Pie Charts and Tally Marks

Dear Diary,

It's all I can do to not raise my hand.

The second grade teacher asks a question about the picture chart.  "How many more pepperoni pizzas were made than cheese?"  The kids aren't getting it.  They raise their hands to answer but just can't quite figure it out. 

Ooooh. Pick me! Pick me! I know the answer! I think to myself. 

I love this math. It is so much fun!  I would love to be able to show the class how smart I am.

But this is not a flashback to my childhood.
This is now.
I am an adult.
An aide, sitting in a second grade classroom, watching a lesson about charts and graphs unfold on the overhead screen in front of me and 25+ eight-year-olds. 

And I want to raise my hand.

Silly, I know.

Thanks to my employment, I now spend a lot of time in first and second grade.

We are
counting coins
charting and tallying
telling time
watching plants grow from seeds
spelling homonyms
reading stories
subtracting three digit numbers
learning not to cut in line. 

Through all this activity I am realizing:

All I ever really need to know I learned by second grade. 

Have I ever used sine and cosine in my "real" life?  Nope.  But three digit subtraction sure comes in handy with my checkbook (and so does counting coins).  And it is always good to know which witch to write, right?

So, just in case the teacher gets tired of hearing wrong answers, and one day I hear,
"Mrs. LJ, what is the noun in that sentence?"

I'll be ready.
'Cuz I've already been through second grade, and I'll know.

Precociously yours,
LJ