Dereham

I mentioned that I visited the library in Dereham last Saturday as part of the America Week celebration. Today I visited the school to talk about Americans in Norwich during WWII, partly because of America Week and partly because the third years just started learning about WWII.

So, this morning I showed my PowerPoint and did the paper airplane craft with two groups of 50 children.

Then I ate lunch at a sandwich shop.

Then I went to the library. The third years walked up to the library (in two separate groups of 50, again) to listen to me tell American stories.

The PowerPoint went pretty well. Sometimes I get discouraged because the facial expressions don't change, but all the other adults seem to read that as "paying attention," so I guess that's a good thing.

Every time I have worked with grade school children in England there has been an incident with boys and boobies. Today was no exception. The first classroom I was in had a male teacher and I hung out in the classroom after my presentation because they had just a few minutes before they would go to a short recess. One of the boys in the class pulled his pant leg up and told his teacher to look at his socks. They had a picture of a lady in a bikini. The teacher just laughed and asked him where he had gotten them. He said he borrowed them from his dad.

This afternoon was the first time I got to perform the whole program of American stories I had planned. One of the new things I was trying out was making rattlesnake soup. In my book of American folklore I found a little story about cowboys talking up rattlesnake soup to the new guy until he gets really interested, then laughing at him and telling him they don't eat that stuff. I thought I could adapt the story by making imaginary rattlesnake soup with the kids, allowing them to suggest lots of ingredients, going through all the motions, then instructing them to taste it. After they tasted it I would tell them that we "don't really eat that stuff." Well, it actually went better than I could have hoped because when the kids tasted their soup they immediately started saying, "Ew!" "Yuck!" "You poisoned me!" Very good sports.