Conjugation/Broken Bones

In Spanish class today, I told the kids a story about a casa. One kid repeated the word by changing one very important letter, thereby stating, "caca," which is second person present tense of "to shit." It means, "He or she shits."

I kept my best disaffected teacher face and corrected him, "Oh, you mean casa, Joey."

"No," said Joey, with a big grin on his face. "I mean caca."

Narrowing my eyes, I realized that Joey and I had an understanding going on here. None of the other kids got the joke. "Joey," I said, suspiciously, "Hablas espanol en casa?" ("Do you speak Spanish at home?"

Grinning, Joey said, "No."

But I was on to him. He knew exactly what he was saying.

Suddenly I faced a dilemma: how would I properly discourage him from using that sort of language in Spanish class without, as a result, teaching the rest of the class the meaning, or at implying to them the taboo nature of the word? The last thing I needed was a roomful of four-year olds learning how to conjugate excrement. (Trust me, they do enough with the subject matter already.)

I let it slide. I just moved right on, and Joey forgot all about his little second-language show-off moment. I suppose this isn't completely resolved. I'll let you know how next week's review session about the story about the casa goes.

And my second tidbit from the day is about another kid, this one five, at the pre-school who broke his arm last week. Poor guy! He told me proudly this morning that he broke it in two places!

"Oh, that's awful!" I said, wincing with empathy. "How long do you have to wear your cast?"

The kid frowned and gave a dejected sigh.

"Three years."