last class in 2006

Today was the last class of this year and my kiddo’s wanted to play games instead of having a “real” lesson (for me after all it’s all a big play, hahaha).

So when I proposed to play hangman, I immediately got everyone excited!

Now here is something we (being brought up in the West) don’t think about too much, but if we play the hangman wordgame we draw a puppet like this:

However, after having played this twice one of my students came up to the blackboard and drew this picture:

Principle obviously is the same, but there is actually a big difference.
In pic 1 with every incorrect letter asked, we draw lines until we have a man hanging, actually pretty cruel.
Whereas in pic 2 a guy is hanging from a parachute and we erase the lines of the chute with every wrong letter. All the lines gone and he will drop in the beak of the shark.

Funnier?
Cultural difference?

I told David about it when having dinner and he said he had experienced it before too with younger kids who got “traumatized” by the ‘real’ hanging man.

Interesting…