injury a week.) Thankfully the girls were smiling, and proudly said, “April Fools!”

During lunch one of my parents is a PTA officer, she was selling “Smencils.” Yes, pencils that have various scents, like cotton candy, watermelon, orange, etc. She had a bag of Fritos for her daughter that she had put celery and carrot sticks inside, and glued the bag shut. Oh, April Fools.

Then, with about ten minutes to go in the day, one of my boys rushes out of my classroom to go to the restroom. He returns about two minutes later with a Kleenex covered in red marker. As he is holding it up to his nose, I tell him, “Ok, I see that is red marker.” He was disappointed and said slyly, “but it’s April Fools Day!”

Ok, so fifth graders are lame. Luckily, no ones dog really died, no one got hurt on the playground and the day ended without a bloody nose. I think I will live to next year…Oh, and I just checked the calendar. April 1st, 2012 is on a Sunday.