This morning, we hosted Karla Graessley’s two-three split from Erickson Elementary in Ypsilanti. Karla’s name may be familiar to you because we are doing a year-long residency in her classroom, and she’s the one who wrote the wonderful email about us that we posted a few weeks ago. We’ve liked Karla since we met her, and we’ve been having a great time in her classroom every Friday morning, but MAN-OH-MAN were we not prepared for how creative and awesome her class would be at our field trip!
And so, out of pure love and the happy feelings still swirling in our lab, we present to you, their story:
THE ELEPHANT WITH THE CURLY TRUNK AND THE ONE-EYED MOUSE VERSUS CATASAURUS
Curly Girly was an elephant who had a curly trunk. Her trunk was as curly as spiral spaghetti. When she uncurled her trunk and blew out of it, she had the ability to make anything curly.
Curly Girly lived in Iowa. She was, in fact, the only elephant in Davenport. Her best friend was a shiny-silver, one-eyed mouse named Little Squeak who had very straight whiskers. Little Squeak loved candy. He could run a thousand miles in an hour.
One day, Curly Girly and Little Squeak were doing their favorite thing: dressing up like girls, having a whole curly meal (curly turkey, curly cake, curly candy), watching a movie, and then waiting for the symbol to appear in the sky that told them it was time to fight crimes. The symbol was a curly-que and a piece of candy, and when they looked out of the window, there it was.
“I see the symbol! There must be a crime for you and me to fight. Let’s go to where the light is flashing and see what’s going on,” Curly Girly said excitedly.
“Wait! I need to pack my candy and call my family,” Little Squeak replied.
“I’ll get my trunk ready.” Curly Girly started flexing and straightening her trunk. When Little Squeak was ready to go, Curly Girly said, “Up, up, and candy away!” Her trunk started to spin, and Little Squeak jumped on a long piece of salt-water taffy. They flew off into the night.
Soon, they got to downtown Davenport.
They saw their nemesis, Catasaurus, in the town square. Catasaurus was black and orange with colorful spikes going all the way down his back. He was surrounded by people, but no one said a word. The square was as silent as a cloud.
Catasaurus said, “Ha, ha, ha! I used to speak like a toothless baby cow. Moo-goo-goo, that’s all I could say. So I’ve stolen everyone’s thoughts and metaphors. Now I speak like Albert Einstein. I’m as clever as a fox.” He had a long tube coming out of his mouth to suck up the metaphors.
“Not so fast,” Curly Girly said. “You haven’t got our metaphors yet. We’re quicker than quicksand.”
“Drat!” Catasaurus exclaimed. “I know you guys are really as dumb as rock shaped like a log.” He turned his tube on them and …
Twenty-three different endings were written, all of them happy.
Many thanks to Mrs. Graessley’s class for visiting us today! And KUDOS to Mrs. Graessley herself, for being an INCREDIBLE teacher.