W is for...

WATERMELON!

When I was on my gap year, I taught at a preschool group in a township. There was a lot of showing pictures and the children all chanting together "This is a...." One of the things for the letter W was a picture of a "watermyelon."

There was also the letter I, for which the picture was of an "Eendian". Actually, it was a picture of a girl in a beige dress with tassles and a headdress, who was quite clearly an American Indian, but who was I to nitpick.

It was months before I realised what the teacher meant when she taught the children about "chicken tights." (Thighs.)

They had some interesting songs too, which I'm sure were made up on the spot. Each one has the same tune.

Building up a temple,
Building up a temple,
Building up a temple for the Lord,
Boys, come and help us!
Girls, come and help us!
Building up a temple for the Lord.

Another one:

Walking to Jesus,
Walking to Jesus,
Walking to Jesus every day,
With my bible in my hand,
Bare feet in the sand,
Walking to Jesus every day.

This next one ended up with me in a bit of a surreal situation:

Telephone to Jesus
Telephone to Jesus
Telephone to Jesus every day.....
(hands in pretend telephone shape next to ear)
"Hellooo?"
Telephone to Jesus,
Telephone to Jesus,
Telephone to Jesus every day.

One day, I'd only been there a week or so, the teacher said to me, "Teacher Laura, I think Jesus is calling you on the phone!" It took me by surprise and I didn't have time to think about whether I was especially comfortable with the idea so I whipped out my mobile phone in front of about ninety amazed children and said something along the lines of "O hello Jesus! Hi! How are you? That's nice. So you've got a message for the children? O that's good. What would you like me to tell them? To be nicely behaved and to eat up all their dinner? And to listen at school and do lots of learning? Ok Jesus, I'll tell them you called and I'll tell them you love them lots. Ok. Bye bye!"

And that's still probably the wierdest pretend phone call I've ever had.