Out of the mouths of babes
Since my return I have been 'archiving.'
Found this one I posted over a year ago and it still cracks me up. Perhaps some of our newer members might appreciate.
I have been, throughout my teaching career, a great fan of collecting childrens' 'howlers.'
One of my favourites was - a 10 year old girl in my class writing about what she did on Christmas Eve.
'I went upstairs to my bedroom and raped mum and dad's presents.'
Have a look at the following:
The following excerpts are actual answers given on history
tests and in Sunday School quizzes by children between 5th
and 6th grade ages in Ohio. They were collected by two
teachers over a period of three years. Read carefully for
grammar, misplaced modifiers, and, of course, spelling.
Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes.
He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton.
Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Since then no one ever found it.
Ancient Egypt was old. It was inhabited by gypsies and mummies
who all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert.
The climate of the Sarah is such that all the inhabitants have
to live elsewhere.
Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea where they made
unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients.
Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandos. He
died before he ever reached Canada but the commandos made it.
Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.
He was A actual hysterical figure as well as being in the bible.
It sounds Like he was sort of busy too.
The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we
wouldn't have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a
young female moth.
Socrates was a famous old Greek teacher who went around giving
people advice. They killed him. He later died from an overdose
of wedlock which is apparently poisonous. After his death, his
career suffered a Dramatic decline.
In the first Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled
biscuits, and threw the java. The games were messier then than
they show on TV now.
Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul.
The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going
to be made king. Dying, he gasped out "Same to you, Brutus."
Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was canonized by Bernard
Shaw for reasons I don't really understand. The English and
French still have problems.
Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a
success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all
shouted "hurrah!" and that was the end of the fighting for a
long while.
It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg
invented removable type and the Bible. Another important
invention was the circulation of blood.
Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented
Cigarettes and started smoking.
Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper
which was very dangerous to all his men.
The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare.
He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He
never made much money and is famous only because of his plays.
He wrote tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic
pentameter.
Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented
Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were
two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin
discovered electricity by Rubbing two cats backward and also
declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." He was
a naturalist for sure. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's
Mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he
built with his own hands... Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by
signing the Emasculation Proclamation.
On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and
got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture
show. They believe the assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a
supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.
Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a
large number of children. In between he practiced on an old
spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750
to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world
and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and
half English. He was very large.
Bethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf that
he wrote loud music and became the father of rock and roll. He
took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for
him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.
The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and
inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started
reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a
network of rivers to spring up.
Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work
of a hundred men.
Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbits but I don't know why.
Charles Darwin was a naturalist. He wrote the Organ of the Species.
It was very long. People got upset about it and had trials to see
if it was really true. He sort of said God's days were not just 24
hours but without watches who knew anyhow? I don't get it.
Madman Curie discovered radio. She was the first woman to do what
she did. Other women have become scientists since her but they
didn't get to find radios because they were already taken.
Karl Marx was one of the Marx Brothers. The other three were in the eches and started revolutions. Someone in the
family had to have a job, I guess."
Al.
