Day 33: The tale of Lisa and the play dough

One thing I've never understood is why kids eat play dough. The smell alone is reason enough to keep it away from your face, let alone your mouth. I guess when I was little, I was curious as to what it tasted like, so I took a lick, and from that moment, I promised myself I'd never do it again. The salty and bitter taste stayed in my mouth for what seemed like forever, I just hated it.

Today, I used play dough in my lesson, and the kids just love when you bring either that or bubbles during a lesson. They are both rather exciting objects and stray from the typical objects used in class, such as the pom poms, pipe cleaners, paper, scissors, rubber bands, foam cutouts, etc. Anyways, back to my story. I used this really potent, purple play dough in class and the kids loved it. As soon as I whipped it out of my bag, they all jumped from their seats and sprawled onto the table, in hopes they could each snag themselves a piece from my hand. However, since I am more familiar with their tricks, I knew their hands would soon be coming my way so I quickly raised the play dough, high in the air.

After I got them calmed down, I began to roll the dough onto the table, into the shape of a snake. I kept rolling the ball back and forth, spreading my fingers across it, so it would grow in length and look more snake-like. Through this process, some of the play dough stuck onto the table, but I hadn't realized that. I picked the snake up off the table to show my class only to find that I had one lose interest. I found that little Lisa, the only Korean in the class, was transfixed on the leftover play dough on the table, rolling it into a ball, then placing it directly into her mouth. I was disgusted. First, because she was eating play dough. Second, she was rolling it up off of the dirty table that all the kids climb all over and rub their dirty paws on.

I told Lisa to stop eating the play dough, but every time I slightly turned away from her,I caught her sneaking a little nibble in. After a while, I gave up and let her eat all the left over play dough she wanted. I mean, if she was that desperate for a snack, then so be it! I did get quite a kick out of it though, Lisa (or li-tha, she has a cute little lisp) is such a good one, I really do love her.