Riddles, Once Again

Today it was time to teach the concept of riddles to one of my elementary classes. I braced myself. The last time I tried to teach riddles to an advanced class it didn’t go over so well. The lesson started off like this, “What is big and hairy and has four arms?” “I don’t know.” “I don’t know, either, but it’s standing right behind you.” And the four students burst into laughter. Knee-slapping guffawing. Maybe there’s hope…

So after explaining the concept of a riddle, it was time for us to create some on our own. In the book, it gave two possible answers, we were to create the riddle itself. The first answer was dog. We began to list all attributes of a dog on the board: cute, good nose, helps blind people see, has a tair. When we listed about 10 items, we read them out loud, to see which ones we wanted to use in the riddle. I noticed I had written “has a tair” instead of “has a tail.” This was the third time today I’ve switched my r’s and l’s. I really am learning Korean.

We had many attributes on the board. Okay, guys, how should we begin our riddle? “People eat me!” was the unanimous response. I turned around. Were they serious or just joking? They were serious. The riddle didn’t turn out that well. You win some, you lose some. Or, in this case, you eat some.