Does dark have a short a?

What a crazy day! First, our otherwise sublime morning duty was marred by a former customer who, when Anonymous Joe told her NOT to walk out into the middle of traffic and gum up the works, told him to, "Shut up and go back to your job."

When I came back inside, I was informed that my colleague was out and so I would have to split up her class among the other 3rd grade teachers. Once again, I had 25 kids in a room with 21 desks-- always fun!

Then, around 11:30, the school lost power. I was right in the middle of a (very interesting) sentence about pictographs when the lights flickered, there was a strange alien sound outside, and the room was plunged into darkness. Thankfully, it was a relatively sunny day outside, so opening a few blinds provided us with enough light to continue our learning experiences.

As a result of the power outage, we had to go to lunch about 15 minutes earlier than usual or run the risk of the food being cold.

The power finally came back on around 2:40, but only to half of the school. I don't mean that half the rooms had light while the other half did not. Half of the lights in EACH room came back on, while the other half in EACH room stayed dark. Curiouser and curiouser.

Nevertheless, it was a pretty fun day. The kids enjoyed making their pictographs, but the most fun came when we started a language activity. I gave them each a piece of paper, which they then folded into a booklet. This was the "short a" book. Over the course of the week, they are to write down any word that they see, hear, or think of that has a short a.

To get them started, we talked about the sound a short a makes. It's basically the same sound I would make if I stepped on a hot coal. I introduced several short words, stretching the phonetics out each time.

"Cat -- Kuhh-aaaaaaa-tuhh"

"Man -- Muhh-aaaaaaa-nuhh"

The kids picked up and this and started stretching words out with me. And for the rest of the day, I couldn't help myself from stretching out words as they came to me, like a sheep turned teacher.

"OK, cl-aaaaaaaa-ss, take out your pl-aaaaaaaa-nner for your m-aaaaaaaa-th homework."

During my morning class, one of my sweet little girls called me over and asked, "What about ass?"

"Excuse me?"

"Ass!" (while the other 4 kids at the table looked on expectantly)

She continued, "You know, like cool AS ice?"

WHEW!!!