Ring the bell, because Teddy Bear School is back in session!
Almost entirely bears today! So much for diversity...
When we laid out the bears this morning, Lyric insisted we have a new student, and got out his little Totoro doll to be in the class. I asked Zephyr and Lyric what they do when a new student joins their class, and Zephyr said they play the "name game". When I asked what the name game was, he said they pass a ball around and when it stops, the person that touches it says their name, and everyone has to touch it once. Lyric ran to get a ball, and I just sat back and watched.
Zephyr passed the ball from one bear to the next, chanting "round and around and around it goes, where it stops nobody knows" until it landed on a bear, and then either Zephyr or Lyric would say their name (depending on whose bear it was). They had slightly different voices for each bear.
Totoro was last. After he said his name I asked them if they thought Totoro felt more comfortable in the class now, and Lyric said he did. This is what Teddy Bear School is for, finding out about what really goes on in school through kids acting it out, which is sometimes easier for them to do than to describe it.
Zephyr then said they were going to do a math game, which was notable because he was complaining about learning math a few weeks ago. The game was called "What Hundred", and similar to the name game, it involved passing a smaller ball around and calling on the person the ball stopped on, but this time they had to say numbers that when brought together made up 100 (for example, 50 and 50). I'm not sure how much of their school day actually revolves around "hot potato"-esque games, but apparently it's more than I thought.
Zephyr took a few bears, but when it was Lyric's turn (or rather, Lyric's bear Arc), he said "One and zero". I think this was actually pretty accurate for where he's at in Pre-K number theory... understanding that you write 100 with a one and two zeroes. I told Arc he was factually correct in that you needed a one and zero to write 100, and then I asked Zephyr to tell Arc what you'd actually have to add to zero to get 100. Zephyr was able to see that it was 100, and made a show of teaching it to Arc. This was, as you might expect, pretty cute.
Things started to go towards the silly when they asked Bat Bear to say something that could make a hundred and Lyric had him say "Black and yellow and brown". Lyric thought that was the height of wit. I know Zephyr is working on a money study in school, so I had him work out how many quarters go into a dollar (after making sure he knew a dollar was 100 cents), so that he could get that four 25's go into 100. It's a nice side benefit that Teddy Bear School lets them revisit and reinforce what they've been learning at school, and I fell like I could see it working. But of course the main benefit is that it's just freaking adorable.