BABIES: ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW begins: "Everyone starts out as a baby. You were a baby once. Your mom and dad were babies, too. Even your grandparents were babies." It seems that teachers were babies once, too! (Who knew?)
Prove it to your students--have a NAME THAT BABY contest. This idea came from Colleen Ginnetti, a fifth grade teacher at Benjamin Rush Elementary school, where I had a fabulous school visit. All the teachers brought in baby pictures and the students guessed which grown-up belonged to which baby picture.
Everybody had fun guessing--including the teachers. When we had lunch the day of my visit they also had a lot of fun arguing over who was the cutest baby. (I stayed neutral...)
If I am visiting your school and you want me to send in a baby picture to put on the poster, I might just do that...
To have the contest: Have teachers and other faculty submit their baby pictures. Paste them on a poster, with a number for each picture. Print up sheets with numbers and a list of teachers. Display the poster in the library, the lobby, or another central place, or pass the poster around from class to class, as they did at Benjamin Rush. Have children write in the name of the teacher by the number of the picture they think belongs to that teacher. The children who get the most right are the winners! You can have a winner for each class, each grade, or just three top winners for the school. At Benjamin Rush, the top three winners each got an autographed copy of one of my books on the day of the visit.
