I think it's helpful around this time of year to remind myself that fifth graders, like all of us, have emotional soldiers. I first heard this metaphor in a psychology class. The metaphor goes something like this: each of us has a set of emotional soldiers to help us cope with life.
The soldiers serve to protect us in a variety of ways. During the routine times of the year, the soldiers protect our mouths helping us know what to say and when to say it. They also protect our bodies, helping us move efficiently and with purpose. They protect our ears, helping us hear our peers and teachers with reason.
During more exciting times of the year, like the week before Christmas, the soldiers are busy elsewhere. Soldiers are on guard as schedules at school and home change. So, some of the mouth or ear soldiers are pulled away from their posts in order to "combat" change or stress. This leaves the mouth and and bodies less guarded than usual. So, we might say things in ways we don't intend, or we might talk more than we mean. We might fall more or have particularly messy cubbies.
In the end, it is helpful for me to think of energy as a limited resource. Fifth graders have limited supplies of energy. They are thinking about lots of exciting things right now and sometimes this leaves the normal posts unguarded.
We are seeing lots of activity at school these days; the students are feeling exhausted. But they are also happy.
