"-IT" Words

The other day, Cal’s teacher caught me in the hall at school and said, “oh, I have a funny story to tell you about Cal.”  Coming off of learning from Cal the night before that he had “made ‘Teacher’s Choice’” (a negative achievement) I was just glad to hear her describe it as a “funny” story.  Must not be the story of him “making ‘Teacher’s Choice’,” I thought.

She went on to tell me the story.  They’ve been working on identifying collections of words with the same, familiar sound to them.  For example, the words cat, bat and rat are considered “-AT” words.  Lot, rot and cot are considered “-OT” words.
Earlier that day, she asked the class, “Who can tell me an “-IT” word?”

Cal’s hand went up immediately and she called on him, “Cal?”

“SHIT,” he offered up.

Doh.  Apparently, this caused some confusion in the class.  “Shit?  What’s shit?” a few kids asked.  A few repeated the word, “shit.”  They really didn’t know.  Frankly, I’m just glad that MY kid didn’t know.

Mrs. Dunham kept her cool and showed no amused or surprised reaction at the word, “shit” being repeated by her class of Kindergartners.  She simply said it was an “adult word” and asked for another “-IT” word.

“TIT,” said Cal’s classmate.

Mrs. Dunham then thought to herself, maybe the “-IT” family of words wasn’t such a great idea.