Nick, the Gastastic Kinder

So my current position, serving for the Minnesota Reading Corps as a kindergarten-focused literacy tutor, has been an absolute joy. An average of 3.5 days out of 5, that is. During the first few weeks of the school year before my caseload was established, I was able to spend time in the kindergarten classes just getting to know the students. It was such a blast and I fell in love with (most of) the students. I started off working with 20 kids (mostly K, but some 1st/3rd). Throughout the year I was able to exit students if they were making good progress. For example, some kids I started with knew anywhere from 0-6 letter sounds and after a few weeks/months of working with me, were able to name more than 50 in a minute (SO exciting!!). Anyway, my students have changed over the course of the year and I finally have this little boy who I had already met and gotten to know in the beginning of the year. We'll call him Nick.

Nick has pretty much every speech impediment you can imagine. He cannot pronounce his Rs, Ls, Js, Fs, Gs, or Ss. At least they're very hard to decipher. For example, it took me 3 weeks to figure out his cat's name. He kept saying what sounded like, Awwduh. My guesses were Alder, Olive, Otter...the list goes on. He became very frustrated with me on a daily basis because I was determined to figure this out. So finally I sent a piece of paper with him to give to his mom that said, "My cat's name is _____." Nip this question mark in the bud. The cat's name was Oliver. Who woulda thunk. Anyway, Nick is quite cute. The stories he tells are adorable (especially because of his speech), and he's so polite.

Today, when we were reading our book, Miss Bindergarten Stays Home From Kindergarten (highly suspenseful), I noticed Nick kept quietly saying, "exkuthe me." After about 3 or 4 times, I finally said, "Nick, are you trying to get my attention?" He shyly (very unlike him) looked up at me and shook his head. A few more times I heard him say it so I said, "Nick, why do you keep saying excuse me?" ....... "Becuthe I keep fawwting!!"

I should have known. The younger ones somehow are always FULL of farts. Walk into any room and it's a different world of stank in comparison to the hallway. And I'm lucky enough to get to work with the little stink bombs. When do we realize it's not socially acceptable to crop dust your way through life?