Show-and-tell day is beloved by students everywhere, because who doesn’t like to have the opportunity to be the center of attention, and also show something cool from your house?
I’ve never really considered before why it might be a day of trepidation for teachers, who never know what, exactly their kids are going to show up with on the day.
These teachers probably wish they’d rethought the practice after these 15 items showed up in their classrooms.
15. His own mother.
Not a teacher, but when my son was in preschool, he brought me in for show and tell a couple of months after brain surgery. I had a shaved head, gnarly scar, and a crazy eye. He made sure I showed everyone up close my crazy eye 🤣 it was funny to me and made me happy.
He had a hard time seeing me like that in the beginning.
14. That’s one awful moment.
My wife is a teacher in a major US city. One of her grade 4 students brought in a packet of his mom’s cocaine to show the class during drug awareness week.
He got some visits from the principals and school counselor, maybe the.men in blue.
13. The face I just made.
A lamb’s tail. Apparently they went to a farm which let visitors keep them as souvenirs (who knew that removing tails was a thing?)
Turns out it was a mistake to postpone Show and Tell for a couple of days while, hidden in a locker, the tail marinated in the July heat.
12. Priceless response.
When I was in 6th grade I took a belly dancing bralette thing in that my brother sent me from his deployment. We were studying the Middle East and I had something from there, I thought it was cool! I remember my teacher gulping, eyes bulging, asking, “just…. That? That’s all they wear?” And me saying, “yeah, I guess so”.
Anyways it turns out he sent me his girlfriend’s present and his girlfriend got my camel book. But I was very, very popular with the sixth grade boys for a little while.
11. Teachers make mistakes too.
I brought a rattlesnake to school in a mason jar that my father killed directly by our front door. I was 6. Took to show my class. After the teacher let me show everyone and we discussed it she stuck it in closet so we would all calm back down.
Completely forgotten about and we had a 3 day weekend. We had to have class in the gymnasium for 3 days 😀
10. Still alive and everything.
I’m not a teacher, but did bring a Black Widow spider once. I caught it in my backyard.
My teacher kindly explained that it was NOT okay to bring venomous spiders to school, confiscated and released it.
9. Well that’s adorable.
Asked my students to bring an object they loved, one kid brought his grandmother.
8. How the school got a new mascot.
I brought a bat that I’d caught inside a glass mason jar.
My teacher made me release it, and the little guy made a life for himself in the breezeway between the cafeteria and the main building.
7. My heart just leapt into my throat.
glass he brought from home. he did in fact cut himself, which is how i discovered the glass when he walked up to me with bloody hands
6. A close call.
I had a student bring in “her grandfathers skull”. The class was horrified.
It turned out that he was a doctor and it was the skull that he kept in his office as a model.
5. A born storyteller.
Had a kid aged 6-7 who had a lot going on but part of it was that he was a compulsive liar with absolutely no sense of when a lie was so poorly constructed that everyone would know.
Every single day he would say he had something for show and tell. Most days we ‘didn’t have time’ for his show and tell, but every so often we kind of had to let him have a go. He’d stand up, ready to do his show and tell, then wander over to my desk, browse for a minute, pick up the most random crap (a post it note, a sharpener, once it was the custom “well done” stamp that actually had my name on it) and then say some poorly constructed story about how he found it in Africa when he went there for tea yesterday with his auntie or some such.
He’d get really upset if he realized nobody believed him, though even at that age, most of the kids had the tact (or gullibility) to just smile and nod.
4. Or that he drove it himself.
Went to School in a tiny town with n eastern Colorado. Kid in my class drove his dad’s combine to school for show and tell. Was in the 4th grade.
Still find it crazy that nobody really cared that there was this big ass piece of farm equipment sitting on the front lawn all day.
3. A living legend.
I had a relative who was a biology professor at the college and they let me take an actual human brain to show and tell. I was a legend after
2. A whole situation.
When I was in fifth grade and going to school in AZ, this girl in our class brought in a glass jar with a tarantula and a black widow (no clue how she caught both in one day, or WHY). Within an hour the tarantula was dead and upside down in the jar.
Same day there was a fire drill and yep, someone knocked it off her desk and the jar broke, releasing the black widow. We never found it (but the teacher made sure to stomp the dead tarantula just in case).
Same thing happened with our glass fire ant farm in second grade, now that I think about it. I don’t know why people kept bringing this shit into school, or why our teachers let them.
1. This is amazing.
My brother made my mom bring me for show and tell after I was born. He then proceeded to tell the entire class that he helped her dig me up from a cabbage patch. The kids all believed him and the teacher was supposedly trying her hardest to not break out in hysterical laughter.
Yes, I’m a 53yr old Cabbage Patch Kid.
I’m dying. Kids are so unpredictable.
If you’re a teacher, add your story to the list!