12 June 2009

Criminals, as Seen by Children

There was a problem in my class of 5-year-olds the other day. Some little critter was going into the toilets, locking the door and crawling out, leaving the toilets locked from the inside. The old classic.

Who could it be? Better yet, how best to encourage children to stop doing this? I sat the 30 of them down and we had a discussion about how many germs there are on the toilet floor and how leaving the toilets locked would make the other children wet themselves (which happens every now and then anyway).

They were intrigued.

One little boy told me that if we couldn't find out who it was, the police would have to come and find out.

No no, I said. The police only come to catch adults who are naughty. Teachers are in charge of catching naughty children.

Somebody else said that the police come to get "robbers."

And a little girl said that sometimes naughty adults steal children. Time to end this discussion.

***

The next day, a little boy noticed that the toilets were no longer being locked from the inside. He told me that the Head Teacher had caught the child who was doing it and sent them to another school.

Guess he hadn't noticed that there were still 30 children present.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Cute story...the innocence of childhood....well, maybe the one who was locking the doors was not quite so innocent but eventually got the better of him/her!!!! Jill