Them Bones

We began the skeletons this week. I hung Alaina's yellowed paper plate skeleton up, and introduced the project.
"Once many years ago, before you were born, there was a very popular teacher at El Verano School. She was Mrs. Fromke, and known for teaching about birds and bones. My daughters, Alaina and Kaily, were lucky enough to have her, and I got my design for building a skeleton out of paper plates from her. Now we are going to study bones just like the students here long ago.

So I began my patter, to the collective gasps of awe and disbelief. They were amazed that there were students who sat in this same room before they were born. They never even considered that Alaina had even sat in room 33, then room 9 with Mr. Grund but that's another story - one that occurred twenty years ago.

"Did you know that this room is still filled with skeletons? There are 25 skeletons sitting in here right now"

"No! Ms Cambio, skeletons aren't real!" laughed the kids. Then I had to break it to them. Not only were skeletons real, and alive in our time, but they were the skeletons, or each of them has had a living skeleton inside of them.

"Wow" they all exclaimed when they saw my crate filled with traced paper plates, in stacks by bone type. "You must have stayed up late doing all those plates."

"It took two nights of tracing, so you'd better really listen to the instructions or you'll have a skeleton with a bone missing. It happens all the time, the poor student who makes a skeleton that has to hop around on one leg, or make do without a pelvis, all because someone didn't follow directions."

Then I showed them the bag of spare bones, with students of the past's names on them. I saved them just in case someone needed a new humerous or femur.

We passed out the plates and let the cutting begin. We cut out the skulls, the ribcages, the pelvises, the femurs. They labeled each bone with their name and the name of the bone: Alan's pelvis, and Bella's ribcage. I insisted upon the use of possessive s in their labels so they could practice the grammar skill along with the bone identification. I passed out a big plastic bag to each person so they could begin their own bag of bones. We had to stop at this point and clean up.

We'll begin again next week. After the children left, I sorted through the bones, and found an extra pelvis on the loose, and a missing femur. Someone had labeled the skull "femur" and someone else forgot to label at all.

Anyhow, we will in the end, fabricate a set of 24 skeleton models with the bones all labeled to take home on Halloween. It will take time and patience. It will take fine kettle of patience. I'll wonder why I signed on for this again, then in the end, the magic of a classful of dancing skeletons will win me over. It's a boneyard out there!