Say What?

Working with children is amazing. I love the moments when I get a little glimpse into their minds and wonder where my imagination and sense of wonder has gone. These are usually the same moments when I realize that the reason they have taken 4+ weeks to figure out long division is because their brains are preoccupied with matters that are wayyyy more important. For example....
Every day as we walk out to the busses, one of my girls finds her way up to the front of the line and holds my  hand. She's always cheerful and smiling, so it's the most wonderful end to every school day. Despite what kind of terrors the kids have been or how much yelling I have done, she always has a funny comment to tell me or question to ask. Her bus is always the last one we get to, so she has plenty of time to hold my hand. Well, Wednesday was no exception. She was at the front of the line when I had them line up and grabbed my hand as soon as we were out the front door. As we were walking around toward her bus, she asked if the bus was going to leave without her. I gave her a "what do you think?" look and then smiled. She realized it was a ridiculous question, smiled back and then hit me out of nowhere with the next question.
Student: "What if all of the busses were miniature busses? We could ride on top of them like we were riding on a horse!"
Me: Stared at her perplexed and confused.
Student: "Then when we were driving through traffic, we'd have to be careful not to get run over by other cars."
Me: Still staring, wondering why she had told me that morning that she couldn't think of anything to write about.
Student: "We'd also have to watch out for birds, because they might try to steal the busses........" etc.
She continued talking about this hypothetical scenario on and off for about 5 minutes. She would stop occasionally and look around or think about something and then continue with the story getting all the more absurd every time! Haha. It appeared that she had been creating this image in her brain for quite some time, but at the same time, it also seemed this was the first time she had imagined this and was really actually concerned about getting eaten by a bird while riding her miniature bus. :) Thankfully, we got to her bus quickly, I sent her on her merry way and haven't heard about the mysterious shrinking busses ever since!

All that to say, I love working with children and those are the questions and stories that keep me going from day to day! If you'd ever like to experience this wonderful phenomenon for yourself, please feel free to spend a day... or hour.. or couple minutes (that's really all it takes!) in my classroom.. it's a common occurrence!