My On-Again, Off-Again Relationship With the Energizer Bunny

I'm pretty sure that last Wednesday the Energizer Bunny visited all of my students in their sleep and and gave their wind-up knobs a few extra twists.

Oh, didn't you know? All kids under the age of 14 have a tiny wind-up knob on the back of their necks. The knobs begin to disappear shortly after the kids hit high school, although boys typically keep their wind-up knobs a little longer than girls. Before high school though, the Energizer Bunny visits the kids nightly, winding their knobs so that they wake up with a plentiful energy store. Sometimes it's a pretty sweet deal; energetic kids are typically so much more eager to learn than adults. One of the downsides however, is that about mid-May the Energizer Bunny becomes ancy waiting for summer to arrive. And as we all know, anciness usually makes Energizer bunnies get a little wind-happy.

Enter: last Thursday.

All day Thursday my kids would have been plastered to the walls, hanging from the ceiling, and walking on their hands if I didn't have control over a little thing we call recess. I spent the bulk of Thursday morning wracking my brain for any trick I could use to keep my 18 little friends well-behaved. It turns out singing, juggling, miming, tap dancing, and a balance beam act are NOT effective energy-reducers.

I'm thinking of treating the Energizer Bunny to a lengthy, all-expense paid vacation to Bora Bora.

Finally, after cutting short a rather chaotic trip to the library, I had my students write sentences. While they were writing sentences I had to dash off to a meeting, leaving an aide to watch the kids. When I returned from my meeting after school, I found this:

And my favorite:

Hmmm, maybe that Energizer Bunny isn't so exasperating after all...