Lunchtime Conversation--the Best!

What's Inside?

     Sometimes, things just happen.  There was a beautiful, but slightly broken, gourd on the playground.  We brought it into the classroom after recess.  It was just about time for lunch, so we sat at our tables.

     Just for the fun of it, we tried to guess what was inside our cracked gourd.  The gourd was broken; we would be able to take a good peek inside if pulled at the cracked opening.  Morah Susan held it up high, very high.  We could see the outside of the gourd, but not the inside.

     We went around the room asking all our Kitah Gimmel members to take a guess about the inside of the gourd.  The Morahs figured on some logical answers, but it turned out each and every child was in a very funny, and fun, mood.

     One of the girls guessed first. She said, "There's a crab inside!"  Maybe, but probably not, and all the children appreciated the humor in this response.  Everyone smiled, and then added their own silly answer.  "Its a snake!"  "There's a cockroach in there!" Later, the silliness increased, "No, there's a turtle inside!"

     After a while, we really went to town with this.  "There's a whale inside! A big mama whale!"  "No, an elephant!"  "A gorilla!" "No, a teeny-weeny little elephant!"

     One of the last responses was, "There's a monkey inside!"  This led to the group singing one of their favorite songs, "Ten Little Monkeys Jumping on a Bed."  The song ended with mama monkey putting all the monkeys back to bed.

     Not to be outdone, the song took a new turn:  one of the boys declared, "I have a joke!"  He then sang his own made-up song, "Three Little Elephants Jumping on a Bed."  It was the perfect take-off of the monkey song that we had just finished.  His song ended with all the elephants going off to jail!

     Then, we looked inside the gourd.  No crabs, turtles, whales, monkeys or elephants.  We saw the seeds and the fibrous insides of the gourd.  Reality may be fascinating, but our imaginations are truly entertaining!

     Needless to say, the Morahs enjoyed the lunchtime conversation!

Morah Susan and Morah Sterny