3rd grade treasures

Last week I was invited to go and speak to a 3rd grade class about Africa. They had invited guests from Senegal, Morocco, the DRC and me. I took some South African artefacts: my clay pot (from the road side in KZN) and some beaded art (a bowl and strelitzias). I told them a bit about South Africa, and then gave the kids a chance to ask questions.

First question from an eager 8-year old. "Do they have wiggly teeth where you come from?"

I replied that yes, to the best of my knowledge, everywhere in the world people get one set of teeth for when they are little kids, and then they wiggle and fall out when the grown up teeth come. Great question. And so the morning continued.

The highlight of my day yesterday was receiving some thank you cards from the class, each decorated and hand-written. Here are a few of the artistic and literary treasures:

"Dear Mrs L,
I like that bead art stuff it must have took a long time to make! I hope that baby will be a good baby. The beads that were made into a pot looks sort of like candycorn! Those flowers were soo beautiful you no the fake ones and you are nice."

"Dear Mrs L,
I hope your Baby comes out. and I loved your bowl. And I saw your beatiful fours. Je T'aime that meansin French I Love you."

"Dear Mrs L,
I love the clay pot thet you shoud us. the beautiful beed flowers wer really cool. have you ever noticed thet on the beed bowl ther is only one blue beed on it? I want to go to South Africa some day I want to no what it is like ther."
(I went and double checked the bowl: Kelsey is right! I had never noticed that there is a single blue bead among the myriad of red and yellow ones)

And my final two favourites:

"Dear Mrs L,
Thank you so much for coming today! I hope you have a fantastic day today! I think that the bead flowers and bowl wher beautiful. Do you like going to chruch (sic) with Bryn? You are very nice. I hope you can come again! Do you like South Africa? I hope you do! I hope you have a good day! Do you like pigs? Pigs are my favorit animals in the wold! They are beter then monkeys!"

"Dear Mrs L,
As I told you I have been to South Africa I will now tell you what I did. I visited my uncle Trever, went on a ton of safaris and had lots of fun fun fun. My brother Adam caught a feaver. I also had meicine (medicine?) for no good reason. My brother seems to always get a feaver when we goe on a trip."