And THAT is how you teach 4th grade.

My husband is a 4th-grade teacher.  He’s good at his job, he enjoys it, and he comes home every single day with a funny story (i.e. “Kids Say the Darnedest Things!”).  He told me this one last night, and I realized that I just had to share.

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On Monday, just before lunch, JB was going over something having to do with Social Studies, and the question of WWII came up.

Specifically, one of the children asked, “What happened in WWII?  Why did it start?”

JB has his BA in History, and WWII/Hitler was his main topic of study.  He looked at the clock, realized he had 5 minutes before lunch, and proceeded to give a wham-bam-Li’l Hitler demonstration, pulling and pushing the desks around in what was approximately the quickest game of Risk ever.

In the end, the kids understood that greed sucked, and that a certain country [*cough*Germany*cough*] needed to keep its mitts to itself.

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Yesterday, they began to talk about Geography more in-depth.  As part of the lesson, JB had the following fill-in-the-blank sentence on a worksheet the entire class was going over:

“__________ divide countries into regions.”

The children stared blankly at him.

“Okay, guys,” he prompted, “it starts with a ‘G’…”

One little girl raised her hand and shouted triumphantly, “GERMANS!”

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Who says kids don’t listen?