Bu Xing!

I just had a lot of fun things happen today... so I feel a need to keep posting over and over. But let's be honest... the Boy is living for these things.

Today, while teaching children to sort, I was trying to come up with a way to teach them about "sorting rules." I came up with the idea to tell them that they were the boss and they got to make the rules for their shapes to follow. I then taught them about what the Chinese people say to children when they don't follow the rules, which is, "bu xing!" That means, literally, "not allowed!" We then sorted the shapes, and every time I sorted a shape wrong, they would all yell, "Bu Xing!" They loved it, and I did too.

The best part though, is to see how excited they all get about this. I gave each child a bag of shapes to sort. The rule was this: they had to sort the bag of shapes, then show me. If they sorted it correctly, I would have them clean up their shapes, and I traded them bags. I loved watching them sort their shapes incorrectly on purpose so they could yell, "bu xing!" at the offending shape. And then, they would get so excited about doing it all over again. One little boy, Yair, was so excited when I gave him a new bag of shapes, he whispered, "Yes!" and hugged the new shapes to his chest.

Now just pretend for a minute that you're an adult: if you sort this bag of shapes, all you get is another one. The more work you do, the more work you get. YES!!