I received a wonderful email from a teacher at Olivet New Church school in Ontario (the birthplace of Alice the Apatosaurus):
The kids clearly loved Featherbrain, but more than that, they loved your Howweirdcanyouget site. Shall I tell you how we discovered it? It was one of those “the teacher has ADD” moments, let me tell you!
We were having SSR time, and all was quiet in the classroom. We were sharing the Silver Birch books and it was my turn to read Featherbrain. (I try to read all the books I ask the kids to read) My eyes fixed on the http://www.com address and I thought “Let’s ruin the quiet atmosphere with some excitement” (or something like that; I don’t actually remember what I was thinking) and announced (probably without thinking) “I wonder if this is a real site?”
The kids, some of whom are always looking for a distraction anyway, were quite eager to check it out. As you know, we only have 4 students, so it was easy for us to crowd around the computer. I wish I had a video of us at that time. We quickly decided we had to buy a magic potion. Naturally I had to be quite dramatic as I wondered out loud how safe this is, and if the authorities know about this (etc ~LOL) Y kept worrying about the price; how were we going to pay the $19.95? At each pop-up I asked the kids (trepidation quivering in my voice) “Should we go on?” The kids’ voices got louder; there was a fever pitch in the air as they yelled “YES!” to each one.
When we finally got to the last one that denied access we all burst out laughing. Some nervous laughter if I sensed that correctly 🙂 Well, SSR was shot for the day, LOL! but reading had suddenly become more interesting. (Bull’s-eye!!!!)
We used your invitation to submit to a contest to talk about recipes and how to write one. I jumped off from there and I read the 3 witches’ part from Shakespeare’s’ Macbeth out loud (nice recipe there!) to them. They were excited to write their own recipes for magic.
I was thrilled with this letter – to have a part in reaching kids, to hear about how much fun the kids had, and to learn how a great teacher can bring learning alive. And it really made me laugh!
Maureen
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