We are here, we are learning.

Idiom Day is one of my favorite days of the year. And it's not just because we all get to dress up in fun costumes. Well, okay -- it's a little bit because of the costumes.

Each year after teaching figurative language to our students, they choose an idiom, design a costume to match the idiom's literal meaning, and come to school for a day of rotation through each 4th grade teacher's classroom for games designed to reinforce their learning.

I love seeing the various interpretations they come up with for their idioms. "Caught red handed" showed up today in several versions: with handcuffs, painted hands, gloved hands, or even wrapped in a large net! My favorite "break a leg" wore an xray screen showing a fractured leg, and I think my favorite costume of the day was a simple red t-shirt with a heart drawn on one sleeve. Simple. Perfect.

As for my amazing team, we showed up as "thrown under the bus," having a "green thumb," the "bee's knees," the ever popular classroom idiom "all eyes on me," and "it's all Greek to me." We had a ridiculous amount of fun letting all the other teachers and parents guess what our idioms where.

In the rotations, the students spent time playing 4 different figurative language games, including Jeopardy with me, where they teamed up to answer questions about idioms, hyperbole, simile, metaphor, and onomatopoeia. They enjoyed finding the figurative language within famous quotes and poetry, and completing popular idioms.

At the end of the day we gave out awards for best in class, funniest, most creative, best overall, best at keeping us guessing, and most over the top. The kids each had a moment in the spotlight to tell who they were and what their idiom was -- everyone clapped and cheered during "the big reveal!"

Next year, I think I'll take it a little further and add a bit of a research element by having my students find out where their idiom originated and sharing that information with our class when they come in costume.

So, yeah. One of my favorites. Love to dress up, love the costumes, the creativity, the laughter, and the months that follow as students run to me with a book in hand shouting, "I found an idiom!" grab a sentence strip, write it down, and post it on the wall -- a symbol to me, to them, to anyone that enters our room -- we are here, we are learning.